Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

PHOTOS BY JIM WOLCOTT. LORI TYSON AND KIT PALMER FXRS is available in two versions. with standard short-travel suspension or high-performance. longer-travel forks and shocks. This is the Harley-Davidson cruiser look being copied with a passion by stylists for the big Japanese companies. It's an American fashion. PfR 11By Jim Wolcott Harley-D~vidson motorcycles have al,ways posed a dilemma for motorcycle magazines. Dh, getting volunteers to put the miles on them is no problem - in fact, small-scale brawls have been known to ;.- erupt over which editor gelS to take home the lest Harley for the weekend. As fun as lhese bikes are, one of the little known secrets of the magazine biz is that no editor in his right mind wants to actually write the review of a Harley·Davidson. The straw-drawing sessio[1 to determine who will Face The Typewriter is held with all the relish of a. hearty game of Russian Roulelle. The reason for this is simple: it's hard to put the Harley-Davidson experience into words. They're motorcycles all right, but Harley-Davidson motorcycles are difficult to quantify. They are immune to race track and canyon road analysis. They vibrate to a degree that promotes measurement on the Richter Scale. You can hard boil an egg in the time it takes a Harley to trip the lights at the far end of the quarter mile. For years,this select group of unlucky edi:tors would wear - their thesauruses ragged groping for words to describe the Harley-Davidson experience. Lines like "stump-pulling torque," and "the euphonic rumble 64 of a big V-twin" have become cliches for describing Heavy Iron from Milwaukee. I suspect that many motorcycle enthusiasts dismissed tbese editorial ramblings as wordy excuses for clunky, ill-engineered antiques that were both leaky and unreliable. On the spectrum of two-wheeled transportation, Harley-Davidsons were off the scale; whether they were better or worse than other motorcycles was a maller of individual perception. One thing was for sure: to announce that you were trading a "modern" motor: cycle for a Harley-Davidson was akin to telling the boys at the Ferrari club 'about your recent acquisition of a '57 Buick Roadmaster. To be fair, Harley-Davidson wasn't cur ed with this reputation: They earned it. Throughout the '70s, motorcycle technology took quantum leaps forward.~.whjje the motorcycle from Milwaukee remained conspicuously unchanged. The priceof new HarleyDavidsonssoared, while the company suffered increasing problems with quality control and product reHabil- ity. More than a few people speculated that the last remaining American motorcycle manufacturer would go the way of BSA, Norton and Triumph - other companies that had resisted the technological advancements of the '70s. Four years ago, AMF bowed out of the Harley-Davidson project, sell ing the company to an optimistic group of its executives. These last four years have seen a great deal of change: both for HarleyDavidson as a company, and for the motorcycles they produce. 'Unfortunately, the hoopla of various engineering advancements have gone unnoticed by all but the most die-hard of Harley loyalists. For those who haven't taken note, recent years have seen the adventof a new 80 cubic-inch engine, a sophisticated elastomer vibration-isolation system, a,new fivespeed transmission, a new frame, improved brakes, tubeless-type cast wheels, improved tires (to suit tbe improved handling), and last but not least, the development of a viable belt-drive system. All of these changes have appeared in combinations on various bike~, but it's taken until 1985 to bring them all together on one motorcycle. Not too coincidentally, that motorcyCle is the topicof this article: the ]985 Harley-' Davidson Low Glide FXRS. The centerpiece of this new Low Glide is the V2 Evolution engine, now entering its second year of production. Based on the previous shovel head engine, the Evolution shares only the crankcase and crankshaft with its predecessor. Though unmistakablya big-inch Harley-Davidson, the new engine is vastly improved. Bolted onto the crankcase are newlydesigned cylinders, sporting aluminum fins filled to cast iron sleeves. Rather than being straight-walled, the exterior of these sleeves are gearshaped: a configuration that Harley has given the name "Spiny-Lok." Not only does this gear shape firmly anchor the liner to the fins, it also provides more surface area to the iron! aluminum junction - thereby affording superior heat transfer and improved cooling. Running within these cylinder sleeves are new pistons,.designed and manufactured by the well-known German firm Mahle. These pistons are flat-topped, and have a new conical-oval profile. When viewed from the wrist-pin side, these pistons have a very slight barrel shape that tends to trap a wedge of oil as the piston rises and falls. The pistons are cast from a special 12% siliCOn/aluminum anoy which resists thermal expansion due to its composition. Gone are the traditiOnal steel struts cast into the ptston skirts. The combination of the barrel shape of the pistons and the low ex parision alloy allow for tighter piston clearance. The Evolution engine's huge 88.5mm pistons.are filled with a clearance of .0015 'inch - tighter than most air-cooled motorcycle engines. Longer piston life and beller piston cooling are the benefits. The improved alloy and the omission of the steel ami-expansion struts also makes the pistons ligh~er. In order to use the shovelhead's crankshaft without modification or rebalancing, extra weight was added to the connecting rods. The new rods are therefore stronger - in fact, have a ten fold increase in fatigue strength. All of these changes provide a foundation for the really big news of the Evolution engine: the revised cylinder heads. Often the greatest increases in engi ne performance can be realized through improved breathing. It's no secret that the old shovel head was not particularly efficient in the breathing department, owing to the dated design of the cylinder heads. Severe kinks in the inlet and exhaust tracts made the combustion gasses literally fight their way in and out of the engine. To add insult to injury, the shovelhead was desi~ned around a '50s technology hemispherical combustion chamber. This combustion chamber, teamed with a domed piston. crown and a spark plug located near the edge of the cham1?er, was a combination notoriously 'sensitive to gasoline quality. As octane ratings deteriorated, detonation and ping became the watchwords of Harley ownership. In order for this dated design to operate on inferior fuels without tearing itself apart, Harley was forced to lower the compression ratio. And then lower it some more. When the shovel head engine was finally laid to rest early this year, the

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