Do you own a Harley-Davidson Sportster? Or do you know someone who does? Then this would be a good time to pay attention as you stand a chance to save some serious cash on maintenance cost, or possibly even help someone save some cash.
What’s happening?
Harley-Davidson of Petaling Jaya (HDPJ) and Harley-Davidson of Penang (HDPG) are hosting a special Sportster service campaign specially for Sportster owners. It does not matter which year the bike is or where it was bought from, HDPJ and HDPG will be happy to welcome you and your Sportster for this service campaign.
When is it happening?
Now until 31st January 2019, HDPJ and HDPG are offering a special “buy one and get one free” service package.
Will it blow up my bank account?
No! What would usually cost close to RM900, is now available for just RM549. The package includes one Major Service (that involves a engine oil change, transmission oil change, filter change, a brake flush as well as a diagnostics and general inspection) as well as a Minor Service that also involves all of the above expect except for a transmission oil change.
If I buy the package now, do I have to use it immediately?
No! The best thing about this deal is that you can buy the package now or at any point before Jan 31st 2019, and use it anytime within 2019.
Wow, great deal! Where do I buy one of these packages?
Interested? For more information, you can call +60379559399 if you would like to visit Harley-Davidson of Petaling Jaya, or call +6045062200 for Harley-Davidson of Penang.
Ever since the inception of the HOG PJ (Harley Owners Group Petaling Jaya), they’ve been keeping themselves busy by organising a number of rides to not only bring Harley owners together from across the country but also invite new members into the ever-growing family. (more…)
For a lot of bikers here in Malaysia, Sunday morning is the time to get their bikes rolling for a nice ride to their favourite routes and locations. These include having a nice breakfast with good friends at beautiful destinations, which was what the Harley Owners Group (HOG) Petaling Jaya chapter did yesterday. (more…)
The folks representing Harley-Davidson here in Malaysia has just launched its premier Passport to Freedom campaign. From now until 30 September 2018, new H-D bike owners can enjoy a number of great rebates that can assist in obtaining their B Full licenses, training costs plus more. (more…)
So where the Harley-Davidson Sportster Iron 1200 is the hardcore chopper with performance that could make a sports bike blush, the Sportster 48 is the chilled out cruiser with a design that looks like it came right off a 60s era vintage Harley.
That iconic fat front tyre, the low slung body, forward controls and single-passenger seat are all meant to make the bike look retro cool. And cool it definitely is.
I have always been a huge fan of the 48. I have a 2014 Sportster 48 and love every bit about it, especially because of its laid-back yet powerful character, and because of its classic good looks of course. So if the weather is not too hot and I am having an easy day, I usually take out the 48.
The Iron 1200 may have that iconic chopper like styling and the ergonomics of it makes you feel totally in control weaving in and out of corners. But the 48 is different, it encourages you to slow down and enjoy the ride, some call it a thinking-man’s bike, the man with a free spirit but yet has places to be and people to see.
The 48 is lower than the Iron, a little over an inch closer to the ground, with a little more rake and trail and a shorter wheelbase. Then of course there are the tyres with the 48 getting beefier 130 section front tyres and a smaller 16 inch rim while the Iron 1200 gets 100 section tyres and bigger 19 inch rims. Both share the same 150/80B 16 rear tyre.
The wheels and the sitting position are the only difference between the two bikes, but the bikes are far from the same. The Iron 1200 lets you carry lower lean angles into corners which means more speed and agility, while the 48 feels like it is hardly done bending over when the foot pegs meet the road.
The build of the bike gives it a heavy metal feel to it, you will come to appreciate the weight of the bike. Cables running down the handle bar and beneath the frame all suggest that this is bike that will give you plenty to customize later on in its life, so you may never get bored of owning it.
Living in Kuala Lumpur means you’re constantly surrounded by traffic, construction and buildings, and though the 48 felt at one with the roads carved into the cliff side roads of Split, Croatia, I will confess through experience that it is also perfectly adapted to life in the concrete jungle. It does not have a very good turning radius for tight u-turns, but at least you will still look cool while clumsily turning around.
And so, after spending some time with the Iron 1200, I hopped on to the new 48 Special. The Special variant gets some chrome highlights around the exhaust and other shinny bits. It also gets the same mini-ape bars as the Iron 1200 but not the headlight cover.
At first ride both bikes offer about the same character, and why shouldn’t they as both are powered by the same air-cooled evolution 1202cc engine with the same 100Nm of torque. Even the gearbox and all of its ratios are the same.
But the similarities end at the first corner, each bike has its own unique character in a corner. There is an immediate feeling that the 48 is a little reluctant to bite in as compared to the Iron. This is because of the thicker front tyre, but once it settles in the front end feels more confident especially during the exit where the Iron can feel a little nervous as soon as it squats under power.
The Iron 1200 is also better to cover miles with. The 8-litre peanut tank of the 48 gives it a range better suited to city riding. And its outreached handle bars, foot pegs and smallish seat will kill your back after about an hour or so of riding. It becomes so uncomfortable that you simply want to get off the bike. It is a common problem with the 48, I suffered the same with my own bike and the solution was to get a bigger, more supportive seat. The seat on the Iron 1200 though is fantastic to say the least.
The 48 also comes with the same retro AMF-era paint job which just lends to its classic looks. The two new Sportsters, though visually different, are nearly identical in geometry yet completely unique in character. The 48 Special is obviously the more stylish sibling in the Sportster family.
The 2018 Harley-Davidson Sportster 48 Special is yet to hit the Malaysian market but we hear that may happen towards the later part of the year, and when it does arrive, this is one Sportster that would be worth giving a look at the Harley-Davidson KL showroom at The Gasket Alley in PJ.
The Harley-Davidson Sportster is the oldest continuously produced motorcycle. It has been in production since 1957, and though a lot has changed, park new and original together and you will still be able to pick out some similarities through 60 years of evolution.
This is something the geeks in product development call ‘product continuation’, it is the retention of the DNA of a particular model so it can develop and evolve but yet stay true to the original. Sometimes in design, sometimes in purpose.
But the Sportster is special because it is one of the few motorcycles that is perfectly adaptable to being multiple versions of the same bike.
And that is what has made it immensely successful, because it can be a bike to ride up to the mountains or go touring with. It has spawned variants that were absolutely devilish in corners yet perfectly friendly for newbies to get started with.
The popularity of the Sportster grew at about the same time as the Triumph Bonneville’s, the Norton’s and the Enfield’s. The rise of today’s modern retro machine is considered to be a revival of this era, and the Sportster Iron 1200 is the perfect salute with its classic styling.
Fast and stylish with radical chopper styling, the Sportster Iron 1200 we rode in Croatia is everything Harley-Davidsons were meant to be from the start, fast and stylish.
To the uninitiated, the Iron 1200 may look just like an Iron 883 with taller mini-ape handle bars instead of the usual flat-bend handle bars on the regular Iron. But the Iron 1200 is not just the same motorcycle with a bigger engine, it is very much its own motorcycle.
It has plenty of style to begin, it could have been on the cover of U2’s Achung Baby and would have fit right in with the AMF-era tank stripes.
And just like the original Sportster intended, the Iron 1200 is brilliantly fun in corners. It shares the same chassis as the Iron 883 so it has the same frame, wheels, suspension and just about everything else. In fact, despite the fact that the it has a bigger engine and taller handle bars, it manages to be less than a kilogram heavier than the Iron 883, which is a feat by itself.
So the two are clearly siblings, just with different characters. You sit with your fists in the wind, the mid-set foot pegs giving you a perfectly adapted peg-scrapping sitting position, and the big 19-inch front wheel makes this Sportster one of the best handling in its class. It also has an amazingly comfortable seat, much much more comfortable than the 48 Special.
But it is that engine that suddenly makes this Sportster Iron everything it should have been right from the start. The Iron 883 was great but it was also very much an “entry-level” model at one point of time so it felt limited when it came to performance. The Iron 1200 obviously built around the fun package of the 883, but with heaps more fun.
So it all begins with a new air-cooled evolution engine which has 30% more capacity than the 883 and produces about 100Nm of torque. The engine is connected to the same 5-speed gearbox as the 883 though with different gear ratios. As with most Harley-Davidsons, the best way to ride the 1202cc engine is just to leave it in a higher gear and ride the mountain of torque is offers through the corners. Of course, you could bang down the gears and catapult out of corners too. Either way the Iron 1200 is happy to oblige.
But as fun as that sounds, there’s an unnerving feel as you get on the throttle though. Just as the bike piles on some speed, the front goes into a mini-wobble as the bike squats on maximum acceleration. It is not very noticeable but it is there everytime you blast out of a corner.
And matching all the fun and power is some fantastic handling. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can’t have fun with Harley-Davidsons because the Iron 1200 is brilliant in corners. Purists will love the fact that it does not come with a lot of electronics like ABS (optional) and traction control. And the entire meter cluster has been flushed down to the bare necessities, giving you only the most important information. And don’t let that headlight cover fool you, it sucks at deflecting the onslaught of wind, the Sportster Iron 1200 is still very much a city bike than it is a highway cruiser.
But despite the new herculean engine, the brakes and suspension are the same as the Iron 883, which means the same dual-piston calipers front and rear with a single disc keeping you in check. But this just means adjusting your riding style to allow for more foot-peg scrapping fun as you get to carry more speed into corners.
And because there is no electronic interference to control the wheel from slipping, you have to be gentle with the throttle, ask for too much and you risk lighting up the rear on exit. Which can be fun in experienced hands, but scary for the rest.
We spent the entire day literally carving up mountain roads, scrapping foot pegs on both the Iron 1200 and the new Sportster 48 Special (which we will get to in a later article). There is no doubt that the Iron 1200 is one of the greatest Sportster’s to date, just a pity that it has not made it to the Malaysian market as yet, but when it does, pay attention as only a few bikes have the talent to back up good looks, and this Iron 1200 is more than just talented.
Do you prefer a bigger bike? How about something like a Road Glide? Click here to read our review and to watch a video on it. Or do you prefer the classic styling of the Street Glide? We rode that too! Watch our video review here.
Last Saturday was the first ever Iftar ride for the Harley Owners Group (HOG) Petaling Jaya chapter where they organised a day trip to Melaka. Around 40 members of HOG PJ joined the festivities supported by Harley-Davidson of Petaling Jaya (HDPJ) conveniently located at the Gasket Alley. (more…)
“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it.” A quote from Paulo Coelho’s ’The Alchemist’. Something that suddenly feels all too true for a boy who grew up dreaming about riding Harley-Davidson’s along some of the most beautiful roads in the world. So you can imagine the bewilderment when the email came through, I read it, closed it, let it all sink, and read it again a few minutes later. Just to be sure.
I replied the email the soonest I could, complete with passport details. It was probably the quickest I had ever replied to an email. I was not leaving anything to chance, obviously.
The Adriatic Sea is almost mystical in its appearance as you can see in the video above. It has seen kings, emperors, warriors, conquerers, the hopeful and lovers sailing over its beautiful blue waters. The Romans sailed it during their conquests, as did the Greeks. The Venetians too. It was a battle ground and also a source of food and romance.
And so, not too long ago, the shores of the Adriatic saw a different kind of story, one of realisation, awe and excitement, involving a few Harley-Davidsons and I.
9am on a Tuesday morning. Being spring the sun rises early, so it was already blazing by the time I came face to face with the 2018 Harley-Davidson Road Glide.
We had flown into Split, Croatia just the day before, for the Harley-Davidson #riderideslide global ride, you can watch the highlights from our trip in the video above. The three-day ride involved testing the Road Glide, Street Glide, and the new range of Sportsters, the Iron 1200 and the 48 Special. And the final day was capped by a very special ride, one that I will not soon forget, and which I will write about in my final review, but just as a teaser, it involved riding on a flat track on specially built Harley-Davidson Street Rods.
And so after a few weeks of emails and a near 24 hour travel time, here I was, face-to-face with a motorcycle I had lusted over for some time. Some may call it a “hey look at me” bike, for poseuers apparently. But there is a certain appeal in its design, a purity of purpose even, it’s a touring bike and nothing else. It is simply a big, beautiful bike that cocoons you in comfort and style, a package that has been improving since 1941, the year the first Harley-Davidson touring model was introduced, the FL.
So yes, I am a fan of the Road Glide. I had spent many hours flipping through listing sites, monitoring prices and hoping that one would soon come within reach. It was previously priced at around RM200,000 for a brand new model, making it a stuff of dreams.
Now, it is priced at about RM180,000 after a local dealership “refreshment” campaign in Malaysia, and still out of reach. So when I had to pick a colour to ride for the day, it had to be one that I had always loved – a black on chrome Road Glide (though I had later hopped on to the metallic green you see in some of the photos here)
Glittering in the sun, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. The Road Glide weighs 388kg’s and would be about 460kg with me on it. So having to manage that heft through some tight roads in a country with peculiar driving habits, and having to do it all while riding on the wrong side of the road (Croatia drives on the right), my emotions were a perfect storm of excitement, nervousness, and some shock splashed in representing the surreality of it all.
But as Ice Cube said, “You better check yourself before you wreck yourself”. So I kept it all in check with my best impersonation of Al Pacino as he did the tango in the Scent of a Woman – cool, calm, collected – you would never have guessed that he was blind, just as you would never have guessed I was a complete wreck inside.
Anyway, jacket zipped, helmet and gloves on and a quick thought for the man above, and it was all engines start. The keyless feature means you only need to turn the key knob to the left, switch on the ignition and thumb the starter button. It sounds more complicated than it actually is, and can be done in less than 5 seconds if you actually keep track.
Being noise regulations compliant means that the exhaust note is flat, almost muted. It doesn’t really sound like a big, bad-ass Harley-Davidson should, but there is nothing a set of aftermarket Vance & Hines can’t change.
Out of the hotel and onto a narrow single lane street, and right into my first test. Just to our luck, the local municipality decided to conduct some road works just on the day of our test ride, so as you can probably imagine, the roads were entirely ripped up, dozens of excavators and trucks littered the streets, and traffic was at a complete standstill. A perfect testing ground for the low speed handling of the Road Glide. The video below perfectly captures the predicament I was in.
Harley-Davidsons have one of the best low speed handling in the business, so managing this brute of a bike through traffic was actually quite an experience. You don’t expect such a big, heavy thing to be effortless at crawling speed, but it was exactly that. But it still is a big bike, so even though it handles well, it still won’t fit through tightly spaced traffic.
There is a believe among bikers that Harley-Davidsons are best left to the open highways than mountain carving. A sly dig at the supposed clumsy handling of Harleys, but the Road Glide is anything but clumsy.
On the highway and high up on the mountains of Split overlooking the Adriatic, the bike is comfortable yet chatty. The Showa forks up front manage the soaks quite well, but it is the rear that sends back tiny nuggets of information up your back, telling you exactly what is happening between road and tyre.
Hand adjustable for pre-load, I actually like the fact that the Road Glide is a good balance of comfort and tractability. Some older Harley-Davidson touring models had somewhat of a reputation for softish suspension that do well at keeping you comfortable, but don’t do much at telling you about the road until you’re flat on the floor. Well, that’s no more.
The Road Glide handles so well that it is almost okay to use the word agile for a bike that weighs nearly half a ton complete with rider. The suspension helps of course, but it is also the fact that the front end of the bike does nothing more than to connect the rider to the turning wheel.
That massive fairing, entertainment system, speakers, and dials which you see above, are all connected directly to the frame of the bike. The Street Glide however, has all of that mounted to the fork, which makes the front heavier than it should be. The fact that the Road Glide has light front end is what makes the Road Glide so placeable in corners. Because the front has nothing else to do but turn, which is fantastic and the way it should be.
And being light up front means you can have some fun with the 1,746cc Milwaukee-8 engine. It produces 150Nm of torque from just 3,250rpm so it can be pretty quick off the line, and you can ride the wave of torque whenever you need as it seldom leaves you wanting power. It is no sport bike in the performance sense of the word, but all things considered, it is mighty powerful.
But the new Milwaukee engine is more than just a big, powerful engine, it is also refined, and almost smooth. I say almost because a Harley will never be Harley if it didn’t have its iconic vibrations. Whether an entry-level model or a flagship, a Harley-Davidson has to rumble, somewhat. The smoothness of the engine and the re-engineered rubber mounts help keep the vibrations away from the rider, and whatever that remains feels as if it were deliberately left there, perhaps as an invisible link to Harleys of past.
Comfort is of course top notch. The seat is plush, the reach to the handle bars is perfect and rarely do you get tired of reaching out to them, but if you do there’s cruise control to help. The floorboards are mounted further front than they are on the Street Glide, which gives the bike a more elongated feel.
My left foot though kept getting caught between the shifter pedals, the space between the up and down shifter was too small to properly fit my size 10 shoe. A quick fix to that though would be to remove the rear upshift paddle, and use only the front paddle for gear related operations.
At the end of the day, having inched through traffic, slice between cars, carved up mountain passes, and manhandled it through all the low speed manoeuvres, there’s a feeling of connected to the Road Glide. You learn to understand the bike very quickly and where its size and heft was a cause for anxiety, you learn to manage it all using just your body and the throttle stick. Tight corner? The Road Glide asks you to simply drop its weight into the corner and pick it back up again with a quick flick of the stick. That is all it takes.
That is the Road Glide, it inspires confidence in you and makes you feel as if you know the bike really well. But it’s not unfounded, its weight becomes an ally as you learn how to exploit it in corners. The engine too plays a huge part in managing the heft and balance, but is brutish in nature when it comes to putting down power, yet gentle and smooth when you just want to take it easy.
It has been love at first sight for me and the Road Glide, and now it has turned to pure lust as I want one more than ever. Watch our video review of the Harley-Davidson Road Glide in the video above, or on our Youtube channel accessible through our link here.
But later that day I hopped on to the Street Glide and that just messed up my thoughts about the Road Glide. Suddenly the ideal bike seemed to be one that handles like a Street Glide but looks like a Road Glide.
I will tell you why in Part 2 of the review.
Berita hebat buat semua pemilik Harley-Davidson di Malaysia! Pusat perkhidmatan rasmi Harley-Davidson di The Gasket Alley telah dibuka secara rasminya semalam (Sabtu, 8 Disember).
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