Richie Pilavin, Precision Harley-Davidson Dealer Principal
PRECISION HARLEY-DAVIDSON: NOT HELPING ISN’T IN THE EQUATION
Words and images by Max Barna
I knew Precision Harley-Davidson was going to be my kind of place before I ever stepped foot in Rhode Island.
A few days before the trip, I was doing what I always do when researching a dealership. I started digging through their website, inventory, and social media pages to get a feel for who they were and what they cared about.
That's when I found their Instagram.
Most dealership Instagram pages tend to follow a pretty similar formula. New inventory. Customer delivery photos. Event announcements. Maybe a burnout video every once in a while if somebody's feeling ambitious. It's the kind of content you'd expect from a Harley-Davidson dealership, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it.
Precision's page was different.
The first video I landed on featured Dealer Principal Richie Pilavin talking about staying late to machine a set of old Shovelhead cases for a customer. Then came more videos with Richie walking viewers through resurfacing Evo heads, repairing stripped spark plug holes, soda blasting old parts back to life, lacing and truing wheels, fixing broken exhaust studs, tuning bikes on the dyno, and tackling the kind of machine work most riders rarely get to see up close.
The deeper I got into the feed, the more it felt like I was looking at the back room of an old speed shop. The difference was that alongside all the decades of knowledge were modern matching equipment, diagnostic tools, and technology that would’ve seemed like science fiction to all the old shops I’d frequent as a kid.
PRECISION SEEMED JUST AS INTERESTED IN HELPING SOMEBODY KEEP A 40-YEAR OLD HARLEY-DAVIDSON ALIVE AS THEY WERE HELPING SOMEBODY BUILD A BRAND-NEW ONE INTO THEIR DREAM MOTORCYCLE.
As somebody who has spent a good chunk of his life building, riding, and wrenching on old motorcycles, I was hooked.
Precision seemed just as interested in helping somebody keep a 40-year-old Harley-Davidson alive as they were helping somebody build a brand-new one into their dream motorcycle.
These folks were digging deeper into actual machine work instead of the standard, “here’s how to do a three-hole fluid change on your Road Glide”. This is work that requires experience, specialized equipment, and a willingness to get your hands dirty.
By the time I was packing up my bike to head up to Rhode Island, I'd built the place up in my head as some kind of amusement park for old-bike nerds like me.
The good news is that it turned out to be exactly that. It was a veritable Disneyland of pieces and parts.
Richie came outside to meet me when I pulled into the parking lot. Before we exchanged more than a few words, I noticed his hands were covered in grease. Then I noticed his shoes. The soles had literal holes worn through them.
Those little details immediately told me something about the guy. Richie wasn't spending his days sitting behind a desk talking about motorcycles. He was spending his days working on them.
After a brief introduction, I went to grab his hand for a shake and I could see that he was hesitant because his hands were greasy and gunky.
When I laughed and said, “Aw hell, a little grease don’t scare me” and went in for the shake, I could see his face light up.
He said, “Oh good! This is perfect timing, follow me!”
We didn't start with a tour of the showroom. We didn't sit down in his office. We didn't walk the sales floor and talk inventory.
Instead, Richie took me straight back into service because he was finishing a last-minute wheel repair for a customer who was waiting.
While he wrapped things up, I grabbed water and took a look around.
By the time we finally sat down to talk, it was one of the few moments all day that Richie wasn’t actively working on something.
Every time I turned around, he seemed to be somewhere else. One minute he was helping in service. The next he was answering a question about parts. Then he’d disappear into the shop before popping back up in a few minutes later somewhere completely different.
THOSE LITTLE DETAILS IMMEDIATELY TOLD ME SOMETHING ABOUT THE GUY. RICHIE WASN’T SPENDING HIS DAYS SITTING BEHIND A DESK TALKING ABOUT MOTORCYCLES. HE SPENT HIS DAYS WORKING ON THEM.
Richie was born in Boston and got hooked on motorcycles young. His parents tried their best to keep him away from them, but like most parents who find themselves fighting that battle, they eventually lost.
It started with his cousin, who had a Honda Z50 dirtbike. That was the beginning.
Before long, Richie had saved enough money from his lawn mowing route to buy a Yamaha Mini Enduro. By high school, motorcycles had become the center of gravity around which everything else seemed to orbit.
He got to know people at local motorcycle shops, landed at the legendary Cycle Parts Center of Boston, and earned the nickname "The Hog Man" because of how quickly he could mount a 16-inch wheel.
"I earned their respect," he told me. "All these big greasy bikers and I was just a kid."
But Richie was never going to spend his entire life working for somebody else.
I laughed as he walked me through those early chapters of his career because it perfectly captures the way he seems to approach things. Directly, methodically, and without much drama, but with an excess of compassion and willingness to help folks out.
In 1980, he incorporated Richie's Used Motorcycle Parts Inc. And opened a 5,000-square-foot shop known locally as a Motorcycle Warehouse. A year later, an old drag racer who was closing up shop offered Richie the chance to purchase a collection of machining equipment. Richie jumped on the opportunity, and machine work became part of the business.
More than 40 years later, that decision still shapes Precision Harley-Davidson.
Richie, Samantha, and Jimmy Pilavin
Of course, none of this happens because of Richie alone.
Precision is very much a family business. His wife, Anneke has been part of the operation since the Motorcycle Warehouse days and today oversees MotorClothes and Parts & Accessories.
Long before that, she was lacing wheels, doing component rebuilds, and taking on many of the same jobs that helped build the business in the first place.
His daughter, Samantha, is at the center of so much happening at the dealership, and I honestly can't remember a moment during my visit when she wasn't behind the service counter helping customers, moving work through service, answering questions, settling up repair orders, or talking on the phone.
In fact, one of the first things she said to me when I walked through the door was "Welcome to the chaos” with a laugh right behind it. It was a fitting introduction.
And of course, a ton of other people help keep the dream alive.
The further I got into the property, the easier it became to see. The showroom was clean, thoughtfully laid out, and stocked with a strong mix of new and pre-owned motorcycles. During my visit, a beautiful 1971 FX — complete with its iconic boattail rear fender — sat on the floor alongside several customer builds.
1971 FX Super Glide
PRECISION’S INVENTORY OCCUPIES TWO FULL FLOORS. SHELVES STRETCH IN EVERY DIRECTION, PACKED WITH EVERYTHING FROM MODERN SCREAMIN’ EAGLE COMPONENTS TO OBSCURE PIECES FOR MOTORCYCLES THAT HAVEN’T BEEN IN PRODUCTION FOR DECADES.
But beyond the showroom sat a service department packed with lifts, technicians, tools, and ongoing projects. A completely torn-down performance bagger occupied one lift. Nearby sat equipment for head porting, valve work, cylinder boring, and flow benching.
There was also a fleet of newer CNC equipment tucked into the mix, which felt very on-brand for Precision. For all the dealership’s love of old motorcycles and old-school craftsmanship, these guys aren’t stuck in the past.
It was here that he introduced me to Vitor Raposo, one of Precision H-D’s Master Techs. Richie talks about Vitor with enormous respect, and after seeing the volume and complexity of the work moving through the shop up close, it wasn’t difficult to understand why. While his title might be Master Technician, his role within the business clearly extends far beyond that.
Between the machine work, diagnostics, performance projects, and caliber of motorcycles rolling through the service department, Vitor is one of the key people helping Precision maintain the reputation it's built over the last four decades.
Then he took me through the show room and behind the service desk to get a glimpse of the parts department. It was huge. Wall to wall, row after row, shelf upon shelf, all packed with parts.
Then we climbed a set of stairs and entered what appeared to be an entirely different parts department.
It took me a second to realize I was still looking at the same operation.
Precision's inventory occupies two full floors. Shelves stretch in every direction, packed with everything from modern Screamin' Eagle components to obscure pieces for motorcycles that haven't been in production for decades.
Vitor Raposo, Precision H-D's Master Tech
According to Richie, other dealerships regularly reach out when they're hunting for hard-to-find parts, which makes perfect sense once you see what's sitting on those shelves.
The deeper we walked into the inventory, the more ridiculous it became. There were shelves dedicated to old Sportster components, shelves filled with axle spacers and brake hardware, shelves packed with Screamin' Eagle parts, and countless bins containing the kind of oddball pieces that seem to disappear from existence the moment you actually need one.
What impressed me wasn’t just the depth of the inventory, but the range of it. Whether somebody was restoring a decades-old motorcycle, building a high performance Milwaukee-Eight motor or simply looking for the right parts to keep their bike (new and old!) on the road, there seemed to be a place for all of it.
And make no mistake: every single part is carefully catalogued and tagged, and Richie seems to know where every nut and bolt in the building lives.
I was both dumbfounded and enamored by it all. It was like a library’s Dewey Decimal System, but for Harley-Davidson parts.
And that’s because the operation is overseen by Parts Manager Allen Queen, one of those rare industry veterans who knows the parts business inside and out. Allen has been with Precision since 1991 and spent roughly two decades with another Harley-Davidson dealer in his hometown of Annapolis before that.
After walking those aisles, it was easy to understand why Richie speaks so highly of him.
According to Precision's own description of the business, they perform dyno tuning, boring and honing, aluminum welding, valve seat work, wheel truing, mill and lathe work, and a variety of machine shop services that many dealerships simply don't offer anymore. They also openly describe themselves as vintage motorcycle specialists and state that they service motorcycles other shops won't touch.
Throughout the day, Richie told story after story about riders who needed help. Some were looking for obscure parts. Others were trying to keep decades-old motorcycles on the road. A few had found themselves in situations that seemed almost impossible to predict. No matter what the challenge was, Richie always seemed to find himself in the middle of it.
He had story after story about times he’d gone out of his way to help folks out of a jam. There was the time he machined a shim down by five thousandths of an inch (thinner than a sheet of printer paper) just because it was what the job called for. And then there’ve been the countless times that folks have come in for a specific brake caliper, a certain type of foot control, a decades old OEM axle, and countless other tales of missing widgets and doo-dads.
Yet somehow every story ended the same way. No matter how far out of the way he had to go, Richie and his team would always solve the problem.
“WE STAY LATE, COME IN EARLY, WE’LL HIDE A PART IN THE BUSHES IF WE KNOW SOMEONE IS GOING TO NEED IT.”
- Richie Pilavin, Precision Harley-Davidson Dealer Principal
Eventually, I asked him a direct question: would he ever consider helping fewer people out of jams?
"Absolutely not," he said. "Not helping isn't in the equation."
Then he explained what keeps him motivated after all these years.
"What makes me tick is that a guy comes in looking for a little widget that he can't find, and then I find it. I feel like I'm the hero."
After spending the day with Richie, it was easy to believe him. Whether it was machine work, a performance build, helping somebody find the right motorcycle, or tracking down a hard-to-find part, he genuinely seemed to enjoy solving problems.
Richie spent years trying to acquire existing Harley-Davidson dealerships before eventually replacing the former Pawtucket dealer and opening Precision Harley-Davidson in its original location. The dealership held its grand opening in 1991 and expanded into the surrounding buildings over time as the operation grew.
"We were taking brand-new bikes and customizing them," Richie said while describing those early years. "That's what we kind of got known for."
And while Precision’s reputation has been built on machine work, performance, and vintage motorcycles, spending time there makes it clear that they’re every bit as committed to the newest motorcycles rolling out of Milwaukee.
At one point during the visit, Richie walked me through part of his personal collection. There were Panheads, Shovelheads, a rare old Harley-Davidson moped, and countless other classic bikes. There were even several newer, more highly sought Harley-Davidsons still sitting in their original factory crates.
My personal favorite was a Low Rider ST El Diablo from Harley-Davidson's 2022 Icons Collection. Richie has good taste.
What I found interesting wasn't necessarily the value or rarity of the motorcycles as much as it was how naturally they fit into everything else I’d seen throughout the day. The machine shop, the two floors of parts inventory, the old motorcycles, the new motorcycles, the customer projects, the performance builds. It all felt like different expressions of the same obsession.
That same mentality shows up in the way Precision approaches parts and service.
"We stay late, we come in early, we'll hide a part in the bushes if we know someone’s going to need it," he said as we all laughed.
Which, after spending a day hanging out with these guys, hearing that somebody had hidden a part in a bush at some point actually sounded entirely plausible.
Probably more than once.
I’m always grateful for the folks in our dealership network, but meeting guys like Richie takes me way back to my own early days, sitting in my OG’s shop, listening to the stories he’d tell, watching how he always delivered on promises and made folks’ dreams come true.
If you ever find yourself in Rhode Island grabbing a lobster roll around Pawtucket, just north of Providence, stop by Precision Harley-Davidson at 269 Armistice Boulevard. Whether you're looking for a new motorcycle, a hard-to-find used bike, expert service, performance work, or simply want to spend some time around people who genuinely love Harley-Davidsons, you'll find it here.
Richie has enough stories to write a book with, and he enjoys telling them. Want to find out for yourself? Give the shop a call at (401) 724-0010.
And if you're missing a little widget nobody else can find, there's a decent chance Richie already knows where it is.
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