Harley Davidson Fat Bob (2018) - Long Term Review

Part 1 - First Impressions

BikeSocial has a Fat Bob on extended test this summer, here’s what we made of the first 500 miles.

It’s been a while since I rode a Harley that makes this much of an impression. Maybe even as far back as the V-Rod. The Fat Bob might have a rubbish name but it’s a bike that attracts attention of both riders and non-riders alike. Maybe the name is an assumption that if you buy a Harley you need to get used to the sneers and the insults so why not start at the dealer, who knows?

Our bike is still very new, but first impressions are mostly very good. It’s done a mix of long, short, straight and twisty journeys and, as the engine loosens up it’s getting better and better.

Details

It’s a long time since a new Harley made such an impression style-wise, but the design team who built Bob deserve an extra doughnut. From ten feet it looks stunning. From five feet you start to notice that the huge, fat exhaust pipes are actually only a cover on some standard, skinny items, but as you get even closer that doesn’t matter. The way the handlebars taper is a lesson to other custom builders (and makes Ducati’s XDiavel’s items look as nasty as they really are). The paint job and cosmetic finish is superb and the whole bike manages to look cool and futuristic, while still being absolutely everything Harley Davidson stand for. Then there’s the bold headlight design, the flamboyant exhausts and wacky number plate hanger. Love it!

Comfort

Sadly, HD’s ergonomics team appear to be on sabbatical for the moment. Last year’s Street Rod and this year’s Fat Bob may well look the part and go pretty well, but it’s hard to see how anyone could make a motorcycle less comfortable. Fat Bob has a cool-looking, comfy seat, but the forward pegs make distance a chore, you can’t operate the back brake effectively and the handlebar position makes it harder to steer the bike how you want to when the going gets twisty. Add that to the slightly cumbersome turning properties of the 150-section front tyre (that’s 25 per cent fatter than almost every other bike on the planet) and instead of the riding experience being simple and instinctive, it becomes considered and slightly laboured.

130 miles on the motorway numbed three fingers in my right hand and my wrist ached after less than an hour. The following day my knees my felt like I’d run a 10k race.

Interestingly, BikeSocial colleague Toad, who’s a few inches shorter than me (I’m six foot, he’s five-foot six) thought it was spot-on.

Engine and Gearbox

There are currently two engine options. This one has the larger 114 cubic inch engine, which translates to 1868cc (multiply the CI figure by 16.38 to convert - one cc is 0.0610237 of a cubic inch). It’s based on the latest motor used in HD’s tourers, but this one is air and oil cooled, without the water-cooled heads (no room for the radiators with this styling, just an oil cooler between the frame tubes). Two balancer shafts do a really good job of smoothing out the vibes. Cruising at 60mph in top gear the engine is so smooth that you actually notice it, which sounds weird, but it makes you realise how vibey other big twins can be.

The clutch is light, for a Harley and unobtrusive when filtering through rush hour traffic. Gearchanges are clunky enough to remind you there’s some serious mechanical movement going on in there, but it always goes in with a re-assuringly positive ‘thunk’. 

Performance

The fuelling is spot-on too and this ‘two-pints-per-cylinder’ V-twin pulls easily from just below 1000rpm right through to 5500rpm, although in the first five (of six) gears you’ve changed up long before that – peak torque (114lb-ft) is at 3500rpm and you feel it drop away soon afterwards. Harley don’t like to talk horsepower, but their German importer quotes 93bhp for the 114 engine, which sounds puny, but remember that bhp is torque multiplied by revs and this bike only revs to 6000rpm.

Ridden in isolation, the Fat Bob feels quick and punchy. Ridden in typical British A-road traffic and it lacks the thrust you need on a motorcycle to overtake effectively. Maybe it’s the weight (the fat part of Bob equates to 306kg ready to ride) or maybe we underestimate  how much faster modern cars have become, but I had a lot more challenging overtakes on this than I usually do. Let’s see how it feels with some more miles and loosened-up engine.  80mph comes up at just below 3000rpm and motorway cruising at that speed still returns 50mpg. Chugging through town nudges that mpg up to late-50s, but a spot of spirited, high-speed, cog-swapping suspension testing down some favourite b-roads dropped consumption into the low-40s. Our bike is still relatively new though and we’d expect consumption to improve even further as it loosens up. With a 13.5 litre tank, that equates to somewhere around 160 miles range.

Chassis

Harley rationalised their ranges last year, ditching the twin-shock dyna chassis to focus on the softails (which use a single shock absorber hidden in a frame designed to resemble a vintage hardtail). The Fat Bob has a new frame with increased stiffness, new suspension including a shock absorber with remote preload adjustment and fat, upside-down Showa forks. The brakes are uprated too – twin four-piston calipers at the front work really well, which is good because you can’t get enough stomp on the rear pedal to do much else other than switch on the brake light. The sporty-set suspension has enough control to cope with fast corners and just about enough ride quality to be comfy too. The remote preload adjuster on the rear shock is useful, but positioned so close to the exhaust that you can’t twist it while the engine is hot.  All-in-all it’s a good package and Big Bob is surprisingly confident on a twisty road. Think of your favourite early 1980s superbike (Suzuki GSX1100E or Kawasaki GPz1100) equipped with mid-90s radial tyres and carrying a pillion and you’re just about there. Firelade owners need not worry, but, their bikes won’t attract the attention the Harley will wherever you pull up. This is another step in the right direction for Harley and on a fast blast down my super-secret test roads between Guy Martin’s pub and Cadwell Park the Fat Bob was genuinely impressive.

What's next?

Before I rode it, I’d half-volunteered to ride our Fat Bob the 900 miles to Harley’s European rally in Prague. After the first 500 miles I’m not so sure. The engine and chassis will be great on that run, but I can’t imagine what state my poor, ageing bones will be in after three days hunched into that position. I have another long day planned on it next week, let’s make a decision after that.

Harley-Davidson Fat Bob 114 (2018) - Verdict

If motorcycling had an annual award for ‘most improved manufacturer’ Harley would walk it. These days they have smooth, powerful engines, lightweight clutches, chassis that handle, brakes that stop, suspension that controls a corner and soaks up bumps and they almost never break down. Seriously, if my lottery numbers come up, a Street Glide would be one of the first bikes I’d buy.

But there are still some challenges for next year. The good news is that after 221 miles on Harley’s new fat Bob, three out of the four indicators were still attached and pointing in the right direction. The bad news is…, yup, you guessed it. Add in the half inch gap between the instrument binnacle sealing rubber and fuel tank and the occasional random alarm triggering (I didn’t know that bike alarms were even still a thing) and it’s easy to overlook the good points of this bike for the stuff that… well, let’s just say the stuff you would never ever get on any other bike. At the time of writing, with 550 miles showing nothing else has gone wrong.

Harley’s build quality has got much, much better in the last few years, but, evidently there is still some work to do. The fantasy might be that your HD is hand-assembled by Bruce Springsteen, sadly the reality is that Homer Simpson and Barney are still helping out.

Ok, so one wobbly indicator and a lifting instrument seal might not be a problem, you say. But if you can miss that, what’s to say it won’t be the handlebars coming loose or the brakes falling off next. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect your motorcycle’s assembly to be finished when you ride it away.

Build quality aside, first impressions are that the new-for-2018 Fat Bob is a good bike that moves Harley styling forward, builds on the technical improvements and, in the current market represents good value too, especially considering HD’s resale values.

Second Opinion - John Milbank

Harley-Davidson Fat Bob: The torquiest bike you’ve never ridden

I’ll be the first to say that it’s a massively privileged position to be a motorcycle journalist: you get the chance to ride almost any bike. And that can help give you an extremely open mind.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m well aware that it’s easy to say ‘this bike is awesome’ when you haven’t had to stump up your own cash for it, but I do know what it’s like to save for something; I currently own a KTM 1050 Adventure and a custom Honda MSX125. Over the years I’ve bought and sold about 20 bikes.

Riding different machines that I haven’t had to pay for as a job is great, but it’s not often I get home with one and immediately go to the manufacturer’s website to check the price. Oh. The Fat Bob is £15,495. The most I’ve ever spent on a bike is £7,000. I can’t afford that.

It doesn’t stop me lusting after it though. Sure, it’s big and heavy and not that powerful; 92.5bhp from a 1,868cc motor? Yeah, that’s not that much. But 155Nm is 43Nm MORE than a Yamaha R1M. This is the 114, so has the biggest engine; the 107 model has a 1,745cc motor that only makes 33Nm more than an R1M. Dammit, this bike makes 41Nm MORE than a £34,995 Ducati Panigale V4 Speciale. That’s a thing of beauty, no doubt, but given the choice (and a lottery win), I’d buy the Harley first.

The finish on the Fat Bob is great – lots of chunky metal, sure, but it’s a lovely clean design to my eyes at least

I’d get more use out of the Harley – I couldn’t use a fraction of the Ducati’s performance on the road, but the Harley is a different beast. And riding home after my wife had dropped me off at work to pick this up – my daughter hanging out of the passenger window grinning – I roared up alongside them, waved, then sped off. I looked cool. Okay, scratch that, I felt cool. But that’s what matters.

Of course, I wouldn’t get the kind of use out of a Harley that I get out of my KTM – I can hack around back roads on that, I can take my wife away with full luggage, and I can get where I need to fast. The Harley would be a toy really. Sure, I could do pretty well anything on it that I could on any other bike, and the seat is unfathomably comfortable. But the tank range isn’t that great thanks to capacity of 13.6litres; enough for fill-ups every 110-120miles or so, to be safe.

Details like the cables hidden inside the handlebars really make the Fat Bob for me

Having said that, you can get 14.27litres in. I know; I just did it. But it was running on vapour. Literally. Half a mile from the filling station (the fuel light was already on when I left the office), it died as I braked for a roundabout. Still rolling, the massive flywheel spun the machine back into life, and despite doing it on the next two roundabouts as well, I got there.

Fortunate really – I didn’t fancy pushing this 306kg behemoth along. Actually, it’d be about 290kg with no fuel.

A close call… the Harley was on vapour at this point.

So if I had the money, I’d buy one. Well, yes, but the trouble is I don’t really have room in the garage – I like tinkering and this takes up a lot of space, and certainly isn’t easy to move around.

No money, no space. The end of my Harley dream. For now. Unless… While the Fat Bob genuinely left me hugely excited about its awesome thrust, laid-back riding style and (I, and my wife and daughter think) great styling, there is another: the £9,995 Harley-Davidson Sportster Forty Eight Special. I rode one on the launch in Croatia, and loved it. It’s a bit smaller (so easier to tuck into the garage), it’s a bit lighter at 256kg (so easier to push if it runs out of fuel – likely with a 7.9litre tank), and while it makes less torque (96Nm), that’s only 6Nm less than a 959 Panigale.

Despite a massive range of different bikes, a Harley-Davidson rarely makes a rational, practical choice in motorcycling. While I’m most definitely an all-year-round biker, the last thing I want to be known as is rational or practical. My Harley will be a toy. An expensive, big, heavy toy. But it’s one I really, really want…

Troll homologation

No doubt most of the negative comments will already be posted on associated Facebook links before anyone’s read this article. To save me trawling through and answering every one at night (when I should be having my tea and watching The Wire), here are my responses to the most common trolls. As you’ve proven yourself open-minded enough to the idea of Harley to read this far, I’m sure you’re not one of them…

“plus trump tax lol. to much money”

Harley-Davidson is indeed caught up in the ongoing trade war, but the company has said that it will absorb costs for European buyers for now, then will be taking advantage of the production lines it has outside of the USA. H-Ds are sold globally, so logistically it’s always made sense to have production around the world.

“They all look the same”

Glance briefly at a Harley and you’ll know it’s a Harley. Manufacturers around the world crave that brand identity. H-Ds are built around the engine, and that sets a lot of the style… no fairings to cover things up (in fact, few plastics at all – all that metal is why they’re so heavy). But look more closely at the range and you’ll see there’s a great deal of variety. Check them out: www.harley-davidson.com

Of the 34 bikes currently in the range, I don’t like them all. There are two I really, really want – the Fat Bob or the Forty Eight. But I don’t like ALL the bikes KTM or Ducati or Kawasaki or Suzuki or Honda make either.

“if u want to ride a tractor by a harley”

Harleys have a distinctive engine layout – it’s a narrower angle than that on a Ducati for instance, and it’s a lazier pulse. But it’s a V-twin. Every year, Harley has advanced its technology, and this Fat Bob for instance is full of character yet comfortable, really well fuelled, and very cleverly engineered.

“havnt changed since 1920 lmfao”

Harley-Davidsons are designed to echo the style of the machines that made the company so successful – right back to the first days in the early 1900s, through the racing wins over the years. Have a look at the fascinating history of the company here.

Does your bike have a USB charging port for your phone?

“u just be waiting for it to brake down”

Not like the Brit bikes of old then, yeah? Despite the classic looks, these motorcycles are engineered to give a specific feel, while meeting modern emission regulations, and being as reliable as any other modern bike.

“Great if u want to dress up like a pirate”

I’m not sure what this means really. Personally, I wear what I want when I ride. And please note that Harley is leading the way with making all of its motorcycle kit approved to the new PPE legislation that came into force in April 2018; modern, protective riding kit that looks great. Click here to see some examples. I’m sure you’ll find some you hate, but I challenge you to not see something that you think ‘actually, that’s pretty cool.’

“They don’t go round corners”

Sure, many have limited ground clearance that means they can deck out quite quickly, and they’re never going to go around a track like a sportsbike. But ride them appropriately and they can hustle. The Fat Bob has a maximum lean angle of 31° on the right and 32° on the left. In real terms, that means you can hammer hard around tight roundabouts without touching anything down – I’ve been really impressed with the way it handles, once you get used to that big front tyre.

Don’t believe me? Motorcycle press launches are led my professional riders – sometimes development riders, sometimes ‘specialist’ contractors. Harley almost always uses Alex Hearn; you might remember him as ‘Frog’ from Superbike, Performance Bikes and TWO magazines. Many a journalist has seen him embarrass a local Spanish sportsbike rider on a massive Harley tourer. It’s how you ride, not what you ride.

“how much are Harley paying u?”

I refer you back to the start of this article: “You get the chance to ride almost any bike. And that can help give you an extremely open mind.”

“Id rather walk than ride a Harley”

Walk then. Not everyone wants a laid-back cruiser. But if you’re open-minded to biking – and even if you rode a Harley five years ago and didn’t like it – have a test ride now and see how they’ve changed… I recommend you give this Fat Bob a go if nothing else!

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2018 Harley-Davison Fat Bob 114 - Technical Specification

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