Handlebars for Road King Classic

Let me cut to the chase by saying Heritage Softail bars are going on the 2010 Road King Classic.

There’s a very, very long story of handlebars that goes with my FLHRC.  And it’s not a good story.  But it does end with finding money, and maybe flava the dragon came too …

I want beach bars.  I think they look great and I think they capture how I feel about riding: casual, relaxed, chill.  The opposite of drag bars.  The opposite attitude of ape hangers.  The kind you’d find on a 1955 bicycle if you rode to the pier and bought an ice cream cone.

Beach bars won’t work for me.  They pull back a lot and my arms are very long.   Yes, that long.  Well, ladies, what can I say …

So yeah, no beach bars.  I’d have to pull my elbows up and it’d look like I was riding a wheelbarrow (that’s “wheelbarrel” for those that have never been to a Devitt’s and seen the price sticker with the proper wasp name on it…).

What then?  I really like the Chubby Wild1 bars.  They all look good, and the construction videos and the customer testimonials really sold me.  Or sold the bars, I should say, because I was fixin’ to pick up some.  The question became which?  The Road King and Road King II bars were the obvious choice, because they improved on the already-there bars and that seemed the prudent way to go.  I wasn’t taken with them, though, because I want something sexy for all that money ($215 for the bars, in 2009 dollars*  —  then around $500 for labor, since the lines all need to be extended and the ABS and TBW complicate things).  The RK and RKII bars have that crimp, crinkle, harsh bend, ugly turn, etc., that I couldn’t abide.

So I looked at baby apes, of all things.  They really grew on me.  They really do work with all sorts of bikes, and all eras, but they’re not really ‘me’ so I figured I’d let it go.

Back to square one.

Then, after what was so frustrating and annoying I’ll just skip to the end, I found the adjustable Heritage bars (same as on Police models) were an easy swap (no extension wires to run except the blinker cables, which is negligable).

The frustration could be summed as follows: WHY THE HELL can’t we put in perspective/angle parameters when using a google image search?  How long will it be before they crowdsource the cataloging of images to include what view you’re getting? Some things have MANY views, MANY sides, and having 44,000 pictures to sort through just to get the few dozen from “underneath left” really, really pissed me off.  It felt like blind hunting through FTP sites before thumbnails were ubiquitous.  Google image’s thumbnails need to evolve to have perspective tags. SRSLY!~

Heritage bars are the same as the Police bars on FLHRP(I)’s.  Have you seen what the MC cops can do?   They tend to be the *best* with maneuvering (skip 34 seconds in for the Road King):

Obviously the rider has great skill, but the Heritage / Police bars don’t get in the way at all.  I mean that literally – you can got *THAT* tight in your turns without hitting your own knee.  I’m 6′ tall and my legs are actually somewhat shorter than average (pant length 31″), I believe, but for whatever reason my knees are up way over the tank on the Road King.  Maybe I sit like a dweeb!

By the way, if you’re impressed by great riding, the hardest thing (IMO) is the slowride.  Here’s a video that still amazes me:

And of course, the Heritage / Police bars are adjustable, so that right there is a major plus.  They’re made for comfort as well as performance, and if they’re good enough for the Police then they’ll work for me and all of my different riding moods.

Looks wise, they’re not as sharp looking as the beach bars, but someone thinks the tall bars look right:

I'm not imitating anything - I have ALWAYS loved peanut butter, banana, and fried, in any combination.

Just hope they look good with the windshield off.

And while I was at it, I ordered the 1962 gun sight tank badges.

Now I can go around telling everyone about my life behind bars.  And when they say “what bars?” I can say “Police bars, son, Police bars…”

And no one will think it’s funny, because I’ll have taken that old joke too far.

*Allow me to admit that I hope this blog gets picked up by anyone else looking for information on a Harley-Davidson 2010 Road King Classic (with ABS … or without!).  You can tell I’m throwing in the model very often, almost as much as I can without (hopefully) becoming overbearing.  It’s intentional.  I AM advertising (but only ‘selling’ my free information; the story of my experience).  I want people who were stuck in my situation (“will this work with a 2010?” or “what can I expect from a 2010?”) to have at least SOME trustworthy resource.

And yes, I realize that by 2012, no one will care at all about a 2010.  So there’s not much need to label pricetags with the year.  But fuck it, there’s a comet coming in 2012, and the 2010 model may be more popular than ya think.  Especially if the MoCo screws something up.  Plus I can use this blog for my own records.

My 2010 Harley-Davidson Road King Classic

[EDIT – if you arrived here via google, please click the “2010 Harley-Davidson Road King Classic” banner above: it will link you to the most-current page of this blog]

 

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.