Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128608
The author found the Blast to be Just that - a Blast! other Buells (and has allegedly been carefully tuned to give the "right" sound for beginner riders - sporty, but not threatening), the single rear shock is located vertically in a conventional position (rather than beneath the motor as on a Buell Vtwin) and uses no linkage, though it does have a progressive-rate spring. It and the 37mm fork - set at a 25degree head angle with 87mm of trail - are made by Show a and offer four inches (102mm) of wheel travel and are completely nonadjustable, in keeping with the simple-is-best philosophy. So too is the rear-axle location, thanks to the specially developed Gates final-drive belt that is designed to run 15,000 miles before replacement, without stretching. The steel swingarm pivots in the simplification is the Blast bodywork. The shroud for the 2.8-gallon plastic fuel tank, the front fender, screen and tail section are all injection-molded from Surlyn (an impact-resistant be a hit with women riders who, due to their smaller hands, will also appreciate the closeness of the lightaction clutch and front-brake levers to the well-shaped, one-piece handle- DuPont plastic originally developed for cut-proof golf-ball casings and then adopted by Chrysler for use on the bumpers of Dodge cars). Surlyn can't be painted, so while it comes straight from the molds in the same glossy colors used on the Blast (red and black are the only choices at present), in the case of accident damage or if you just get bored with the color, you have to buy a new set of bodywork rather than paint over it. Still, bars. The bars are pulled back just enough to deliver a comfortable everyday riding stance - this is a bike you can imagine just slinging a leg over for the 10-minute run across engine cases, and both the front and rear cast-alloy wheels are 16-inchers shod with Japanese-market Dunlop K330 bias-ply rubber, complete with an aggressive-looking tread pattern modeled after a racing rain tire. Each wheel has a single, steel disc brake bolted directly to it, with a sort of floating effect achieved via wave washers and fixing bolts with a twinpiston Nissin caliper gripping the front 320mm rotor. Equally costeffective in the cause of imaginative Sling a leg over the Blast, as I did for a day in Daytona Beach, Florida, and the low 27.5-inch seat height and relatively narrow build of the bike are immediately noticeable as you sink into what is a surprisingly plush dual seat. The Blast really does feel light and low-slung, yet comparatively spacious. And that's with the taller of the two available seat heights there's an optional 2-inch-lower one costing $125 that is tailored for the vertically challenged and is likely to the cost of doing so is promised to be very cheap. BEACH CRUISER town to pick up a carton of milk or a newspaper (there's an optional range of hard and soft luggage bags), which might well become 20 minutes or half an hour as you give in to the temptation to take the long way home again, just for the fun it. If that happens, you'll have to hope you don't have to stop at any traffic lights, not because the Blast's Harley's creation of the Blast may be considered an investment in its own future, with the average age of a Harley-Davidson owner now 44 years (whereas in 1985 it was 34) and the median also climbing for motorcycling as a whole - especially in America. In 1975, the average motorcyclist was 27.6 years old - but in 1998 this became 38, while over the same period the annual sales of motorcycles declined from 1.2 million in 1973 to 416,000 in 1998. Harley attributes this drop mainly to the wider range of recreational choice available to the under-30s crowd today, whether snowboarding or surfing, mountain biking or fitness clubs - anything that deters the neophyte as compared to bornagain biker from investing the substantial chunk of money needed to buy a bike and discover motorcycling - but also to the perception that bikes are either intimidating or some-. thing an old guy would ride. Since by definition half the target audience is female, and Harley is eager to make motorcycling more accessible to woman riders, that was another reason to develop the Blast as a lightweight single rather than a budget, entry-level V-twin', says Harley president Jeff Bleustein, who, in mulling over the problem, derived inspiration from Harley's past. "I looked over at a picture of the first motorcycle we built back in 1903," he said. "and I thought, 'Why don't we go back to our roots and develop a single-cylinder that would be light yet powerful, easy to ride, and still deliver a genuine riding experience?'" So he shared this thought with Erik Buell, who worked under him when Bluestein headed up Harley's engineering department, and hence the Blast, a product arrived at after exhaustive market research and half a million miles of testing, aimed at refining the essential appeal of motorcycling into a simple, easy-to-use model in order to provide a valid introduction for the dot.com generation to the joys of riding something you don't have to pedal. cue I e n e _ S • APRIL 12,2000 25