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I get confused by the letters in the harleys names, flh, flt, hfltq and all. lol. Mainly thats cause they dont match with the names of the bikes as far as I know, I am pretty uneducated in this though. then again all the g's and s's and x's and cbr's and such confuse me too though, cant these bikes find real names?

Dichotomous wrote:I get confused by the letters in the harleys names, flh, flt, hfltq and all.

Here, this will help: Harley Alphabet.

hmmm, yes I looked at that, so they change the motor and keep the same letter for the new motor, and instead of calling something new a new model they just adapt the old one with more letters? I still dont like it. But then again I also dont like how they secretely call my steel cage an XJ and that has nothing at all to do with the name. 3 points to anyone who can get the vehicle name on that one. that and my LS 650 is also called the savage, why cant companies stick with one name?

Dichotomous wrote:I get confused by the letters in the harleys names, flh, flt, hfltq and all. lol. Mainly thats cause they dont match with the names of the bikes as far as I know, I am pretty uneducated in this though. then again all the g's and s's and x's and cbr's and such confuse me too though, cant these bikes find real names?

I see gummi beat me to it, but here is a bit of an explaination as well...


Model designations
Harley model designations are a sequence of letters and numbers, combined
in limited ways. The sequences can be long, as in the 2006 model designation FLHTCUSE.

The first letter is one of the following:

F (Big Twin), M (Military), X (Sportster), or V (VRSC)

Letters are appended singly or in pairs, as follows:

B (Belt Drive), C (Classic or Custom), D (Dyna Glide), DG (Disk Glide),
E (Electric start), F (Fat Boy (1990-present) or Foot-shift (1972 and prior)),
H (High compression), L (Hydra Glide forks), LR (Low Rider), P (Police),
R (Race or Rubber-mount), S (Sport or Springer), SB (Single belt final drive),
ST (Softail), T (Touring), WG (Wide Glide), I (Fuel injection),
SE (Screamin’ Eagle), U (Ultra)

Custom Vehicle Operations models can also have a number (2,3,4) added.

Note that these conventions for model designations are broken regularly by the company.

now what does the dyna mean? is it the transmission or model or something?

Dichotomous wrote:now what does the dyna mean? is it the transmission or model or something?

Chassis type

Dammit Gummi, here all these years I thought I was riding a Super Glide but Noooooooooo you had to go and show me that lousy alphabet.
So it turns out that all along it's been a Fat Bob, FXEF, yep now I feel cheated like maybe I should have been living in the Broken Mountains region of Alberta, Riding a Fat Bob and all! I don't know how the wife is going to take this!