Thursday, February 26, 2015
2008 Harley Davidson FXDC Dyna Super Glide Custom – Motorbike Bicycle
An Electra Glide from a fall tour four years ago was my first Harley ride, and compared to the BMW and Honda on the trip it felt antiquated. We wondered if the fork lacked oil, but when it was returned and examined, they told us that it was working as designed. Occasionally I’d see a Harley on the road and my head would whip around, but it was never the Heritage models or the bombastic Fat Bobs or the slammed V-Rods that caught my eye. What I’d notice were models that looked, to my sensibilities, like regular motorcycles. I went to the Harley website and spent an afternoon looking at pictures and jotting down specifications, and what I came up with was the FXDC Dyna Super Glide Custom. The rear tire is 160 mm wide, skinny by current cruiser standards; the footpegs are mid-mounted, according to Harley nomenclature, and the handlebar sits below the shoulders. Unfortunately there was no Super Glide in the press fleet, but with the help of Deeley’s Alex Carroni, who liberated one from the staff pool, I set out on my trip down Highway 7.
Motorcycle magazine people, and I include myself among them, test cruisers by seeing how much metal they can grind off the pipes or the footboards by riding too aggressively. But no one who buys them rides like that, so taking my cue from the Glide in Super Glide, I left the city and rode at speeds between 80 km/h and 120 km/h. Mechanically, the Super Glide impressed. The rubber-mounted engine was smooth, quiet and powerful. The six-speed transmission shifted positively and quietly with short lever throw and the clutch action was light. What was most peculiar about the Super Glide was that the riding position, that looks so neutral in photographs, was odd to acclimatize to. The footpeg location neither bent the knees too much nor stretched the leg too straight, but something in the seat to peg -relationship caused an uncomfortable ache in my hips that I’d never experienced on a motorcycle before. At speeds over 110 km/h the cruiser riding position uses the body as a sail and exhausts arms and jams the tailbone into the lip at the rear of the seat. But slowed to 100 km/h or below and burbling along in top gear the bike exuded heaviness, like Led Zeppelin playing Muddy Waters, and ridden like this, the Super Glide was as rewarding, in its own way, as thrashing a superbike at speed.
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