Milennials are killing HD

You hate Jeeps too? Same deal and millions of people love them. Harley's are what they are, and they are not f'n high tech sport bikes. Some of you folks are just whining little school girls.

 

Stereotypes exist for a reason. It sounds like you're an exception, but over the last 6 or 7 years since the shop I worked at closed and I bought my own tire changer, I've worked on scores of HD's and interactions with their owners predominantly followed the same pattern.

 

I know

 

Just as a point of interest, when we are talking about Harley's old engine design, The Ducati engine was introduced in 1979. Sombody commented on Harley pushing a 40 year old design and the Ducati has been in production for 38. It is a single cam 2 valve air cooled motor and the more recent Harley's are 2 cam, 4 valve partially oil cooled motors.

 

Lets see the XS650. I crossed the country on those with a jean jacket and a bed role. Strange what we think we need now to tour

 

Even worse, the water cooled 4v Ducs are literally just bolt on hop ups to the base 38yr old Pantah motor... (Everyone's ragged on HD for 'slapping' liquid cooling on their base motor design, they're not the first to do so.)

 

i'd be more ragging on the fact that they make like 70-75whp out of a motor the size of a Corolla in 2017.

an SV650 makes that at literally 1/3rd the size. did they not figure out how to efficiently combust air and fuel together yet in 80 years or something? or they just doing it on purpose?

 

I was saying the styling looks like it's 40 years old, I had no idea it actually was.

 

It's not breaking news. The AMA rule book defines it as "competitive balancing", which basically means restricting bikes that win and don't say Harley on them. Indian is beating them with their own rules, so it will be interesting to see if there will be any changes.

I'm not anti Harley at all. Ride what you want, just let's not pretend that Harley's flat track success can be attributed to superior innovation and technology.

 

What's the point? Harley builds a better engine than Ducati?

 

You can't compare JUST HP, torque matters too. You can make SV HP out of a 250cc inline four, again with a completely different power delivery. Fit the curve to the intended role. Hell, this has played out for Ducati before, there are still guys out there that preferred the lower HP, higher torque ST2 to the more revvy ST4S, despite it being a less 'modern' engine. When Ducati updated the ST they relaunched with the 3v motor in an attempt to convince the ST2 guys to update. (I still say the 3v motor is artificially choked down to keep it from competing with the ST4s...)

No, just that some of the talking points against HD also apply to others but oddly never come up.

 

The title of this thread needs to be changed to HD owners are killing HD. A bunch of excuse makers up in here.
As long as HD keeps listening to their current owners, they'll continue to have declining sales because they don't think they need to change a thing

A few pics of HD execs and owners below

 

There may be a kernel of truth to that, I question weather your preferred direction would work though. The VRod was an attempt at a 'modern' machine, it didn't do so hot. Based on the Scrambler's success I wonder if the correct path is a stripped down, simplified but still air cooled, push rod Sportster for example, go for low cost, reliable, lighter, easy to work on vs trying to crank up the BMEP? How are the numbers doing on their new liquid small machines so far?

 

2013 Sportster 883
HORSEPOWER 46.7 @ 5970 rpm
TORQUE 48.9 ft.-lb. @ 3780 rpm

XR1200
HORSEPOWER 79.26 hp (rear wheel)
TORQUE 67.53 lb·ft (rear wheel)

2013 SV650
HORSEPOWER 73.4 hp @ 8800 rpm(rear wheel)
TORQUE 47.2 lbf·ft @ 7000 rpm(rear wheel)

huh? you pulling campers or enclosed trailers with your Harley? only took doubling the motor size of the SV to just barely beat it. kudos to Harley.

 

Manufacturers offer what has proven itself successful. I seem to remember a thread full of rage concerning the 2017 Yamaha R6.

 

Harley needs the additional torque to get the additional 120 pounds of XR12 moving.

 

Right, but I think the reason it doesn't come up is that Ducati builds a 200hp superbike and is winning races in MotoGP.

It's a moot point because HD isn't interested in performance. They don't care that their bikes are slow and handle like a dump truck, and neither do their customers. It's their job to respond to the demands of their unique market. Notwithstanding this little bump in the road, they're still the most successful motorcycle-only manufacturer in the world.

I think this is the answer. HD needs a hipster bike for guys in flannels and leather goggles, that also appeals to the fun factor of riding motorcycles. It's served them well to sell a lifestyle for a long time, but maybe it's time to build a fun bike again. The Scrambler is underpowered and doesn't exactly handle well, but you can ring its neck and grind the footpegs off of it. It's actually fun to ride.

 

they have that though. like i mentioned before... everyone i know that fits that mold (tattoos, beards, vests, flannels, hipster shit) just went out and bought a used one for nothing, got a rigid frame, some extended forks, narrow apes, a chain conversion, and a king & queen seat with a sissy bar. custom paint a tank and rear fender, some kinda custom exhaust (which are cheap as shit because they don't even have collectors) and you're in business. and in business for way less than the cost of a new harley.

the fact that they've hardly changed in so long, and there are just SO MANY of them out there, does not help harley's cause one bit in this matter either. some of my friends have a barn full of custom choppers and not a single one was new.

 

So, just to throw some numbers in:

SV650's BMEP is 12.36, using that as the yeardstick 'cause it was thrown out there as the comparison bike.

Liquid cooled, SOHC four valves, should be room to improve on these numbers:
HD Street 500 - 10.09
HD Street 750 - 10.92

Air cooled, pushrod two valves:
HD Sportster 883 - 10.42
HD Sportster 1200 - 10.09
Buell XB12SS - 11.55

Bikes in the same range, in this case air/oil cooled SOHC two valves:
Ducati Sixty2 - 10.73
Ducati Cafe Racer - 10.47

HD's best:
114cu in CVO motor - 12.54
VRod - 11.89

For giggles, the R1 clocks in at 12.51 BMEP.

So there is easily an argument to be made that the Street 500/750 and Sportsters are not built to maximize motor, on the flip side the CVO is doing impressive things for a giant air/liquid pushrod twin. I'm also decently impressed with the SV on that same benchmark.