It's been fun, but I've gone to the dark side......

[Pappy13]

I now own a Harley Davidson. In 55 years of riding I've never owned one, have made fun of them and their riders, used to run off and hide from them on the streets on my multi cylinder Jap bikes at about 1/2 the displacement of the Harleys, but I must admit, they've come a long way since the 60s and 70s. I'm riding a 2025 Road Glide. I missed the clutch and swapping my gears, and I really like the shark nose fairing. I ended up with almost 55,000 miles on the scooter, took very good care of it and ended up trading it to the Harley Dealer when I purchased the Road Glide. The mechanics were having a great time on it till they sent it to the auction. I had a new set of tires, a new drive belt, enough parts for 2 oil changes, the chain tensioners for the drive chain, and a host of specialty tools and it all went with it.
I've enjoyed the forum, learned a lot about these scooters, never did get to make the trip to Nevada on the scoot (cancer hit about the time I was planning to make the ride) but maybe I can make it on the new Glide.......I had thought about a R1250RT, but I'm a short rider and they have a tall seat, on this Glide I can sit flatfooted at a traffic light. Ride safe fellas.

 

[wspollack]

I now own a Harley Davidson. In 55 years of riding I've never owned one, have made fun of them and their riders, used to run off and hide from them on the streets on my multi cylinder Jap bikes at about 1/2 the displacement of the Harleys, but I must admit, they've come a long way since the 60s and 70s. I'm riding a 2025 Road Glide. I missed the clutch and swapping my gears, and I really like the shark nose fairing. I ended up with almost 55,000 miles on the scooter, took very good care of it and ended up trading it to the Harley Dealer when I purchased the Road Glide. The mechanics were having a great time on it till they sent it to the auction. I had a new set of tires, a new drive belt, enough parts for 2 oil changes, the chain tensioners for the drive chain, and a host of specialty tools and it all went with it.
I've enjoyed the forum, learned a lot about these scooters, never did get to make the trip to Nevada on the scoot (cancer hit about the time I was planning to make the ride) but maybe I can make it on the new Glide.......I had thought about a R1250RT, but I'm a short rider and they have a tall seat, on this Glide I can sit flatfooted at a traffic light. Ride safe fellas.

Enjoy your new ride.

Nothing particularly wrong with a Harley. A lot of posers, of course, but that's true for a lot of brands. I've never owned one, either, but I did rent a couple on vacations, for enjoying local destinations.

And I owned a couple of huge baggers, over the years.

- A Honda Valkyrie Interstate was a smooth six-cylinder monster, but fairly tall and top-heavy.

- More akin to an H-D, I had a Victory Cross Country Tour for five years (2012 - 2017, when I was 64 - 69), a huge V-twin. The Vic had the lowest seat of any bike I've ever owned, and that includes a couple of 650 Burgman scooters, my current C 400 GT and Royal Enfield Meteor 350, etc.

So a lot to be said for all brands, just depending on use-case and how much weight we older folks can lift off a sidestand, how often we ride two-up, how far, etc.

 

[Ceesie76]

Enjoy, the C650 was not a light animal but the HD must be positively heavy!

P.s. 'the dark side' on the BMW K1600 forum refers to folks fitting car tires (!!) on their rims, to stretch out the mileage obtained from the tires. So that was my first thought when I saw the title of your post ...

 

[Pappy13]

Enjoy, the C650 was not a light animal but the HD must be positively heavy!

P.s. 'the dark side' on the BMW K1600 forum refers to folks fitting car tires (!!) on their rims, to stretch out the mileage obtained from the tires. So that was my first thought when I saw the title of your post ...

Yep, I had a VTX1800 that had a car tire on the rear, I never was really happy with the car tire and when I swapped it for a bike tire handling REALLY improved, suddenly it would "fall" into curves that I had to really force the bike over to navigate before. (I didn't put the tire on, I bought it used from Texas).

 

[Ceesie76]

Yes my thoughts as well. In fact, last week I put on new Michelins on my K1600 and even though they replaced the same type of Michelins (Road 6 GT), the old ones were worn just a bit flat and the difference in handling is huge, just like you describe. I can't imagine how terrible the handling must be on a car tire that is shaped flat from new and designed to never 'rotate' like a motorcycle tire.