Michigan State Police not riding Harleys???

LS rod:

Harley rods:

Ask Dr. Hess about rebuilding the rear head on one of his bikes in a hotel room on a trip back from Sturgis. IIRC he has that on his blog. Since the rear cylinder is directly behind the front, it gets way less cooling air than the front cylinder and also receives all the heat coming off that front one. That's the direct cause of that type failure, and for years H-D fought that with large piston skirt clearances and loose valve stems.

My ol' sixfiddy does shake at idle, yes. Other than that, from a basic engine architecture engineering standpoint it's way ahead of anything H-D has built. (It's actually Yamaha's 'refinement' of a German (Hosk) design.) In stock form, an XS (with 2/3 - 1/2 the displacement) would run away and hide from anything H-D built at the time.

Yamaha also recognized the inherent limitations of the parallel twin design and replaced it with (problematic) triples and then (much better) fours. H-D? Nope. Same old same old. Yeah the Big 4 Jap manufacturers build cruiser bikes similar to H-D's but offset that with some serious performance bikes.

Mebbe a 'Wing has a longer WB than a Harley, but as noted go back and look at the rest of their lineup, you'll find some bleeding edge tech, bikes which squeeze out every last bit of performance. H-D? Again, same old same old.

An earlier post in this thread asked the question of what Harley will do when the current crop of boomers quit buying their stuff, and that's a valid question. I think it'll be a case of not enough diversification (all their eggs in one basket). As their customer base shrinks they'll spend all their shrinking cash reserves on lobbyists (instead of R&D) as they run to Congress for 'protection' the same way they did back in the '80's (that's where all those 700cc UJM's came from) and they will shrink to a shadow of what we see now.

I think Willie G and the rest of the board need to seriously study the death of the British car industry; that's their bellweather. But what do I know?

ST_ZX2 wrote:

6) the excessively long engine/transmission unit dictated by the primary drive setup. That royally fubars the wheelbase, leading to a less than good handling motorcycle.

I'm pretty sure that My Buell XB12STT, powered by H-D, has one of the shortest wheelbases around. It is also regarded as one of the best handling bikes. Period. I am guessing that kind of nullifies the #6 argument.

The good Dr. Buell had to resort to some very interesting engineering to accomplish that. That's how the shock wound up where it is and is why it works 'backwards'. Thanks for bringing up Buell, it's another example of what we are capable of from an engineering standpoint.

That "uber" engineering is not The Motor Company's M.O.

ransom said it well earlier in the thread. It's not that H-D can't...it's more that they choose not to. It's not in their business plan, and if it disappoints a few riders like yourself, so be it--because it also attracts far more that want to embrace what ever it is that they are doing.

ST_ZX2 wrote: That "uber" engineering is not The Motor Company's M.O. ransom said it well earlier in the thread. It's not that H-D can't...it's more that they choose not to. It's not in their business plan, and if it disappoints a few riders like yourself, so be it--because it also attracts far more that want to embrace what ever it *is* that they are doing.

So when they lose sales of cop bikes because of their business plan there should be no wailing and teeth gnashing.

I'm sure they are not happy about it; I am also very sure that there are some things coming down the engineering pipeline that will go a long way to winning back those contracts in the not-so-distant future. (...remember the part where realminidriver said that I know people...?).

In the big picture, they are picking up new law-enforcement clients at a higher rate than they are losing previous contracts. Oh, and yes, I have some involvement with this.

Curmudgeon has pretty much nailed all the arguments.

Why can't people just admit they like Harleys despite the E36 M3ty engine design? I like lots of cars with E36 M3ty engineering. But I don't try to defend them as well engineered.

That's the way I feel about it. Hell, I like British sports cars but I do not try to defend their engineering. For instance, the 1500 Spitfire motor can trace its ancestry back to a spindly little 800 sumthin' cc four banger that they kept boring and stroking till it turned into a 1500cc crank buster.

If H-D's got some better engineering in the pipeline, that's great. It's only about 60 years overdue.

EDIT: I recalled that there was all kinds of weirdness going on with Buell, so I went back and looked; Buell was started by an ex-Harley engineer, H-D bought 49% of his company, then H-D finished buying it out and killed it in 2009. Erik Buell restarted the company as Erik Buell Racing and has been struggling ever since, unfortunately.

Otto Maddox wrote: Curmudgeon has pretty much nailed all the arguments. Why can't people just admit they like Harleys despite the E36 M3ty engine design? I like lots of cars with E36 M3ty engineering. But I don't try to defend them as well engineered.

Why can't people just admit that despite their E36 M3ty engine design, they still sell a berkeleyton of bikes? They're copied by every other manufacturer, yet they don't sell as well as HDs, even though they're better designed.

Haters gonna hate.

I don't argue about Harleys anymore. There's about a 10% chance someone interested in riding a Harley will even consider another brand, so...

Hell, I wouldn't mind a Sportster. Sure, that's mostly because they look cool, but hello, motorcycle.

RealMiniDriver wrote:

Otto Maddox wrote: Curmudgeon has pretty much nailed all the arguments. Why can't people just admit they like Harleys despite the E36 M3ty engine design? I like lots of cars with E36 M3ty engineering. But I don't try to defend them as well engineered.

Why can't people just admit that despite their E36 M3ty engine design, they still sell a berkeleyton of bikes? They're copied by every other manufacturer, yet they don't sell as well as HDs, even though they're better designed. Haters gonna hate.

Lovers gonna love, too. I think you're just defending the stuff to the wrong crowd, here, which is why you're not getting much traction. This place worships performance over all, cost-effectiveness a close second, reliability third, and "image" somewhere back a couple of laps down.

Harley lovers have a different set of priorities. Not worse, just not exactly in line with most users here.

RealMiniDriver wrote:

Otto Maddox wrote: Curmudgeon has pretty much nailed all the arguments. Why can't people just admit they like Harleys despite the E36 M3ty engine design? I like lots of cars with E36 M3ty engineering. But I don't try to defend them as well engineered.

Why can't people just admit that despite their E36 M3ty engine design, they still sell a berkeleyton of bikes? They're copied by every other manufacturer, yet they don't sell as well as HDs, even though they're better designed. Haters gonna hate.

I can admit that they sell a ton of bikes.

Duke wrote: Lovers gonna love, too. I think you're just defending the stuff to the wrong crowd, here, which is why you're not getting much traction. This place worships performance over all, cost-effectiveness a close second, reliability third, and "image" somewhere back a couple of laps down. Harley lovers have a different set of priorities. Not worse, just not exactly in line with most users here.

Fact: Most H-D owners pay for increased "performance" to compliment the image as well. How many H-Ds do you see that don't have a set of aftermarket pipes? When that happens, most get a high-flow intake and a EFI tuner (on later model bikes). They usually see an increase of about 10-15% in hp/tq by doing that...and get a cooler running, more responsive motor.

Yep, Harley sells a E36 M3 ton (I was gonna say metric E36 M3 ton but thought better of it ) of bikes because they know their intended market well. Gotta give them props for that.

I may be in my fifties, a bit porky and have gray hair but I ain't a member of their target demographic.

ST_ZX2 wrote:

Duke wrote: Lovers gonna love, too. I think you're just defending the stuff to the wrong crowd, here, which is why you're not getting much traction. This place worships performance over all, cost-effectiveness a close second, reliability third, and "image" somewhere back a couple of laps down. Harley lovers have a different set of priorities. Not worse, just not exactly in line with most users here.

Fact: Most H-D owners pay for increased "performance" to compliment the image as well. How many H-Ds do you see that *don't have* a set of aftermarket pipes? When that happens, most get a high-flow intake and a EFI tuner (on later model bikes). They usually see an increase of about 10-15% in hp/tq by doing that...and get a cooler running, more responsive motor.

Another point of view here from a BMW owner. The factory fueling on my k1200s was less than adequate,,,,worse than my carbed yzf600 basically. It's a well know issue and you can search any BMW bike forum for stalling and see posts for days....while your at it also search for "clutch" and "chain tensioner". I installed a power commander V with the wideband 02 sensor and autotune option, so it could write maps based on target AFs I set.

Long story short....I hit the BMW forums and found maybe two or three very short threads on something like this....I'm serious...it was awful, but when I did generalized search engine searches tons of Harley threads came up, some of them 30 pages long. I've owned all types of bikes and from what I've found a lot of Harley guys work on their bikes and improve them in a very grassroots sense. Unfortunately I have not found this to be the case in the BMW bike community. My experience is in the newer watercooled BMWs, so the old timers on the boxer engined bikes may be different. This is very frustrating because I avoid dealers at all costs and do my own work and I rely HEAVILY on web resources. Since there is very little diy info for the BMW bikes, other than how to change your oil or recalibrate your tire pressure sensor, it's a hard bike to own once it gets up in the miles some and things start to go wrong. Mine currently has 38k miles.

This has left me in a bit of a dilemma. I love the BMW k bike and it's the fastest shaft drive bike made. I had intended to go with a K1300S once my k1200s hit around 60k miles, but now I'm a little gun shy. I kind of look at it the way I look at German cars though.....they have their faults, but the driving/riding experience mostly makes up for it. I'm just amazed at how many people on this forum think they are close to perfect....it baffles me, but I imagine it is coming from the days of the "low tech", low power, oil cooled boxer engines....not the new stuff.

I'll admit to envying the fuel mileage on stock or nearly-stock H-D's; 50+ mpg? Sign me up! Also, highway pegs, if I could engineer something to get me highway pegs and still have normal bodywork on my VFR I'd be all over it.

The Germans like to load their vehicles up with all kinds of bleeding edge engineering and let their customers test it out, particularly Mercedes. In that way they are the antithesis of H-D. On German motorcycles KTM is not as bad as the rest of them (maybe it's because they are actually Austrian) but I have seen some 'experimental' stuff from them which did not work well and was pricey to fix, like the first year of the 'linkless' rising rate rear suspension.

OTOH Pacific Rim vehicles come with all sorts of bells and whistles too, the difference is the damn things hang together better and the owner is not necessarily the guinea pig for their latest tech toy. They aren't perfect but for this old fart's dollar they are much better.

pres589 wrote: I'll admit to envying the fuel mileage on stock or nearly-stock H-D's; 50+ mpg? Sign me up! Also, highway pegs, if I could engineer something to get me highway pegs and still have normal bodywork on my VFR I'd be all over it.

I passed a VFR800 with highway pegs and factory bodywork the other day. looked nice.o

I've ridden Buells for years. Erik Buell was working towards making a world class American sportbike. When HD pulled the plug on Buell it was right after the 1125CR was released. Let's not talk about the rotax engine it had.

But this was a bike built from the ground up to handle and be a modern motorcycle. From all accounts it worked pretty well. HD's numbers went down that year, as had been predicted for eons, and they panic'ed. They hit the flush button Buell and lost any innovation or chance for future innovation they had.

Instead of making a new motorcycle they double downed on the greying, HD biker demographic. It's well know that each year HD's customer base gets older and older. Young guys don't typically buy Harley's.

We'll see how this plays out for HD. I'm hoping they wake up.

Xceler8x wrote: Instead of making a new motorcycle they double downed on the greying, HD biker demographic. It's well know that each year HD's customer base gets older and older. Young guys don't typically buy Harley's. We'll see how this plays out for HD. I'm hoping they wake up.

Sounds like HD is becoming the 1990's/2000's Buick of the motorcycle world.

In reply to Type Q:

I think of new Harleys as if Chevrolet was still making 1975 Corvettes new today. The defenders would be saying that the 2012 version of the '75 Vette now has fuel injection, 14 more horsepower, and a four speed automatic.

At some point, doesn't Harley have to change the design?

Otto Maddox wrote: At some point, doesn't Harley have to change the design?

Why? Morgan hasn't which is why I want a Morgan.

If Harleys were produced somewhere else, I doubt that I would be concerned. I just see the last representative of American built motorcycles, and they don't just don't stack up with the rest of the world on so many levels. The next few years may look promising, but what about ten to twenty years from now? At what point will they become more of a marketing company than a manufacturing company?

The new Buell looks awesome.

(The following is, as much as anything, a rant about marketing, about taste, and generally about stuff that folks have every right to choose for themselves. It's not very useful, but it's my insight into why I dislike Harley so much in spite of having to respect what they've achieved. Ignore at will.)

I can admit up front that my reason for disliking Harley is to do with being one of the biggest examples of selling people a bill of goods. People buy it, and Harley is rewarded for their decisions, so I can't say it's not successful, or a bad business plan thus far. I've already stated my opinion that what they have achieved took some serious doing on several fronts, engineering most definitely included.

It's that while I believe there are lots of people who love Harleys for what they are, I think they're dwarfed by the people who love them like they love Tasmanian Devil tattoos, No Fear stickers, The Intimidator, and the bad-boy basketball player of the week. They love them like people love music which has been engineered to be distasteful to the smallest proportion of the target demographic and then marketed heavily: It's not good, but a large enough number of people can be relied upon to cough up their wages to make it a better and/or more reliable ROI than finding exceptional music that speaks for itself. They love them like they love the detritus of the Disney empire.

I can't argue against doing that way. I'd look awfully silly telling them to stop raking in all that money. As the Talking Heads once said "Love and money, getting all mixed up."

But I find the result about as interesting as a Camry, and yes, it uselessly offends my sensibilities to have someone Camrying away when it's not actually an appliance, and there's a world of more interesting and better-performing machinery out there, often for less money, if only they didn't clash with the bandanas and vests.

93EXCivic wrote:

Otto Maddox wrote: At some point, doesn't Harley have to change the design?

Why? Morgan hasn't which is why I want a Morgan.

They could keep the look. It is the ancient engine that needs replacing. Does it have any redeeming qualities other than making potato noises?

Morgan has changed a lot of things over the years. They have kept a theme. Kind of like Porsche - a 911 is still instantly recognizable as a 911, but they improved the engineering over time, even made very major changes.