Hogs fly

Harley Davidson Sportster SuperLow 883.

Harley-Davidson, according to my September 2010 Cycle World Magazine, is finally bringing its vaunted Sportster motorcycle kicking and screaming into the new century.
Primary is its use of radial motorcycle tires.
Um, guys, the radial motorcycle tire goes back to 1984.
My last motorcycle with bias-ply motorcycle tires was my 1984 Yamaha RZ350 two-stroke, motorbike number three.
Every motorbike since — I’m now on number-six — has been on radial motorcycle tires.
Radial motorcycle tire construction puts more contact-patch on the road, and runs cooler.
But the Sportster is an icon, so Harley kept making the old design.
In 2004 they rubber-mounted the engine, solving one of its major problems, that it was a chronic vibrator.
The rubber-mount was essentially Norton’s Isolastic system. The Norton engine was another chronic vibrator.
60 mph would rattle your teeth.
My first motorcycle was a Norton 850.
It had the Isolastic rubber-mount.
Rubber-mounting was first used on the Harley Big Twins, but found its way onto the Sportster.
Radial tires were first used on the XR1200, which if I’m correct was Europe only.
Cycle World got one, and sang its praises; that it still looked the part, but was much more pleasant to ride.
So now Harley is trying radials on other of its motorcycles, in this case the Sportster SuperLow 883.
That’s 883 cubic centimeters of engine displacement; 1200 is 1,200 ccs.
It’s still a pig, still flaccid and overweight.
The Japanese are making much better motorcycles.
But it has “The Look;” what Harley has used as a cash-cow.
“The Look” cashes in on the image of Hells Angel motorcycling; bombast and noise.
The local manifestation of this out front is “Loud Pipes Save Lives.” Every Harley passing our house has loud exhausts that loudly serenade the countryside; a cascade of noisy racket.
Personally, I ride motorcycle myself, and couldn’t stand such racket.
Racket like that would be a distraction; irksome.
Even the metric Harleys have this; often unmuffled.
Our house is atop a small hill not far from a sharp curve.
The Harley guys slow for this corner, then loudly accelerate past our house.
A guy up the street has a metric Harley, a Yamaha I think.
It has unmuffled exhausts.
He putts out his driveway, and then wicks it up as he blasts out on the highway.
There he goes; BRRRRAAAP-uh!
Well, I too have liked “The Look,” but to me function is more important than “The Look.”
I remember what a revelation it was, when I got my first motorcycle with radial tires; a Yamaha FZR400.
(That’s 400 ccs of engine displacement; rather small.)
It was much easier to ride.
So Harley advances the Sportster into the new century, but it’s still not interesting to me.
The guys at Cycle World were so impressed, they took it out on a ride.
What a joy, but it was so low it often grounded things.
You couldn’t tilt it even a little for curves without grounding things.
The feelers broke off.
After that were exhaust-pipes, and the retractible prop-stand. Grounded they could send you wobbling into oncoming traffic.
Sorry Harley, I don’t want surprises.
Number Six could get tilted much farther than I’d ever do, without grounding things.
The Harley Sportster SuperLow 883 has “The Look,” and is much easier to ride, but to me would be unsafe.

• “Bias-ply” is tire construction whereby the plies under the tread are at 45 degrees from the tire-rotation. with “radial plies” the tire construction under the tread is 90 degrees from tire rotation. “Radials” were first applied to automobiles. —Bias-ply was the way tires were made at first.
* “Two-stroke” is a power-stroke for every engine revolution. Most internal combustion engines are “four-stroke,” a single power-stroke for every two engine revolutions. “Two-strokes” throw out a lot of unburnt gasoline, so can’t meet engine emission requirements.
• “Norton” was an English motorcycle manufacturer, now defunct.
• A “metric Harley” is a cruiser-bike much like a Harley Davidson Big Twin, but made by the Japanese. As such they have metric fittings and nuts. “Metric Harley” is a put-down by the Harley crowd.