Total Motorcycle Community Forums

Gummiente wrote:

Grey Thumper wrote:Isn't it just the two Electra Glide models that get the water-cooled (well, partially water-cooled) engine. Interestingly, water-cooling isn't even mentioned in the press notes http://www.totalmotorcycle.com/motorcyc ... aGlide.htm

They certainly have seemed to downplay the water cooling for some reason. They've been advertising 8 bikes under the "Project Mount Rushmore" banner, which focuses on how they were built with "unprecedented" customer input, so you would think a significant change like water cooling (okay, partial water cooling) would be front and centre in all the hype.

I'm really curious to see how well it works and what, if any, long term maintenance or reliability issues will arise. If they can pass the next hike in emissions standards with this setup, it will be an impressive feat, but I'm still hoping for a bored out V-Rod motor in a Road Glide chassis to appear some day.

They are really tiptoeing around the watercooling in product literature on the electra-glide. They were also pretty low-key about the EFI changeover IIRC. Given the reception the v-rod got I'm not surprised (I've heard it called "v-wad" on several occasions). There is a certain portion of H-D's rider demographic that despises ANY innovation on their bikes, and Harley has to be careful how they market their bikes to this segment or risk losing sales.

On the flip side, looks like competition is doing Harley some good. Looks like Harley is taking their competition seriously now instead of trying to rely on their name to sell bikes (so now in addition to the generally better attention to detail in the styling that H-D pulls off in the cruiser class they have some of the best engines/transmissions in the segment too).

Sometimes I scratch my head at certain parts of the MOCo faithful. But they probably scratch their heads at me. IMHO the best h-d put out in recent memory is the XR which H-D promptly killed IDK if they were not selling it was probably due to the price tag rather than the bike. A huge number that I know hate on the VROD which is also IMO a very very good machine? The days are coming or rather hear when it is cheap very very cheap to manufacture an air cooled pushrod engine and if you want to continue to get $15K and better for a machine it needs to be more. Well I have to admit the MOCo got everything and way more they could out of the old school tech.

When I bought my XR1200 in 2010, it was the same price as an XL1200. I think Harley fans wouldn't buy it because it had no chrome, and sport bike riders wouldn't buy it because it was a Harley. Funny, though, on every forum I read people were writing "I'd buy one if only they would bring them over here."