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/1365688
P78 RIDE REVIEW I 2 0 2 1 H A R L E Y - D A V I D S O N P A N A M E R I C A 1 2 5 0 S P E C I A L shock react to vehicle speed, suspension position, vertical acceleration, roll angle and rate, throttle and brake inputs and the selected Ride Mode to dial in comfort via damping circuits while riding. There are five zones pre-programmed into the bike: Comfort, Balanced, Sport, Off- Road Soft and Off-Road Firm damping profiles. These are pre- loaded into Ride Modes as well. So the suspension is both active and adjustable if you want to mix settings around as you create custom ride modes. ARH and the Semi-Active Suspension is going to get a lot of press, as it should. The simplicity of this system is a no-brainer and expect to see copycat forms of it across the board soon. It's great. However, a lowering bike alone will not make a great Adventure weapon. For me, in particular, the bike needs to handle off-road at a pretty good clip. I know from expe- rience this isn't an easy task with a 560-pound V-twin touring bike. Over-taxing a fork and shock at speed off-road is easy and making one cover the range of impacts out there is a challenge, but the Pan America's Showa 47mm Balance Free Fork (BFF) with semi-active damping abso- lutely delivered. I went as fast and hard as I ever want to on this bike and it responded with control and balance almost every time. I slowly increased my pace to the point I was getting close to being irresponsible. And only once did I surprise the system at low speed hitting a very abrupt rock edge. It was an intentional test to see if the system would re- sist bottoming and it didn't. But, if I had a bit of speed, everything tightened up and the same level of hit was mitigated. The fork is really good across the board and shined in heavy braking or even the occasional all-wheel lift scenario (that's a jump). The shock, a Showa Balanced Free Rear Cushion-Lite (BFRC) is doing a lot, as well, but I feel the rebound damping in its algorithm could use some tuning. Remem- ber, this shock is auto-tuning preload for the laden load on the bike as well as semi-actively tun- ing compression and rebound. I didn't have any issues with it blowing through the stroke, but I would like to see some rebound damping applied to keep the rear- end kicking to a minimum. At touring pace, the shock was comfortable and compliant, only when I got rowdy did it want to kick. Modes Harley-Davidson's Ride Modes are similar to what we see else- where on high-end performance touring motorcycles of today. Powered by a six-axis IMU as other leaders use, H-D has added some nice versatility and upped the game. There are five pre- programmed ride modes: Road, Punching a hole in the wind has never had a more literal meaning than with the Pan America. This fairing put our 5'10" test rider in a comfortable position out of the wind, even with a moto helmet. Shorter and taller windscreens are available.