Are they just a meme?

Yep, the 'muh heritage' meme.

Harleys are all about compromise.

As in, putting styling and 'muh heritage' as top priority and compromising on everything else.

If you want a good cruiser, buy literally anything else. Indian, Victory, any Jap cruiser, it doesn't matter.

Harleys are for 'look at me I'm still relevant!' special snowflakes and people who are insecure about themselves.

Probably both, actually.

They're not reliable and they're not good to ride. Hell, they're not even that comfortable either, which is the point of a cruiser, no?

>What every normie who has never ridden a motorbike thinks about H-D.

I enjoy my sportster.

Harley is far worse than a meme, they are a literal cancer killing the American motorcycle industry, look at what they did to Buell.

froggypwns.com/buellpdfs/Cycle World - May2010 - Demise of Buell and Barracuda 2.pdf

people have told me that sportsters aren't "real harleys" and i will happily agree, most harleys suck compared to my 1972 xlch.

>They're not reliable and they're not good to ride. Hell, they're not even that comfortable either,

i remind myself this every time my kicker slips, but something about working on and riding the bike i spent my childhood on the back seat of makes me keep at it.

american-made sports bikes and standards when

Harley Davidson is the Apple of motorcycles

>sportsters aren't "real harleys"
Those are the type of Harley riders that I hate and my biggest beef with Harley. The "lifestyle" and the people that will love them not because they are a good or bad bike, but love them because they have seen Easy Rider one too many times. I really don't hate on the bikes themselves even though I never could see myself on one.

I ride a 1200 sportster and the "Real harley" boys don't even give me the wave. Jokes on them, I can actually get some decent speed.

I was anxious to see Harley mass produce that electric bike that they put together but NOPE. Harley can't get out of it's comfort zone.

Vrod is ok, there are better bikes in the same class, but it's still alright. Shame they pulled it.

I can see where they're coming from, and why they do what they do. But I'm not a part of their target demographic, and likely never will be.

Indian and Victory are owned by Polaris, and Polaris is fucking garbage.

oh yes those people are all over the place where i live, harly t shirt, jacket, pants, boots, underwear.
guy who lives up the street from me got a new f150, lifted, with harley logos all over it and he doesn't even own a bike.

Funny I see this thread on the day I pick up my first Harley...

I've owned several motorcycles- slow bikes, fast bikes, everything in between

Picked up a 1200 Roadster today. It's probably the 2nd slowest bike I've owned. Good torque, but it runs out of steam pretty quick. Why did I opt for this over other bikes? Quite honestly it has a "daily driver" feel that my other bikes didn't have. I didn't give a shit while riding it home. Other bikes had me worrying about everything from pebbles to engine longevity at every rpm. The HD doesn't give a shit and neither do I.

I'll probably get a lot more miles on the Sporty than my other bikes. It's not the fastest thing on the road but it's fun and it has a definite personality that some of my other bikes were lacking.

>Sportster
>decent speed
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I get a mixture of waves and no waves on my nightster. At the end of the day I can lane split and they can't so w/e.

Must vary by location

I live in SC and everybody waves- even those drunken fucktards on mopeds wave.

Buell seems to be what you're looking for.

To be fair though Most are just normal riders that are cool with you as a fellow rider, no matter what brand/type it is. But Douchbags ride all brands/types of bikes. Right user?

No lie, the sportster, altho slow, Is the fastest bike Harley makes. Still loses power in the heat like any pos aircooled engine.

Yes.

The handling, braking, acceleration, and smoothness of american style cruisers are all gimped in the name of aesthetics. It's a dated design paradigm from the crazy raked out forks and pathetic rear shock right down the V angle of the engine and there is nothing good about it. They even still make them air cooled. What's good on a harley? The hydraulic lifters save you from the infamous jap bike valve clearancing, but that's about it.

Get a honda.

It's all in your head dude. Harleys slip on gravel as well as any other bike that puts at least some of its weight over the rear wheel, albeit less than sportbikes that are eager to flip over.

Same, I've managed to squeeze my 1200 through some pretty tight traffic.

I mean, of course any bike will slip on gravel. But compared to my sport bikes that would slip on a single grain of sand...

Do I miss being able to pull power wheelies in 3rd gear? Sure.

Is the HD the pinnacle of modern technology? Pffft hell no. It's just a fun bike with good personality.

It depends, until recently Harley's engine reliability was shit. Add to the fact they their firing order robs power, adds necessary vibration, for the sake of "sound" In a package that is typically more expensive than a comparative Japanese cruiser and you'll see that they're not all that great.

From working on mine and others, and various brands of bikes I can tell you what I like most about my Harley.

Working on it. I know that seems like a meme but they're so FUCKING SATISFYING to work on because they're built by luddite engineers.

Everything is accessible, chunky, overbuilt. My modern dyna gives me the same feeling as I get when working on an old carb'd truck, It's heavy, it's simple.

That being said it's not winning any engineering contests, I know full well it doesn't handle anything like anything else in its class and the meme tax is real ($2.50 CDN per primary cover bolt, they're stamped HD, this is not a joke)

The hope is that they're folding Victory into Indian so closing Victory may bear fruit at Indian.

i have a 91 softail with evo

it's pretty fun to ride but i wouldn't want it as my only bike

Indian > harley

Oh god, I live in Milwaukee. I fucking cannot stand the sound of these things at 3AM.

Every address I have ever lived at since childhood I have had at least one neighbor who drives one late at night regularly, and it wakes up everyone.

Why do you want to be an obnoxious douchebag? I mean I have met plenty of kind and interesting folks from around the world who come here for the Harley Museum and Harley events, but the bikes are so annoying.

Can confirm, never worked on a bike before, have torn apart the front forks and rewired the speedo, torn apart the top end to replace gaskets, and various other stuff. Shit is easy and satisfying.

Luckily the new indians are best bikes

VA here, everyone waves at everyone here. The only people who don't wave are "hardcore 1%" fags

From '08 - '10, I was a test engineer for Harley-Davidson in full-vehicle testing at their former test site: Talladega Superspeeday.

ama yo.

How much thought, if any, is put into performance? And are they capable of making better bikes and just not allowed by corporate decisions or something?

Only harley worth a fuck is the vrod.

Looks as though only the larger "Milwaukee 8" motors are going to get the top end liquid cooling (ala the full dresser Road Kings and Electra Glides). The smaller of the full size Dynas and Soft tails are all air cooled.

I'm actually interested to see how this motor goes in the long run.

Unreliable, inefficient, unecessary engine design. The whole v-twin-sounds-like-a-helicopter-fucking-a-garbage-truck noise is PURELY for ascetic purposes, and "looking cool". A plan inline engine is objectively superior for bikes, because they rarely have more than 4 cylinders and 1.5l capacity at the most, so the inline engine is inherently more balanced, better on fuel, quieter, and more powerful.

Also, despite what Americans say, the build quality on any of their motor vehicles after the 1960's is atrocious. Harley recently had to get Porsche to design their bottom end because they were too incompetent and foolish to do it themselves without making a "dude sounds like a dragon farting and is slower than a family car" clone.

>Harley recently had to get Porsche to design their bottom end
It was the top end, and only on their Revolution motor. The rest of your post is unsubstantiated tripe.
For a twin cylinder an inline is not more balanced than an arbitrary V-twin. Irrelevant to this application, but I'd argue a 90 degree V is the smoothest configuration for a twin

>until recently Harley's engine reliability was shit.

>1984 was recent

Look at all the mad poor fags in this thread.

This board is full of them

>How much thought, if any, is put into performance?

First, I want to emphasize that I worked at a site that only tested the bikes; we did communicate with design engineers in Milwaukee about our test results, but I never really had a chance to see where their priorities were. That said, I had access to all of the upcoming plans and future upgrade.

Now, consider what a Harley is for. They're ( mostly) cruisers. For average day-to-day driving most people spend life under 4k rpm. Harleys are engineered to provide plenty of low-end torque, near-instant throttle response, and a subjectively-nice sound. They allow the rider to mildly roll-on the throttle at low-rpms to get a decent burst of acceleration to pass without being that jackass that drops gears to 11k rpm and redlines splitting traffic to pass. . They give up high-rpm horsepower and 0-199 performance numbers to make it more fun when being driven at normal in-town speeds.

> And are they capable of making better bikes and just not allowed by corporate decisions or something

No, and sadly a lot of it is "muh heritage" bullshit.where they think riders would reject
the idea of a water-cooled Harley. Although now that the Boomers* are dying / retiring, the company is starting to try new ideas.

*P.S. "Boomer" was the project name for the official HD Trike - Obv the target market was boomers who could no longer physically ride a motorbike.

Not him, but really with bikes there's tons of shit from the 80's still on the roads mostly because Hondas and Yamahas wont fucking die, so while not recent, as far as bikes go it's more "recent" than cars.

I rode a 125cc suzuki for a year (Britfag laws suck) took it on long 150 mile plus cross country trips then moved to a Honda cb600f, loved the Honda, it ran smoothly, cornered amazingly and had loads of available power but honestly it wasn't as comfortable as the 125 on long trips and there was something sterile about it. I now have a sportster XL1200 and I love it as well, rear suspension is shite and it is left standing compared to the Honda but I like it, I like when the gears slam into place like on an old land rover I like the clattering and burble of the exhaust, it is just pleasant and soulful to ride, my wrist and arse don't hurt on long journeys like the honda, it's plush and bounds along confidently.

I hate all 'the life' shit and the fact that most harley riders are pussies never seen on a dull rainy day, it's irritating as fuck.

I was about to call you a cruiser cuck faggot, then I realized you genuinely are just a dude who loves riding on his bike. I can get down with that.

Enjoy the ride!

Were the Harley's reliable?

Got any other stories?

Thanks.

But I paid cash for my last bike user.