Harley-Davidson Dyna Wide Glide
CYCLE WORLD TEST
HARLEY-DAVIDSON DYNA WIDE GLIDE
HAVE STYLE, WILL CRUISE
HARLEY-DAVIDSON IS SELLing all the motorcycles it can fling together by following a single, basic dictum: Build ’em right, and build ’em different. Building ’em right, something the Motor Company has been doing for a decade now, has meant vanquishing the philosophical and manufacturing demons that nearly brought the proud old company to its knees during its ownership by American Machine and Foundry. It’s meant producing a strong, oil-tight vehicle as reliable as a sledgehammer.
Building ’em different, meanwhile, has meant using just two engine designs to power the company’s entire lineup. Take away the four Sportster models, and the remaining 15 Big Twin models for 1993 (plus five additional 90th Anniversary editions) are all based around a single engine/transmission combination. Yes, the Softails feel somewhat different from the Low Riders, which feel somewhat different from the FLH dressers, but there’s a continuity of feel and character that cuts across the entire Harley-Davidson line. It’s a continuity that just isn’t present in the line of any other manufacturer.
The Dyna Wide Glide is the newest Harley-Davidson model, the latest machine to benefit from the company’s willingness to exploit its familiar designs. Also known by the alphabet-soup designation FXDWG, the Dyna Wide Glide is intended as a factory-built custom-you might even call it a factory-built chopper. Hence its long, low look, its bobbed rear fender, its minimal sissybar, its frame-hugging seat, its highway footpegs, its 21-inch front wheel and-in crowning glory-its Ape Hanger handlebar. Yes, the Motor Company has copyrighted the use of the once-generic name that for so long denoted a handlebar the rider has to reach up for, a handlebar that automatically, by virtue of its bend and height, cools turgid armpits.
Good thing, too, for “cool” is the operative word with this bike. It gets its name from its use of the Dyna Glide frame, which uses a beefy, square-section backbone and a secondgeneration rubber-mount system for the engine. It also gets its name from the w-i-d-e spacing of its fork tubes: There’s about 8.25 inches of wide-open space between those upper stanchions, all to carry a front hub that measures about four inches in width. In fact, this bike’s dimensions are one of its interesting facets. It’s long, with a whopping 65.5-inch wheelbase. It’s low, with 4.8 inches of ground clearance. And it’s tall, with that handlebar rising about 10 inches above the top of the triple clamp to measure, at its uppermost bends, about 47 inches off the deck.
The rider is connected to that deck via some pretty ordinary hardware-a non-adjustable fork and a pair of shocks that control the movement of the Wide Glide’s steel, boxsection swingarm. It is, after all, one of the tenets of the Harley-Davidson faith that in an increasingly sophisticated world, Harley-Davidsons will remain simple. The bike’s suspension does its part to keep the faith. So do the bike’s brakes-single rotors front and rear, each gripped by a floating, single-piston caliper.
The engine, the familiar 1340cc (that’s 80 cubic inches, for you non-metric speakers) Evolution V-Twin, also keeps the Harley faith. Hell, it’s one of the main elements of that faith, isn’t it? A separate five-speed transmission is bolted to the frame and connected to the engine via a duplex chain contained in a cast and partially chromed primary-drive case. This is much the way the engines and transmissions of the classic bikes of the Good Olde Days were configured until about the early 1960s, when even the British bowed to the inevitability of unitized engines and transmissions. Harley-Davidson remains the only major manufacturer to persist in non-unit engineering for the bulk of its product line, though it must be noted that Sportster engines and transmissions are unitized.
The Wide Glide’s look and configuration may be American Provincial, but its level of finish is absolutely world-class—with one odd exception. Indeed, the Wide Glide is the most finished Harley to roll through Cycle World's garages in a long while. Its rough-hewn character is nicely and deliberately accomplished with thoughtful detail touches such as clever cable routing and, on this model, a nice chrome cap on the usually naked head of the steering-stem bolt. The surfaces that haven’t been treated to deep, rich paint have been coated with thick, heavy chrome.
The one jarring note in this otherwise commendable attention to detail involves the bike’s tank-insignia decal. This, unfortunately, is applied over the top of the final coat of paint, with no clear coat to protect it. Too bad.
Riding the bike confirms what your eyes tell you. If you’re looking to go somewhere, at least to go somewhere and be comfortable while you’re going, look elsewhere. If you’re looking for a hot lap around your favorite backroad, again, look elsewhere. But if you’re looking for the coolest high-profile, in-town ride around, you’re in the right pew.
Hot or cold, the engine starts semi-instantly and idles nicely. Starting is only semi-instant because a push of the starter button levers one of the big pistons upward in a compression stroke the starter motor sometimes seems reluctant to overcome. So you hit the button, and you hear, “Rrr...rrr, rrr,” but then the starter prevails and the beast is running, aided by a well-jetted 40mm Keihin carburetor and a nice, hot spark. The idle that follows is that characteristic uneven Harley rhythm derived from both connecting rods being operated from a single crankshaft throw in a 45degree Vee-arrangement. When cold, the choke knob, located between the engine’s Vee on its left side, is pulled out and pushed back in after just a couple miles of riding.
What happens once the engine has been coaxed into life depends upon how familiar you are with this bike. To roll off, you’ve got to find a gear. To do that, you’ve got to find the shift lever.
This is not where you might think it would be, like somewhere in the vicinity of the gearbox. Rather, it’s waaay up there on the left, forward, even, of the bike’s front downtubes, above the left footpeg, and connected to the transmission by a very long, and long-travel, linkage. Moving between gears is done slowly and with deliberation, as each shift seems to slide gearwheels the size of industrial flywheels along wrist-sized splined gear shafts.
Finding first gear and releasing the bike’s silky-smooth clutch rewards the rider with reassuring forward progress; he finds that as soon as the engine is off-idle in each gear, the bike can be upshifted. In this way, fifth gear can be reached by 30 miles per hour, by which speed the engine, with its heavy flywheel and a stroke considerably longer than its bores are wide, is very willing to plonk along very comfortably. When you’ve arrived at fifth gear, you’ve arrived in prime Wide Glide cruise territory. Generally this stretches from about 30 miles per hour to more than 90. But in truth, the bike is at its smoothest and least frenetic at about 50 miles per hour.
Below 50 mph, vibration from our test bike’s engine, rubber-mounted though it was, was heavy enough that it juddered through the whole bike, and was felt most strongly through the tank and footpegs. At 50 and above, however (don’t ask rpm, the Wide Glide doesn’t sport a tachometer), the heavy vibes smoothed out nicely. The rider still gets some vibration through the pegs, tank and air cleaner, which contacts his right knee, but this becomes a sort of V-Twin reassurance rather than a distraction.
At speed, laid back, kicked back, looking and feeling cool, all is right with the world aboard the Wide Glide. Steering is very light, and if slow, at least fairly precise. Stopping requires heavy use of front and rear brakes, with the front lever requiring a particularly vigorous squeeze the rider soon gets used to applying. The bike’s center of gravity is sufficiently low that the bike tips from side-to-side very easily, making it feel lighter than it really is as it weaves through traffic.
What spoils the pleasantness of all this is that the Wide Glide comes equipped with suspension components so poorly calibrated as to give the bike a very harsh ride. The shocks have fairly heavy springs and very little rebound damping. Any rear-suspension deflection is followed by a fast overreaction that often will cause the shocks to top out. The fork also contains stiff springs. This, in conjunction with seal stiction, means the fork moves very little when the bike’s front tire encounters small surface irregularities. Instead of absorbing the bumps, it passes them right through the chassis to the rider.
All of which is strong incentive to use the Wide Glide in town, at low speeds, cruising around looking cool. That’s what it was designed to do, that’s what it’s good at. And thanks to its sit-up-and-beg riding position-a position which gets old soon at highway speeds-that’s where its rider will be the most comfortable.
The Wide Glide is nothing less than Harley-Davidson’s refutation of the contemporary motorcycle. Secure in its retro-ness, it values fashion over function, style over substance. If you’re after equal measures of fashion and function, if you want a well-rounded, real-world ridable motorcycle, the FXDWG is not for you. There are plenty of other models-some in Harley’s own lineup-that can deliver those qualities. But there’s nothing else anywhere quite like the Dyna Wide Glide.
And for some riders, that will be reason enough for wanting one.
EDITORS' NOTES
IT’S HARD NOT TO LIKE THE WAY THE Harley Dyna Wide Glide looks, with its beautiful wire-spoked, spoolhubbed 21-inch front wheel, massive V-Twin engine and overall macho image. But a lot of my enthusiasm for this model waned as soon as I gave it the “parking lot test.” At rest, the Glide’s wide, high-rise handlebar feels clumsy and looks silly.
feels clumsy and looks silly.
Five minutes of road time quickly changed those impressions, however. Strangely, the handlebar shape felt perfect once I planted my feet on the cruiser footpegs that live way up there by the front of the engine. I could lean back and really enjoy the scenery.
With this Harley I couldn’t seem to find any real reason to hurry to my destinations. Plugging down the highway at legal speeds, kicked back lounge-chair like, the big Harley Vee making its distinctive booming music, 1 was filled with a kind of enjoyment that the fastest rocketbike can’t
begin to match.
Ron Griewe, Senior Editor
WAIT A MINUTE. FOR ABOUT 12,000 I could buy this Harley, or most of a Ducati 888, or two Honda CBR600F2s, or even three Suzuki DR350Ss? Maybe my vision of the motorcycle is skewed, but for me, any single one of these other bikes represents more real value than this chopped Hog. The Ducati? Speed with style. The Hondas? Function and fash-
ion
Squared. The
style. Suzukis? Dual-purpose dynamite. Cubed.
I know, I know, the Harley testifies to the viability of the American motorcycle market, where whatever it is you want, someone builds it. But couldn’t this bike be built with suspension that worked, with an engine that actually produced 80 cubic inches worth of horsepower, and did so without jiggling the rider’s shades right off his nose? Or is there a component of the riding public that has so much money, and so little sophistication, that its members will put up with this bike just to bask in the questionable identity it gives them? I don’t get it.
-Jon F. Thompson, Feature Editor
C’MON, THIS BIKE’S NOT SO HARD TO understand. It’s for the Easy Rider in all of us. You want the ultimate in functionality? Buy a Volvo.
Sure, the Wide Glide’s suspension should be better, and I wouldn’t turn down a few extra ponies, but I kinda like how the Dyna Glide chassis takes care of vibration, letting a fair amount get through around town so you know
you you’re aboard something with pulling power, but damping out most of the vibes at speed so long trips are possible.
Long trips? You bet. First thing, I’d lay on a real flame paint job to cover up the stock fuel tank’s impotent little flicker, then I’d bungee a good-sized duffel bag to the rear seat for some back support, cinch on my stars-and-stripes helmet, and-with Stepenwolf s “Bom to be Wild” playing in the background-point the Harley’s front wheel towards the opposite coast. Steering clear of gunrack-equipped pickup trucks in Mississippi, of course.
—David Edwards, Editor-in-Chief
H-D
DYNA WIDE GLIDE
$12,550
SPECIFICATIONS
