2017 Harley-Davidson Street Glide
For 2017, Harley has seen fit to bestow its touring range with the new Milwaukee Eight engine. We’re fans.
Never tried speed dating. But I imagine that it’d be somewhat similar to a multi-bike launch. Lots of short, torrid discussions with a bit of fumbling about while trying to remember where the important bits are.
As you would have seen featured in Road Rider # 133, Harley-Davidson took a group of Australians to Washington late last year for the launch of its new Milwaukee Eight engine, the capstone of the Project Rushmore program. We spent two days riding as many different models as we could while trying to keep a clear distinction between each one.
As is natural, people tend to gravitate towards what they most desire. For me that was the Freewheeler and the Street Glide. Shortly after returning to Australia, I rode the Triumph Thunderbird LT to Melbourne and delivered it back into the hands of Triumph Australia. Coincidentally, this was the weekend of the Australian Motorcycle Expo in Melbourne and a phone call to Harley-Davidson Australia secured a Street Glide from its demo fleet for the trip north. Gotta love it when a plan dovetails perfectly.
At the end of the show, and while others were trying to work out how they were getting home, I stuck my nose in the air and sailed off into a city I know marginally at best. Within a very short space of time, I had filled the fuel tank and got hopelessly lost. The Harley-Davidson folk were thinking of me specifically when they fitted their incredibly easy-to-use GPS. I’m not great with techno. As a first-time user, it was all simple, straightforward and led me back to my sleeping quarters from a completely different direction than I had experienced or expected. Well done HD techno people!
This wasn’t my first date with a Street Glide. We’re old friends, but this was my first date on home soil with the stronger engine-equipped and better-suspended package. Initial impressions were of a slimmer bike that had plenty of poke and could be ridden across tram tracks without fillings abandoning ship.
The clever engineering types in charge of ergonomics have worked equally hard and managed to make the primary drive and clutch cover less intrusive under your left leg. On the right they changed the shape of the air cleaner cover but, more importantly, they deliberately moved the exhaust port and the rear exhaust header. This shifting of the hot pipe served two purposes: additional clearance for the rider, and less heat reaching the rider’s leg.
Out on the highway you’d never notice this stuff except a tad more room to move your feet and legs around on the floorboard before body/hard object interactions occur. In the heat of city traffic while you’re paddling about and trying to get to the side of the road and out of the way of errant locals balancing lattes on their fixed-gear hipster-cycles in the cycle lane, a narrower profile is a good thing to have.
Sitting on the side of a hipster-laden avenue of coffee retailers while educating myself about the use of on-board GPS wasn’t in my plan. Thankfully Harley-Davidson has made their GPS simple. I like simple, especially when it comes to technology. With a deep breath and a push of an on-screen button, I was Brunswick-bound. After travelling back streets like an over-caffeinated Uber driver, I found the motel and life returned to a semblance of normality.
As this was the same joint where local ice-junkies had tried to steal Snag’s Blackbudgie, I parked it under the lights outside the 24-hour reception. Can never be too careful, especially with someone else’s motorcycle.
Before escaping the southern fishing village and returning to Sydney the next morning, I had to meet a man at Lilydale for a working breakfast. This made my decision to depart Melbourne via Yea, Bonnie Doon and re-join the Hume freeway at Glenrowan a very simple and enjoyable option.
Leaving Brunswick and heading to the south-eastern fringe in the middle of the morning peak hour is probably a no-brainer for locals, but I’m not a local. A couple of minutes with the GPS and I placed my faith in that digital marvel to take me to my intended destination. Peak-hour traffic may not be seen as the natural hunting ground for the Street Glide, but a combination of good brakes, instant power and good suspension made it a doddle for the cut and thrust of reaching the front of the pack and open road. The safest place to be, especially in unfamiliar territory. Not that there was much chance to do that in Lygon Street, but the street on the left that leads out to a freeway was a happier place to be.
Pulling up for breakfast — early — gave me a chance to think about the Street Glide as well as Melbourne drivers and their inability to keep left. I believe that a driver on his local roads is the most dangerous road creature. They know where they’re going and are oblivious to any other object on their road. A couple of evasive actions were required but again, the good brakes and steering of the Street Glide made life easy.
With the last of breakfast washed down with coffee, my aim was to reach Sydney and sleep in my own bed that night. The route was already decided. Consulting the cheat sheet provided by a Harley engineer at the Milwaukee 8 launch, I adjusted the rear shocks to suit my weight. This is so quick and easy — all manufacturers could learn from it. Undo two levers and the left-hand pannier jumps off. Look at lines and turn the knob until the number you want lines up with the end of the knob. Re-fit pannier, and ride. Harley’s smart buggers spent time with Showa’s equally smart buggers and perfected a suspension package that works. Nothing simpler can be said.
Leaving Melboring along roads that bypass the normal exit routes for as long as possible, I eventually joined the B300 for the meandering trip north before being spat out onto the Hume Freeway somewhere near Benalla. A stop for fuel at the Glenrowan North service centre and I was set for a further 300km at the 110km/h speed limit, officer.
Street Glides are superb motorcycles for trips up roads like this. You dial up your desired speed on the cruise control, sit back and enjoy the music playing on the you-beaut stereo system. When you catch up to the slower-moving semi-trailers, overtaking is amazing. Steer right while opening the throttle, motor on past and steer left while rolling the throttle off and panicking when you see where the speedo needle is pointing. Even though we got to do a bit of high-speed riding in the US, speed is relevant and 130km/h among a group travelling at the same speed was nothing remarkable. Back on home soil, with the Victorian revenue raisers hiding up every second tree, seeing the speedo needle that far to the right was cause for concern.
The ease of overtaking was the biggest difference I noticed between this and the 2016 Street Glide I last rode. In the real world, accelerating from 110 out and around a truck and back into the left lane in the shortest possible time is a safety item. No downshifting, roll the throttle and go. I’d put the M8-powered Street Glide up against anything at that speed and those conditions.
About 11-ty million bugs and 150km later I was in Holbrook Bakery eating pies. A short hop on the Street Glide but planning ahead, I figured I could make one more stop at Marulan for fuel and then the next one after that would be home.
With another 11ty bugs coating the front of the Street Glide and the only bit of me sticking out from behind the fairing — my helmet, I rolled into Marulan for fuel. The intervening 320km had passed without any real effort. The numbers kept climbing on the odometer but I was still comfortable and able to walk unassisted inside to pay for fuel. Many more trucks and cars had been dispensed with in the same effortless manner. Singing along with music playing through the stereo was the only pain. My music. My singing. My pain. Rather than pair it via Bluetooth, I’d gone old-fashioned and plugged the iPhone in using the charging lead. Even when overtaking and travelling at higher speed, the music from the speakers was still more than clear enough to keep me happy.
The sun dropped over the horizon before I rolled up my driveway and the LED headlight surprised me with its distance as well as the spread. If you can stop from your cruising speed within the distance that your headlight reaches, you’re doing alright. Harley has done that. High beam allowed me to spot a small marsupial before it hopped out onto the concrete and I avoided making it a part of the scenery. Gotta love a story where both parties have a happy ending.
The short time spent aboard Street Glides over the two days we were on the road in Washington served to whet the appetite. It took a day in the saddle on home ground to cement the opinions.
By the time I sat down on my own lounge with a cuppa, I’d covered about 900km and done it easily in under 12 hours. The Street Glide had handled everything from peak-hour crawling to freeway cruising without a single problem. It’s a damned fine motorcycle. One that I could easily add to my collection.
THE BOUNCY BITS
From the seat up, everything will be familiar to anyone who has ridden a Project Rushmore model. You could think of the M8 engine and improved suspension as the capstone of the Rushmore deal. Now they are complete.
Improved suspension? Yes they have. Showa has been supplying Harley-Davidson with suspension componentry since the crap of the 1970s was acceptable. Project Rushmore brought limited suspension improvements but the latest offerings on the 2017 Touring models is noticeably better. Showa developed new front fork internals that are based around their two-way bending valve technology. The internal shim stacks of the past have been made redundant. The simplicity of the Showa bending valves may lead you to believe they couldn’t possibly work, but rest assured they work well. Very bloody well in both compression and rebound.
The rear shocks are also the result of increased compression and rebound control with a single-handed preload adjustor that works. Provided you know the weight of you and your luggage or pillion, it is very easy to refer to the supplied list of suspension preload settings and set the external adjustor exactly where they say for a very compliant ride. I experimented with settings on a Street Glide and on #4 it was a very plush ride. On 12, the number recommended for my weight, the ride was obviously former but still plush.
One of my standard tests on every road test is to look for potholes and ride through them to feel how the suspension is controlling the movement. Unfortunately, potholes are less common than pot sellers in Washington. Desperate times call for creativity, so I rode along the grooves between the centre lane dividers. Cut at 90-degrees to the direction of travel, they were an American version of the well-known Australian stutter bumps found on every dirt road. After about 500m of this abuse, I simply rode back into the centre of my lane. The front and rear suspension remained completely unaffected. Both ends were moving up and down but weren’t pumping up or packing down. They remained perfectly compliant the whole time. But that was America and their bastardly perfect roads.
Riding north to Sydney on our less-than-pristine roads, there were plenty of opportunities to hit the bump. Not sure what I was expecting but what happened made me smile. The front forks moved up and down while the front wheel stayed stuck to the road. There were still no jarring shocks, just the feeling of things moving. The seat never once tried to eject me over the screen. Just like the front end, there was controlled movement without wallowing or jackhammering of the spine.
If you read the road tests of sports bikes you’d be familiar with claims of being able to feel exactly what the front wheel was doing. The 2017 Touring models from Harley-Davidson allow you to experience what they’re talking about. On the perfectly sealed and billiard-table-smooth surfaces of just about every road we traversed, there were very few mid-corner bumps or asphalt joins, but by being creative and looking for opportunities to upset the plot, a few mid-corner bumps were located and ridden over with less fuss than it took to write about them. They could be felt but the plot remained stable. At home on our goat tracks, there were still no surprises. On the Street Glide, you could pick an exit point on your way into a corner and then change your mind and exit in a different spot.
Braking was already good as a result of Project Rushmore, but with the improved suspension, you can brake further into a corner with much less fear of the front wheel tucking and ejecting you from the bike. Huge fun when you’re in the midst of a group of mad Australian journos all determined to claim the honour of being first to the next stop. Even greater fun when you’re out on the road by yourself and going for it.
Driving out of corners on the throttle is one of life’s greatest motorcycling joys. Nothing quite compares to hitting your own personal corner apex and then cracking the fly-by-wire throttle against the stop and roaring out while picking the bike up from a deep lean. One thing noticeably absent was the undercarriage and road surface interface. Unless you choose to ride like a dickhead, the underside of the HD Touring models will remain virginal while you make good time from point to point.
If you’re a supplier of aftermarket suspension for late-model Harleys, it might be a good time to look for a new product line.
IS THE M8 BETTER THAN THE TWIN CAM?
My hand is up in an admission of hitting the rev limiters more in the two days in Washington aboard the 2017 models than in the last two years aboard Harleys. I’m not the only one but I’ll admit to it readily. And here’s why. The M8 produces its power in a very smooth and linear manner. There’s no drop in power until you bash headfirst into the limiter. If you ride like a normal person and not a speed-crazed journo with a point to make, you may never meet the rev limiter. You’ll probably be more observant of posted speed limits and tachometers, too.
The M8 begs to be ridden with the throttle open. You can bop along in fourth gear at 2000rpm and then open the throttle wide purely for the joy of acceleration as it roars into the future. Harley claim that in otherwise identical bikes carrying the same weight, the M8 would be a few bike-lengths ahead over 60 to 80mph, or 100 to 130km/h if you’re in NT, compared to the Twin Cam-powered bike. After riding the Street Glide up the Hume, it was pretty obvious that they weren’t extending the length of our legs.
On my own (and away from those bad influences), I never once touched the rev limiter. Ground was still covered rapidly but the flexible engine meant it was more enjoyable to stay a gear higher and roll through on the fat of the mid-range rather than work the upper rpm. An eye is still needed on the speedo, especially on those double-dipping holiday periods.
SPECS: 2017 HARLEY-DAVIDSON STREET GLIDE SPECIAL
ENGINE
Type: Air/oil-cooled, four-stroke, SOHC, eight-valve, 45-degree V-twin
Capacity: 1745cc
Bore x stroke: 100mm x 111.1mm
Compression ratio: 10.0:1
Engine management: Electronic fuel injection
PERFORMANCE
Claimed maximum power: N/A
Claimed maximum torque: 150Nm at 3250rpm
TRANSMISSION
Type: Six-speed
Final drive: Belt
Clutch: Hydraulic
CHASSIS AND RUNNING GEAR
Frame: Tubular steel twin cradle
Front suspension: 49mm fork, non-adjustable
Rear suspension: Twin emulsion-style shocks, adjustable for preload
Front brakes: Dual 320mm discs with four-piston calipers, ABS equipped
Rear brake: Single 320mm disc with four-piston caliper, ABS equipped
Wheels: 'Enforcer' cast aluminium
Tyres: Dunlop D407, front 130/60-19, rear 180/65-16
DIMENSIONS AND CAPACITIES
Rake: 26 degrees
Trail: 173mm
Claimed wet weight: 376kg
Seat height: 685mm
Wheelbase: 1625mm
Fuel capacity: 22.7 litres
ETCETERA
Price: $36,750 ride away
Colour: Laguna Orange, Crushed Ice Pearl, Hard Candy Black Gold Flake, Hard Candy Hot Rod Red Flake, Hard Candy Mystic Purple Flake, Velocity Red Sunglo, Charcoal Denim, Black Denim, Superior Blue, or Vivid Black.
Test bike supplied by: Harley-Davidson Australia, harley-davidson.com.au
Warranty: 24 months, unlimited kilometres
