VOLUME 57 ISSUE 16 APRIL 21, 2020 P65
freer-flowing Burns stainless-made
exhausts that are partly responsible
for those extra horsepower numbers.
These now bend their way rear-
wards inside your legs, albeit heavily
wrapped in heat-insulating (well, par-
tially anyway) cord, before ending in a
pair of very plain, anonymous-looking
mufflers–sorry, Matt, but these just
look cheap, quite out of keeping with
the rest of this gorgeous-looking set
of wheels. "Yes, we need a better
silencer—they're not very good to look
at, are they?" admits Chambers, "But
they sound so good, especially not
having a crossover pipe, which gives
an angry edge to the exhaust note.
Function beats form, I'm afraid!"
Replacing the exhausts beneath
the dry-sump S&S motor is a larger
oil tank than previously carried higher
up. This not only allows it to con-
tain an extra 1.5 quarts of lubricant,
which according to Chambers makes
the engine run that much cooler,
but also allows a two-inch lower ride
height for the complete motorcycle
versus the Bomber, without sacrific-
ing ground clearance, while the rear
end has been raised half an inch
to sharpen up the steering. That's
partly because the 19-inch front/17-
inch rear wheels of the Bomber
have been replaced here by a pair of
18-inchers, both BST carbon wheels
made in South Africa to Curtiss spec,
here carrying Pirelli Night Dragon
rubber.
Up front as before is a double-wish-
bone parallelogram fork, with tubular
aluminum struts and a direct-action
RaceTech monoshock that's fully-
adjustable for high and low-speed
compression and rebound damp-
ing, in offering 4.35 inches of wheel
travel. That raised rear end consists of
a fabricated aluminum swingarm with
a cantilever RaceTech monoshock,
again offering two-speed compres-
sion and rebound damping, and 5.5
inches of wheel travel that's downright
rangy by cruiser standards. The ultra-
laydown shock location, in theory, at
least gives a progressive rate of rear
suspension response, despite there
being no link. Wheelbase is a rangy
62.52 inches.
Like the Bomber, the Warhawk
carries similar new-generation lead-
ing-edge French brakes made in cast
iron, with no less than four Beringer
230mm stainless steel Aeronal float-
