My 2010 Harley-Davidson Road King Classic

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I ordered a 2010 Harley-Davidson Road King Classic (FLHRC) with ABS.  The paint options are wonderful, but since I couldn’t get the blue-over-white (as on the Heritage), only the white-over-blue (too similar to my old bike), I had to skip all colors and go with BLACK.  Fact: black is the fastest color.  And it looks great, so there’s that too.

Stock, it comes with a 96ci (1584cc) Big Twin engine.  Harley’s twin cam bikes are called “Big Twins” when the transmission assembly is separate from the motor.  This is distinct from, say, Yamaha engines, where the transmission is built into the engine inseparably.  I don’t have the best technical understanding of this, but the transmission of a Big Twin only makes contact with the engine at a few points.  As a practical matter, you can buy a transmission for a Harley if you blow yours up; with an integrated transmission as on another maker’s bikes, you’d have to buy a whole new engine.

I had heard that the stock 96ci Twin Cam left something to be desired when it came to “highway passing power.” That’s a/k/a/ reckless speeding, rushing to an early grave, or just plain ‘asking for it.’  But let’s get something clear: for a bike with a pricetag like it’s got, it damned well better haul ass.  I’m not looking for racetrack performance, but I want that pep I’d get if I paid the same money for a car.  If I can’t beat a car, I’m not interested.  If it isn’t fun, there’s no point.  So I opted for the Stage II 103ci kit.  The kit includes an improved air intake (Stage I Air), SE255 cams for low-RPM torque (that’s “pep” in lay terms), and of course, larger cylinder heads increasing the displacement of the engine to 103 cubic inches.  103ci is 1690cc.  That’s twice my previous bike, the Suzuki Volusia Intruder (VL800): 805cc’s, 650lbs (wet).

And because, in the immutable words of Cosmo Kramer, “Poise counts!” — I upgraded the exhaust to V&H fishtail slip-ons.  Slip-on pipes are the “bottom half” or “back half” of the exhaust pipes.  The “front” or “top”, the part that connects to the engine directly, is called the header.  That’ll remain.  And fishtails are just simply the sexiest little retro bauble a modern man could want.  The whole rest of the custom work I’m doing is matched to those delicious 1947 endcaps.