First Ride Report: 2010 FLHRC + Stage II 103″ Kit + SuperTrapp Slip-Ons

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I must use more expletives so that the formatting works (I put pictures in) … don’t worry, it’s easy!

HOLY SHIT, HAVE YOU SEEN THIS BIKE?

HOLY EARTH-F%(*@#)$*, NINJA-SHITTING #$%@!^#& !!!!!!!!!!!!

WOW!

Hooooooooooooooooo baby !!!!

I have one thing to say that isn’t glowing praise: the SuperTrapp fishtails are shockingly soft.  They’re barely a notch above stock.  It’s a little bit of a let-down.  I don’t need to sound like an asshole, but I want a little roar.  A little something.

Now, everything …. sweet son of a bitch, it’s gorgeous.  This bike is too good for me, or for any mortal man.

Rather than give a detailed blow-by-blow on everything, I’ll just focus on one thing per entry.  Except this entry, where I’ll give general responses to a weekend of riding, and then a ride report on coming home from the dealer (the 30-mile break-in).

Gotta ride!!

In General

The ride quality is 10/10.  The lil’lady was unhappy with the stock pillon seat – as compared with the old bike, where the pillon was a separate cushion a few inches above the rider seat, the RKC’s stock seat is flush and thinner.  So she felt closer, lower, and less cushioned.  New seat is top priority.

The suspension is perfect.  Lots of bumps and it’s no problem.  There is a difference riding solo vs 2-up, and I’ll check the manuals for recommended shocks and tire PSI for 2-up touring.

Handling is great, though I admit I’m not fully used to it.  Put on a little over 110 miles this weekend but she still feels heavy.  Had to put my feet down twice during tight turns, and I noticed that if I was doing a bad job, the passenger floorboards would slice across my calf muscles when deployed.  Makes a bad situation worse.  I’ll keep taking it easy.

Now, the part you’re all eager for: the engine performance!  The Stage II kit  FUCKING ROCKS!

96" Big Twin with Stage II Big Bore Kit, expanded to 103"

As in,

OH

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GOD

If you rev up in 1st, pop into 2nd, and wail on the throttle, you get a feeling like you’re falling except you’re going forward.  If you don’t feather the clutch but just pop it out, you FLY forward like mr sulu just engaged the warp drive.  It’s so tight, so quick, so beefy, you can get away with a Star Trek reference.  Seriously.

I got my money’s worth and I got that pep I was looking for.  I went riding in some mild twisties with my brother on his sportster, and while I was hesitant to open up all the way and beat on the engine during the first 100 miles, I was able to show him up in this corner or that straight run every now and then (at least as much as he did me).  I’m hungry to get out, solo, and see how much she can scream.

Oh yeah, she needs a name.

The handlebars – the heritage bars – are excellent! Truly excellent…I was extremely comfortable at all speeds, and with the highway pegs, I felt like a million bucks.  The lady remarked her feet got very cold when I moved my feet to the pegs. Looks like I’ll get her to wear boots after all (instead of Uggs, the ugliest shoes a woman can wear, unless she’s super fat and it looks normal on her).

And I’ll post more remarks as time goes on – a lot happened this week and hopefully I can get it all down.

The Ride Home From The Dealer

This ride report is my break-in.  You can find lots of different numbers on the internet about how many miles it takes to break in the piston rings.  Motoman says 20, others say 30, or 50, and manufacturers tend to say either 100 or 500.  All agree that the break-in is done in majority over a short period, and then finished (the remaining 10-25%) over the course of a few hundred miles.  The rate tapers off quickly, or, if you want to get technical, decays exponentially.

The Long Branch dealer (and they get their own write-up soon, suffice to say they over charged me a$700 and threw in nothing, but were otherwise good and I’ll go back to them for my warranty work no-problem) is about 30 miles from my house.  I figured the ride home would be the break-in, so I read up and talked to people and made my decision.

On the lot, the dealer told me to never keep the same speed for more than a few seconds, and he asked me to call him when I arrived home to let him know the bike ran alright (and it had just started raining, but I’m sure he didn’t care if I made it home, haha).  And that was what I’d decided to do anyway.

Of COURSE, wouldn’t you know it, as my first maneuver, I stalled.  The brand new bike has a brand new clutch, and hot dog if it isn’t particular! My 8 year old Volusia shifts like butter.  The Road King shifts like you’re shaking hands with a robot.  But that’s ok, it’s new, and it’s a performance clutch, and it’s a different breed of bike.  I got used to it (though I will definitely switch the tranny oil in the hopes of shifting more smoothly).

But I got going – I actually stuck my camcorder in the lil’lady’s car and recorded my whole ride home, but it’s long and I don’t think anyone would want to watch it if I YouTube’d it. I spun up through all the gears and went by the sound of the engine more than the speedometer.  A little green light went on eventually, and it looked like a ‘5’ and I got scared, thinking my transmission was only a 5-speed.  Could they have done something that stupid? Then I looked closer (hard to do at 90 mph) and it was a 6.  I was elated.

I took the Garden State Parkway home, even though obviously they say not to take freeways.  I had my chase car in place, and she had her hazards on (and I mine) and we varied from 45 to 95 on the way.  I figured that, especially since it was starting to rain, people would see us both with hazard lights on and go around us – and that happened.  Then, those idiots drove almost slower than us, or they went only a little faster, which meant we had to go around them to move my RPM’s up a few moments later.  So we had to go around.  Eventually, I simply pulled away and went on my own, not really worried about tailgaters.

Nose over the Heritage bars, out the garage, through all that autumn.

The Garden State was very pretty, actually, with all the leaves still up and still bright.  Anything’s a twisty if you go fast enough, and I was pulling along nicely.  The windshield was fantastic – I forgot how nice they are, having taken my old one off the Volusia about a day after riding her.  Come to think of it, I took the Road King’s windshield off on Sunday.  Old habits, I guess.  But I’ll put it back on soon – it got cold after a few hours in the wind in the mountains.

I would lean into the curves at speed and the bike was extremely confident in leaning.  All that weight fell to my advantage as I tipped over and righted, again and again.  There’s a creamy feeling to that bike that is simply worth every penny.  It’s worth anyone teasing you about riding an old man bike (and not, say, the Heritage Softail or Deluxe – the most gorgeous bikes still in production).  The Heritage, beautiful as it is, and comfortable as it is, can never handle like my Road King.  At least not in my hands, which is what matters to me.  I think of the Softails as overgrown Sportsters – a light frame, very agile, very quick, and often wanting for grace.  The King rolls around corners the way I imagine a whale to swim – huge, yes, but perfectly smooth.  Guess the ubiquitous comparison to boats isn’t far off.

Harley makes driveway happy!

And man, she pulls.  The SE255 cams are known for “coming on early” which is a lay-translation of “providing air for combustion and then closing less recent in the cycle than stock cams” though I suppose that’s a layman’s explanation itself.  In short, the cams of an engine control the air flow to the combustion chamber (the space above the piston where the spark plug is causing the fuel to ignite) – and in effect, this allows you to change the “focus” of the engine from horsepower to torque, or vice versa, and to further control where in the RPM band the peak efficiencies are.  So long story short, the bike can pull away from a dead stop extremely well (high torque in the low range), but at top speed it takes more work to go from 90 to 100mph than it would take a higher horsepower bike.  In practice, this translates to a huge Christmas-Morning grin everytime you hit a stop light and waddle to the front of the line.

When I made it home, the odometer read “000040” on the nose.

40 Miles from the lot to my driveway. I hate that I didn't take a picture of the "000012" when I picked it up.

And that picture isn’t too sexy, so here’s another:

Rode down the street to the piers for a few pictures.

My ride, ladies and gentlemen.