Water-Cooled Harley Discussion

[SeanAlexander]

>>"One totally unsupported rumor was that the 4-cyl CB750 engine was originally part of this collaboration before Harley decided it wouldn't sell and the design was then sold to Honda. "<<





Total bunk... Honda was racing inline 4, 5, and 6 cylinder air cooled engines in the early 60's. They had been racing similiar motors, nearly 10 years before the CB-750 was built. Honda started life as a piston ring manufacturer renowned for the precision and overall excellence of thier parts and slowly expanded to motorized vehicle production. They have always been known for excellence in the design and manufacture of thier engines. If ever a company deserved to be called "The Motor Company" Honda is it.

[SeanAlexander]

Technically Harley never "BUILT" a motocrosser.... they re-badged someone else's (Aeromachi)

[john]

Did you actually read the article that MO posted????? Nothing but good things to say about the new motor. Try reading it. As far as the arguing amongst harley owners and metric owners, this happens everytime an article over a harley or a GSXR-1000 is posted. The only thing that MO can do to stop this is to stop posting ANY articles.



Stop trying to provoke stuff, sellout.

[CYCLE_MONKEY]

I's jus' be a po lo-life white-boy hoo be ridin' a Jap bike massa....

[SamBlob]

1. I think this is less as a response to the EPA as it is to the European Union regulators, including the notorious Martin Bang-A-Man. More than likely the bulk of the liquid-cooled H-D cruisers will go to Europe.



2. The air-cooled H-D engine is, as Monty Python would say, "not dead yet". Not while ALL of the Big Four AND BMW AND Ducati AND Moto Guzzi still make bikes with air-cooled engines and Yamaha has recently built a Harley-style Big Twin of their own.



3. It is clear, however, that the VR1000 "is no more", "has ceased to be" and is an ex-contender. Air-cooled Buells (except maybe the Cyclone and the Blast) will probably follow the same path.



4. It would be interesting if the liquid-cooled engine were to be offered in the Road Glide, whose Tour Glide ancestor was decried as being "too Japanese", just like the FXR was. I was actually thinking a few months ago that a Tour Glide with a liquid cooled twin-rotor rotary engine, shaft drive and hub-centre steering would be cool and would have the Japanese scratching their heads...



5. The BMW K-bike was intended to replace the R-bikes. Hasn't happened, although the R-bikes are now semi-liquid cooled (air/oil cooling). The Porsche 928 was intended to replace the 911, but guess which one survived? Bloor Motorcycles (a.k.a. "Triumph") is bringing out a motorcycle to remind buyers of the heritage the company bought. Tradition/nostalgia is more powerful than the scientific/engineering types will have you believe (which is why I'll never see a Tour Glide like the one I dreamed of above; oh, well....)

[SamBlob]

The Bavarian Motor Works started during World War I, building aircraft engined. Versailles blocked the development of German aviation, so they switched to stationary, truck and motorcycle engines. They absorbed a bankrupt customer called Helios that built Douglas-style bikes with their flat-twin engines and called in one of their aviation engineers to improve the design. He instead threw the design away and created the shaft-drive BMW bike from scratch (or maybe with some reference to ABC motorcycles of England, who used flat-twins in the same position but with chain drive).



BMW is therefore rather more of a "motor company" than Honda, which didn't build a commercial engine until after WWII.



The CB750 engine is more a copy of Italian racing bikes than of anything America produced.

[brent]

Why would we do that? And, like we can control our readers? They flame MO, and me personally, more than anything else!



I've owned a harley, philip the ceo has owned many, MO currently owns about five Buells...

[SeanAlexander]

Granted, MV-Agusta and Gilera both beat Honda to the punch, but aside from basic layout, there were not many similiarities between the MVs and the Honda RCs. I will conceed that Honda may have been given the clue to investigate inline multis by the Italians, but there is little doubt that Honda very quickly produced the superior engine. Though MV's were renowned for thier sound (inline four wail) they couldn't hold a candle to the high RPM shreik of the hondas, especially the 20,000RPM neighborhood motors like the RC-166

[SamBlob]

It's not being built yet. When it is, I'm sure it will be built in the USA, just like the GoldWing engine...

[SamBlob]

H-D is increasing production, but I don't think they actually want to meet demand. That way, if the demand goes away, they don't have a lot of excess production capacity to pay for.



Once bitten, twice shy, I guess...