First Ride: the Harley-Davidson Softail Slim

Now this was trully the very first ride of Guildford Harley-Davidson new Softail Slim. As German I had not missed to put my towel in time on the seat to reserve my demo, and it was to some surprise of the crew that I showed up on time, on my Sportster 883R, in -6 degree C temperatures and icy roads.

Though I could no convince the boss to waive the 1,000 GBP excess one has to sign when taking a demo-bike on a spin, I decided it was worth the risk for taking this new addition out, specially as it had only 4 miles (four!) on its ODO. Just the mechanics taking the bike out of its box from Milwaukee did a short check run, so I was surely the first client to ride the new Softail Slim in the Guildford area, maybe the whole of UK, as Feb 11/12 was the introductory weekend nationwide.

If you expect a in-depth technical analysis of strength and weaknesses, based on the comparison and experience from many years of riding Harley models, stop reading now. For one the roads were really icy, and 1,000 GBP is real money, and a bike with just 4 mile on the ODO is really not run in. I did not push it, though this is a demo bike, it will one day find its way to a proud owner, and I wanted to give it at least the distant chance for a decent run-in.

For the record: I ride a Road King Classic for longer distances (about 15k miles a year) and a Sportster 883R for my daily 40 mile commute (about 5k miles a year).

First impression: the Softail Slim is more suitable to replace my Sportster then my Road King. I like touring, but the Slim did not provide enough space for even my own butt. The seat is clearly too short for my big bum, and the sales rep Michael had already $ signs in his eyes expecting to sell me a wider single seat.

The Slim was surprisingly agile, appeared small and not heavy at all. Not wanting to describe cosmetics, I leave that Harley-Davidson marketing guru’s, the handlebar felt right and very similar positioned then on the 883R, narrow enough for city commuting and filing through lines of cars, wide enough for longer distance runs. The major difference was the low seating position and the big fuel tank between my legs, something I welcomed, as I can not understand how a commuting bike that needs refuelling twice a day makes any sense, as beautiful as the 48er peanut tank may look. On my the 883R I at least get 3 roundtrips to the office.

The back of the Softail Slim is… very slim, never feels present, very nice, but not for touring, as I like to feel the presence of my saddle bags and its valuable cargo, and yes, my windscreen.

The 883R is the only Sportster with the “luxury” of double front disks, something I really appreciate for its fine controls and dose in stop and go city traffic. The slim has just one, and as this one wasn’t even properly run in as it still must have had Milwaukee dust on it, so this was the most disappointing aspect of the ride. With the icy roads I did not grab hard, avoiding surprises and the ABS, but it was very weak in comparison to what I am used.

The engine delivered what I expected, not run in, but deep and powerful, the 103ci on it will clearly improve over the next 500 miles and even put my 2010 Road King with 96ci engine into the shadows.

Did I take the cheque book out? No, luckily not for any 1,000 GBP excess, and not to own the slim. It would fit into my “collection” as a third bike, in between the Road King and Sportster, just for day trips on sunny warm days without luggage.

For 3 bikes in the garage, one even without a pillion seat, I will need a different “Board of Directors” in my household, and a new house. So the Slim will be considered again when its time to replace the Sportster for something more powerful, but nearly as agile. It is clearly not a replacement for a Touring Bike, with or without a bigger seats.

Thank you to Guildford Harley-Davidson to have let me ride this bike in these weather conditions, I can only recomend others to do it, as we all have different reasons and requirements for owning a Harley-Davidson. I have reasons to own 2 very different ones, but for a third there is no present need.

Rake and Trail – your Harley is not a shopping cart

The look of a Harley-Davidson may be a decisive factor in deciding a purchase, but most of us take the candidate of our dreams for a test ride. Chrome and colour suddenly becomes secondary, the right ride feeling is important. The handling of a bike is depending on dozens of factors, the colour clearly not being one of them.

If you are interested in technical details, it is important to understand the basics of front suspension geometry, as these are the major factor in how your bike will handle on a straight line, under braking and in corners, under speed or very slowly. This geometry is primarily defined by six variables, which I want to analyse more closely. At the end, it boils down to 2 headline numbers: rake and trail. Other secondary factors which I will not analyse here in detail are hight adjustments and, sorry to point it out, your very own weight.

First lets look at the primary 6 variables on a bike:

1) The Offset – This is from the centreline of top of steering neck to the centreline of top of fork tubes pic offset

2) Rake – This is the angle in degrees of the steering neck from the vertical

3) Fork Length – This is the distance between the top of the fork tubes to the centreline of the axle.

4) Diameter of the front (and back) tire – this is… the Diameter of the front and back  tire

5) Trail – the most important number, a result of other factos, its the distance defined by vertical line from axle to ground and intersect of centreline of steering neck and ground

6) Raked Triple Trees (not shown above) – Making things complex, and in order to bring trail figures back into line, triple trees with raked steering stems can be used. Expressed in degrees, usually adjustable in 3, 5, and 7 degrees of rake, this number should be added to the Steering Head rake.

Uhh, new technical term, and no, its not Xmas, this is what is called a Triple Tree:

You could consider the Triple Tree as 2 plates, to which the steering neck and the front fork are attached. As shown above, the Offset is defined for the upper plate. If the lover plate has the same offset, both steering neck lne and fork line are parralel. If however the offset is increased on the lower plate of the triple tree, additional rake is introduced, increasing the total rake.

Now lets look at some Harley-Davidson data, collected from the official website (*) and other internet sources (**), not sure they are all correct, as sometimes marketing managers tweak data for a more pleasant look,  and not everything published on the internet is certified to be correct.

Lots of remaining question marks, lots of other influencing factors, but the trail is clearly the number to watch. For example the big difference in trail for the 883R and 883L (low rider) comes mainly from different wheel diameter. The Road King however gets its long trail primarily from a negative offset.

From experience, I ride a Road King and a 883R regularly, above numbers are butt tested and prove to me that a bike with lots of trail will be directionally more stable. It will tend to go straight and be easy to ride hands-off (never do that!!), it will not have its direction changed by every tiny bump in the road. But such a bike will take more physical effort to steer than a bike with less trail, that is also why bikes with long trail have wider handlebars. A bike with lesser trail like sport bikes will be livelier, it will take little effort to change its direction, whether that effort comes from your hands on the bars or (bad!) from a bump in the road. However, too much or too little trail will make your bike undrivable, and chopper builders go to great length to control rake and trail, check out this front special axle, designed not just to please the eye, but also to reduce the trail.

Trail causes the front wheel to act like a caster, and the greater the trail, the more forcefully the wheel tries to align itself with the direction of travel. But only few wants a bike so stable it can not be turned but prefer a bike that can be ridden no-handed for at least a few seconds without going out of control at the tiniest bump. Twisted City Roads vs a straight highway to the horizon, these extremes define your trail needs.

The above numbers however also show one thing very clearly: there is no golden solution, the mix is important, as well as drivers preference. Other external factors also play a role, as the weight of the driver influences the trail (heavy dude lowers the bike and reduces the trail), and the trail actually changes constantly, because under breaking the fork length reduces. Thus entering a corner under breaking (or not) changes the behaviour of the bike, and for a 20-stone dude its again different then for the slim lady on the same bike.

We do not need a PhD in geometry to evaluate a bike, our butt will do that, but to understand the influencing factors will help to formulate preferences. Harley-Davidson website only provides some geometrical data, but rake and trail is disclosed, giving a first hint on how the bike could handle. Then you can more consciously test ride different bikes and customise your own with more then just chrome covers for the back footrests, but maybe a new Raked Triple Tree for Xmas. And you may understand that using raked triple trees on a stock Harley front may not be the best idea, as it may shorten the trail too much and lead at instability at higher speeds. You do not want your bike to handle like a TESCO shopping cart.

Disclaimer: above are my personal research and thoughts. This is just to explain the principles, not to serve as instructions or recommendation, and worse of all, it could be wrong. Happy to receive your comments and corrections.

24,673 shots in a year

When Nikon announced its new flagship D4 camera last week, they advertised that its carbon fiber shutter was rated to 400,000 actuations.

The web community is not clear on what exactly this means, but one does not need to worry that after 400,000 pictures the D4 breaks down. The camera however may start to show signs of age, and a speed of 1/250th second may then be 1/257th or 1/242th of a second. Does it matter? A little.

Fact is, our car breaks down after hundreds of thousands of miles, or less, every product has a life-span, light bulbs, washing machines, and SLR cameras.

The next question is: are 400,000 shutter releases a lot, or not. And if this is the number for the brand new top of the line D4, what is the expected life for a Nikon D700 shutter, my somewhat older camera model first announced in July 2008. Searching the web, the number most often mentioned is 150,000 actuations for the D700, less then half as for a D4, but then the D4 is nearly 3x the price. Should I worry?

First I have to find out how many pictures I take during the year.

My D700 is now exactly 1 year old, and with the help of a RAW file and Apple’s Preview Inspector I found out that in the last year I pressed the shutter button 24,673 times. Wow! That is about 475 pictures every week, or 65 pictures every single day. It sounds even worse when you realise that in 2011 I took about one picture every 20 minutes.

If I continue like this, the shutter of my D700 could start to deteriorite in 6 years, by then in todays fast moving digital world the D700 can be considered a antique and ripe for the museum anyway.

So my very personal conclusion is: Skrew it, lets shot the ride!

The icing on the HOG cake

A great HOG seasons ends for me on very high notes. The first one came via Royal Mail, in form of the Winter 2011 HOG magazine. There on page 15 one of my many photographs of the season was printed:

The picture was taken some time back in May, while we visited the Hawk Conservancy Trust in Andover.

Some days later, the prize arrived, not money, not coupons, but a pin. I think you need to be a keen photographer to enjoy the moment, and I enjoyed it very much.

As if this would not have been enough, I received a heart warming Thank You from my Hogsback Chapter UK during the End of Season Party, in form of a big metal badge, for the photographic work of the last season:

What a ride, I have to say Thank You, as it was great fun for me to share many miles with my fellow members.

Intrigued by the building on the front, I found out that it is the Harley-Davidson offices in Milwaukee, 3700 West Juneau Avenue, USA. Never been there, but riding on Google Street View I took the next left…, and yes, thats the same building.

Have a safe winter.

I wear a helmet because I want to, not because I have to…

Hyperventilating Health and Safety bureaucrats rule the world, and we let them hijack day in day out our own responsibilities. As a citizen, I do not need a brain any longer, all I need to do is following the ever increasing rules and regulations issued by a army of nerds. And if anything goes wrong, we hire a lawyer to sue the shit out of somebody close.

This is a very dangerous development.

I am very worried by recent announcements, where people, sitting in dark back-rooms in Brussels or Westminster, are trying to force us bikers to wear HiVis day glow vests. I am not against HiVis clothing, I own one myself, but I want to decide when and where to wear it, and not be ordered by some public servant who is paid to invent new regulations. The point is: they do not have these ideas because they want to save the world, no, they just want to save their job and be important.

We live in a overly regulated world, where any kind of personal responsibility is discouraged. All what our children learn is to wait for the little green man, and they do not know anymore how to cross a street in safety once the traffic lights break down. This is very wrong, and dangerous. Some communities start to realise this and dismantle traffic lights altogether, leaving it to few simple rules, common sense and the observation skills of its citizens to organise their movements. In principle, we are all willing to respect a set of rules and values, but if our own intelligence gets questioned by politicians piling regulations on regulations, we start to loose the respect of rules, and worse, we start to break them. And it becomes fatal, when we start to break the wrong ones.

Me in yellow at a 4am start John O’Groats – Lands End Iron Butt run to

I wear a HiVis on occasions, when I ride in dark foggy winter conditions, but on a sunny day, my black leathers or even T-shirt for the short dash to TESCO will do just fine. You may consider this risky, yes, but it’s a risk I take, you are not put at risk at all. So let me live my life, if you want to spend yours sweating in a Ronald MacDonald costume, fine with me.

I do not want to ride my bike looking like a clown, I want to decide when I wear a HisVis and when not. The point is: all I endanger is my own life, so please step back and let me decide what to do with it. If some cool dude want to ride without helmet, gloves and in his flippers, let him, its his choice to turn his life at a much too early stage into that of a rotting tomato.

The thing with these health and safety bureaucrats is that they never stop being creative. Today its HiVis for all bikers, tomorrow all cars have to be painted in either bright yellow and orange. Seriously, if I have to ride along in a yellow or orange clowns costume to be seen, I expect every pedestrian to wear the same garbage men’s HiVis vest, so we all can see us during daydreaming. And then we all will suddenly ride faster, and walk with even less attention, as -hurray- we can expect to be seen!! A fatally wrong development, as all our attentions will reduce dramatically. The first to die will be cats and dogs, ah no, wait, stupid me, they will also have to wear Hi-Vis vests.

In a sea of yellow and orange, black becomes the new HiVis colour. Leave Hi-Vis vests for those who actually need them: traffic obstacles. A broken down car driver, the road workers, RAC, AA and ambulance or police, and many others, as they are all temporary sudden obstacles that deserve a special high level of recognition and protection. But normal traffic participants like cars and bikes are not a obstacle.

If we follow the bureaucrats misguided inspirations, we will drown in a bright sea of hi-vis colours, not recognising anymore what is a traffic obstacle and what a normal participant. That is when serious accidents will start to happen.