Does anyone at all here like Harleys?
Discussion
What annoys me and many other bikers is you're paying an obscene premium for an archaic and poorly made machine. Gone are the days where they are 'all American', its more like made in china, assembled in America and even that isn't true most of the time.
Harley are very, very slow to catch up with modern engine designs, they only recently went with water cooling over air cooling. They also cheap out on manufacturing, using pressed together cranks meaning crankshaft runout is laughable by todays standards making aftermarket upgrades impossible in some cases, such as gear driven cams. Then you got that butt ugly primary case sticking out the side of the engine causing more unnecessary maintenance. The best thing about them is the sound and the aesthetics of some models, but don't buy one hoping for cheap upgrades/maintenance, performance, reliability or 'street cred'.
I'd have a Triumph Thunderbird or Rebel 1100 over any Harley:
Love the Rebel, may have to be my next bike:
Just swap out that butt ugly exhaust
Harley are very, very slow to catch up with modern engine designs, they only recently went with water cooling over air cooling. They also cheap out on manufacturing, using pressed together cranks meaning crankshaft runout is laughable by todays standards making aftermarket upgrades impossible in some cases, such as gear driven cams. Then you got that butt ugly primary case sticking out the side of the engine causing more unnecessary maintenance. The best thing about them is the sound and the aesthetics of some models, but don't buy one hoping for cheap upgrades/maintenance, performance, reliability or 'street cred'.
I'd have a Triumph Thunderbird or Rebel 1100 over any Harley:
Love the Rebel, may have to be my next bike:
Just swap out that butt ugly exhaust
RipTrip1 said:
What annoys me and many other bikers is you're paying an obscene premium for an archaic and poorly made machine. Gone are the days where they are 'all American', its more like made in china, assembled in America and even that isn't true most of the time.
Harley are very, very slow to catch up with modern engine designs, they only recently went with water cooling over air cooling. They also cheap out on manufacturing, using pressed together cranks meaning crankshaft runout is laughable by todays standards making aftermarket upgrades impossible in some cases, such as gear driven cams. Then you got that butt ugly primary case sticking out the side of the engine causing more unnecessary maintenance. The best thing about them is the sound and the aesthetics of some models, but don't buy one hoping for cheap upgrades/maintenance, performance, reliability or 'street cred'.
I'd have a Triumph Thunderbird or Rebel 1100 over any Harley:
Just swap out that butt ugly exhaust
Its been a very long time since harleys were all american, my ‘87 fxr has showa forks and did have wheels made in Australia to name but 2 items .Harley are very, very slow to catch up with modern engine designs, they only recently went with water cooling over air cooling. They also cheap out on manufacturing, using pressed together cranks meaning crankshaft runout is laughable by todays standards making aftermarket upgrades impossible in some cases, such as gear driven cams. Then you got that butt ugly primary case sticking out the side of the engine causing more unnecessary maintenance. The best thing about them is the sound and the aesthetics of some models, but don't buy one hoping for cheap upgrades/maintenance, performance, reliability or 'street cred'.
I'd have a Triumph Thunderbird or Rebel 1100 over any Harley:
Just swap out that butt ugly exhaust
20 years ago is very recently to you ? Gear driven cams conversions are available as are tuning options for most models ( not sure about the indian made models )
Edited by bimsb6 on Saturday 19th June 15:04
Edited by bimsb6 on Saturday 19th June 15:07
I've been riding Harleys almost exclusively since the age of 20-my first one was a 1340cc Lowrider ('Shovelhead' engine') which I swapped a couple of bikes for. They were around £3k to buy new at the time.
I have owned, apart from that bike, an FXR Convertible, Softail heritage, FXD Twincam Dynaglide, Twincam 103 Fatbob, VRod Muscle, and a FXDT Twincam T Sport.
In my opinion as the years have gone by quality has declined, and the bikes have lost a lot of their character. Certainly the vast majority of my first Harley was made and assembled in the USA. The FXR frame was superb-enormously strong and well constructed which is why these bikes are generally considered to be the best handling big twin Harleys.
The VRod engine is superb and was designed by Porsche.
Nowadays a lot of the bike is made in countries other than the USA and the M8 engine has had a lot of reliability problems with sumping, etc. Harley has had to uprate the oil pump in an attempt to rectify this problem. The new 1250 Engine fitted in their recently released Adventure Bike has been well received and hopefully will be a success.
Ground clearance is a big problem for a lot of Harleys.
Some models have a single front disc brake which in my opinion is insufficient to safely stop a very heavy motorcycle from high speed.
I am now looking to purchase another bike and have settled (probably!) on a BMW R1250R. I have had a lot of good times/rides on my Harleys but they are just not the right bike for me anymore.
I have owned, apart from that bike, an FXR Convertible, Softail heritage, FXD Twincam Dynaglide, Twincam 103 Fatbob, VRod Muscle, and a FXDT Twincam T Sport.
In my opinion as the years have gone by quality has declined, and the bikes have lost a lot of their character. Certainly the vast majority of my first Harley was made and assembled in the USA. The FXR frame was superb-enormously strong and well constructed which is why these bikes are generally considered to be the best handling big twin Harleys.
The VRod engine is superb and was designed by Porsche.
Nowadays a lot of the bike is made in countries other than the USA and the M8 engine has had a lot of reliability problems with sumping, etc. Harley has had to uprate the oil pump in an attempt to rectify this problem. The new 1250 Engine fitted in their recently released Adventure Bike has been well received and hopefully will be a success.
Ground clearance is a big problem for a lot of Harleys.
Some models have a single front disc brake which in my opinion is insufficient to safely stop a very heavy motorcycle from high speed.
I am now looking to purchase another bike and have settled (probably!) on a BMW R1250R. I have had a lot of good times/rides on my Harleys but they are just not the right bike for me anymore.
RipTrip1 said:
What annoys me and many other bikers is you're paying an obscene premium for an archaic and poorly made machine. Gone are the days where they are 'all American', its more like made in China, assembled in America and even that isn't true most of the time.
Harley are very, very slow to catch up with modern engine designs, they only recently went with water cooling over air cooling. They also cheap out on manufacturing, using pressed together cranks meaning crankshaft runout is laughable by todays standards making aftermarket upgrades impossible in some cases, such as gear driven cams. Then you got that butt ugly primary case sticking out the side of the engine causing more unnecessary maintenance. The best thing about them is the sound and the aesthetics of some models, but don't buy one hoping for cheap upgrades/maintenance, performance, reliability or 'street cred'.
I'd have a Triumph Thunderbird or Rebel 1100 over any Harley:
Motorcycle manufacturers exist to make money, not motorcycles.Harley are very, very slow to catch up with modern engine designs, they only recently went with water cooling over air cooling. They also cheap out on manufacturing, using pressed together cranks meaning crankshaft runout is laughable by todays standards making aftermarket upgrades impossible in some cases, such as gear driven cams. Then you got that butt ugly primary case sticking out the side of the engine causing more unnecessary maintenance. The best thing about them is the sound and the aesthetics of some models, but don't buy one hoping for cheap upgrades/maintenance, performance, reliability or 'street cred'.
I'd have a Triumph Thunderbird or Rebel 1100 over any Harley:
To their customers a Harley is an air cooled 45° pushrod v-twin with a single carburettor/throttle body and the cylinders in line, connected to a separate gearbox by a chain primary drive. They wouldn't buy the Harley version of a Japanese/Italian engine design.
Because the cylinders have to be in line, "knife and fork" conrods have to be used, and that means they cannot use plain big end bearings, which in turn means they can't have a one piece crank (which would be less expensive to manufacture and assemble).
In the '90s they had to move on from the 1930s engine design of the Evo because of the need for more performance (it's all relative
), lower costs, and emissions and noise regulations. The old design had a five piece crank held together with tapers, and it had to be balanced, then bolted together, with big nuts torqued up to 11, and trued. To reduce labour costs they went to a pressed together three piece crank on parallels, not tapers, so that it didn't need to be balanced and trued. That meant they had to allow for more run out (IIRC 12 thou rather than 1 or 2).
Gears can't cope with that much run out, plus they need careful setting up and they are noisy, so the single gear-driven camshaft was replaced by two chain-drive cams which were better aligned with the rocker arms. Again, lower assembly costs, plus less noise to keep the regulators happy.
Like any company the engineers are in a constant battle with the accountants/shareholders and sales/marketing and the law. Apparently they even had to fight the marketing department when the improved performance of the Twin-Cam engine required bigger cooling fins on the head and barrel because "it doesn't look like a Harley engine".
It's not as simple as just designing a modern engine for the Big Twins. As I wrote in a previous post, Indian, Triumph, and Enfield don't have 118 years of continuous history around their necks.
gareth_r said:
Motorcycle manufacturers exist to make money, not motorcycles.
To their customers a Harley is an air cooled 45° pushrod v-twin with a single carburettor/throttle body and the cylinders in line, connected to a separate gearbox by a chain primary drive. They wouldn't buy the Harley version of a Japanese/Italian engine design.
Because the cylinders have to be in line, "knife and fork" conrods have to be used, and that means they cannot use plain big end bearings, which in turn means they can't have a one piece crank (which would be less expensive to manufacture and assemble).
In the '90s they had to move on from the 1930s engine design of the Evo because of the need for more performance (it's all relative), lower costs, and emissions and noise regulations.
The old design had a five piece crank held together with tapers, and it had to be balanced, then bolted together, with big nuts torqued up to 11, and trued. To reduce labour costs they went to a pressed together three piece crank on parallels, not tapers, so that it didn't need to be balanced and trued. That meant they had to allow for more run out (IIRC 12 thou rather than 1 or 2).
Gears can't cope with that much run out, plus they need careful setting up and they are noisy, so the single gear-driven camshaft was replaced by two chain-drive cams which were better aligned with the rocker arms. Again, lower assembly costs, plus less noise to keep the regulators happy.
Like any company the engineers are in a constant battle with the accountants/shareholders and sales/marketing and the law. Apparently they even had to fight the marketing department when the improved performance of the Twin-Cam engine required bigger cooling fins on the head and barrel because "it doesn't look like a Harley engine".
It's not as simple as just designing a modern engine for the Big Twins. As I wrote in a previous post, Indian, Triumph, and Enfield don't have 118 years of continuous history around their necks.
What about the electricity powered Live Wire? To their customers a Harley is an air cooled 45° pushrod v-twin with a single carburettor/throttle body and the cylinders in line, connected to a separate gearbox by a chain primary drive. They wouldn't buy the Harley version of a Japanese/Italian engine design.
Because the cylinders have to be in line, "knife and fork" conrods have to be used, and that means they cannot use plain big end bearings, which in turn means they can't have a one piece crank (which would be less expensive to manufacture and assemble).
In the '90s they had to move on from the 1930s engine design of the Evo because of the need for more performance (it's all relative
), lower costs, and emissions and noise regulations. The old design had a five piece crank held together with tapers, and it had to be balanced, then bolted together, with big nuts torqued up to 11, and trued. To reduce labour costs they went to a pressed together three piece crank on parallels, not tapers, so that it didn't need to be balanced and trued. That meant they had to allow for more run out (IIRC 12 thou rather than 1 or 2).
Gears can't cope with that much run out, plus they need careful setting up and they are noisy, so the single gear-driven camshaft was replaced by two chain-drive cams which were better aligned with the rocker arms. Again, lower assembly costs, plus less noise to keep the regulators happy.
Like any company the engineers are in a constant battle with the accountants/shareholders and sales/marketing and the law. Apparently they even had to fight the marketing department when the improved performance of the Twin-Cam engine required bigger cooling fins on the head and barrel because "it doesn't look like a Harley engine".
It's not as simple as just designing a modern engine for the Big Twins. As I wrote in a previous post, Indian, Triumph, and Enfield don't have 118 years of continuous history around their necks.
Davel said:
Great as a second bike.
I’m lucky to have a BMW R1250 GSA and the Sportglide.
The BMW is an everyday / all day ride.
The Sportglide has that sense of occasion ride for me
Delighted with both
I think that this shows just how good the BMW is. It does so much that you can have anything at all for a second bike and not miss out on much.I’m lucky to have a BMW R1250 GSA and the Sportglide.
The BMW is an everyday / all day ride.
The Sportglide has that sense of occasion ride for me
Delighted with both
gareth_r said:
It's not as simple as just designing a modern engine for the Big Twins. As I wrote in a previous post, Indian, Triumph, and Enfield don't have 118 years of continuous history around their necks.
This is the real problem - lots of manufacturers have plenty of history, but because they continuously update their models their customer base doesn't mind change, or even demands it.You could fix every single issue with the big twins in one update, but it would change the look and sound, so no-one would buy it. So they have to carry on with the same old s
te.gareth_r said:
New Harley Sportster S >>>> https://youtube.com/watch?v=QCoQ2PjdLJA
It looks good for a cruiser with a bit of go in it. 120bhp and just 228Kg is ground breaking ....for Harley-Davidson It could be the fastest accelerating model in the range now...well not far off the 150bhp Pan America.
I wonder what the differences are in the engine, and how easy it is to get 150bhp out it....it could almost be a "super naked" then
andburg said:
I'd be interested to try one but dont like forward controls as I've said previously
Checked the webiste, this is now on the site- sportster completely gone.
Cheapest bike they now sell is £14k
Surely they need to fill that gap below, sure the 883cc bikes were the big sellers
There's a pic of mids on the H-D websiteChecked the webiste, this is now on the site- sportster completely gone.
Cheapest bike they now sell is £14k
Surely they need to fill that gap below, sure the 883cc bikes were the big sellers
andburg said:
I'd be interested to try one but dont like forward controls as I've said previously
Checked the webiste, this is now on the site- sportster completely gone.
Cheapest bike they now sell is £14k
Surely they need to fill that gap below, sure the 883cc bikes were the big sellers
Softail Standard is £12995Checked the webiste, this is now on the site- sportster completely gone.
Cheapest bike they now sell is £14k
Surely they need to fill that gap below, sure the 883cc bikes were the big sellers
Krikkit said:
gareth_r said:
It's not as simple as just designing a modern engine for the Big Twins. As I wrote in a previous post, Indian, Triumph, and Enfield don't have 118 years of continuous history around their necks.
This is the real problem - lots of manufacturers have plenty of history, but because they continuously update their models their customer base doesn't mind change, or even demands it.You could fix every single issue with the big twins in one update, but it would change the look and sound, so no-one would buy it. So they have to carry on with the same old s
te.The problem is that Harley's are expensive. Which means that it's generally old white men that buy them, and they are resistant to change. To appeal to a new generation and to stop their declining sales, they need better tech, and more entry level bikes. The newer, better, smaller bikes, wouldn't appeal to the boomers anyway, but at least they could start afresh and slowly revamp the whole range.
Krikkit said:
100% agree with you, hopefully the split-off of the Livewire into a sub-brand is the start of that.
... they already have! LiveWire is no longer a HD badge.https://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/2021/july/live...
As for the 'Sportster-S' - I'd give one a go, but the looks just don't appeal to me at all - sounds silly - but way too sporty for my liking - I like cruiser bikes, HDs are meant to be that style, even the Sportster, if I wanted a sports looking bike I woudl buy a different brand. *no - I'm not a 'boomer' as I'm sub-40.
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