The Very Long-Term Buell
The Very Long-Term Buell
TALES OF BRAVE ULYSSES, SEVEN YEARS ON
Peter Egan
:It's a good thing your roving eye doesn’t extend to marriage,” my friend Jim said some years ago while regarding my then-new Ducati 996, “or you’d be on your 10th wife and destitute from alimony payments.”
This, of course, assumes there are nine other women on earth besides Barb who are saintly enough to put up with me, but there’s no need to ponder that troubling question now.
The point is, while I may be monogamous I’m also endlessly fascinated with new and presumably better motorcycles that come along, and I have a reputation among my friends for keeping various bikes for a mere two or three years before moving on.
Generally, the decision to trade up, down, or sideways comes to me during a long road trip on which I conjure up images of a new (or used) bike that would be better suited to the trip. Also, I simply enjoy a chance to experience new and different stuff. This is consistent with my personal lifetime motto, which is, “After you’re dead is no time to take action.”
So it’s come as a surprise—even to me—that I’m on my seventh year of owning a dark-blue 2009 Buell Ulysses XB12X adventure-tourer, bought new in early 2010. Apparently, it surprised Editor Hoyer too because he asked me to explain myself for this Buell-focused issue.
“Why have you kept it so long?” he asked.
A small coterie of my riding buddies has asked the same question because they test-rode the Ulysses when it first came out in 2006 and found it wanting. They liked neither the shake nor thud of the 1200 Harley Sportster-based engine—albeit with Buell-designed barrels,
TRUTH BE TOLD, THERE’S A BIT OF CULTISH APPEAL TO THIS BIKE FORME AS WELL, POSSIBLY BECAUSE IT WAS MADE IN EAST TROY, WISCONSIN, ONLY ABOUT GO MILES EAST OF MY HOME.
heads, and fuel injection, rubber mounting, and a large extra dose of horsepower—nor the sometimes-noisy fan that cools the rear cylinder and blows hot air on your right leg. Several guys I know took one test ride on the Ulysses and simply walked away.
But I took our first Ulysses testbike on a long tour through Virginia and the Blue Ridge and liked it. I found the heat almost a nonissue, noticeable only on a very hot day when a strong wind was blowing from the west while I rode north. And it actually felt good in cool weather. Furthermore, as a serial owner of Norton Commandos and Harley Road Kings, I’m somewhat inured to Big Twins that feel like they want to bust out of their stalls at idle but become gloriously smooth at full gallop. The Ulysses engine also has a wide spread of big torque and drives hard out of corners at almost any reasonable rpm. This makes it fun to ride on the roller-coaster roads of our western Wisconsin hill country but also very relaxed on the highway. It shuffles along at 70 mph turning only about 3,100 rpm.
The other nice thing about this engine is its hydraulic valve lifters. No valve adjusts. Plus, the bike uses a toothed belt final drive, so in seven years I’ve not touched this drivetrain except to change the oil and filter. As a full disclosure aside here, I should mention that I only passed the 7,000-mile mark on the Buell last week, as my riding tends to be thinly spread between the other bikes in my small stable and the occasional CW testbike. But during that time I haven’t had a single malfunction, loose bolt, or repair. Just those oil changes and a new set of tires at 4,500 miles. The bike simply starts and runs, every time. It even has the original battery.
So I’m happy with the drivetrain, but I love the chassis. The big Showa fork and rear shock offer superb compliance and road-holding, the steering geometry makes the bike turn instinctively with your whims, and Erik Buell’s enlightened theories on mass centralization and weight reduction can truly be felt and appreciated while you’re riding. The light and low exhaust canister sits under the engine, the rear swingarm doubles as oil reservoir, the front single-disc perimeter brake helps lighten the wheel because it takes the front hub out of the load path to the caliper. Also, the 4.4-gallon fuel load sits relatively low in the hollow chassis/gas tank. All this makes the relatively short chassis feel
quick, compact, willing, and jaunty.
If the dynamics of this bike work well for me, so do its practicality and comfort for touring. It has superb and roomy hard bags, a three-position backrest that can double as a luggage rack, nice wide bars, heated grips, lots of legroom, and both a low and “comfort” seat available—each of which have proven all-day comfortable for me. And my passenger.
Truth be told, there’s a bit of cultish appeal to this bike for me as well, possibly because it was made in East Troy, Wisconsin, only about 60 miles east of my home, and I like its slightly unorthodox yet clean chiseled lines. Sort of a “beauty is as beauty does” appeal that works for me. The detail of workmanship on the bike is nice too; it’s a happy collection of very high-quality components.
So has this bike delivered on its possible role as an off-road adventure-tourer? Don’t ask me. I wouldn’t take any bike weighing more than about 325 pounds seriously off road, except at gunpoint. It’s a road bike for me, one that also happens to work quite well on stretches of gravel and the occasional dirt driveway. It’s the bike I take when I really want to make tracks on the interstate to the (former) MotoGP at Indy or ride two-up through the sinuous paved passes of the Colorado Rockies, as Barb (still my first wife) and I did on vacation just last week.
The Ulysses simply fits me like a good pair of work gloves, and I can’t think of a reason in the world to let it go.
