this is the harley davidson road king special
it's one of the touring bikes from harley davidson and i've been riding this bike around
all day and i'm going to give you my impression of what this bike is like
if you haven't noticed i'm here in wales and this is the old man's new house it looks
incredible i've never seen an area like it it's genuinely like being in france it's incredible
and behind me there is a little bit of an annex part of the house so it might be a good idea for
him to turn that into a holiday who knows or maybe that's a stupid idea who'd want to come and stay
around here horrible harley davidson themselves say that this bike is a hot rod with sinister
styling and it very much is and that's why it's so popular with people who are in motorcycle clubs
it's a sort of stripped down bare essential touring bike you've got the panniers or the
saddlebags at the back and they're quite big and we're very good we'll go into that in a minute
but other than that you've got no screens and what have you so it's very much the sort of bike that
people get if they want to feel the wind and be at one with the elements
so
the row king special starts at 21 995 pounds in the uk and if you want this beautiful deadwood
green color that we've got the bike in here honestly this is probably the most stunning color
i've seen a harley davidson in in quite a few years um it's an extra 350 pounds it's certainly
worth it especially with the black and the little bit of chrome it splits it up really nicely and
this is really a stunning motorcycle now of course the road king special is supremely good on the
motorway or the freeway you can go for miles and miles with no issues whatsoever they burble along
at 70 miles per hour at two and a half thousand rpm or so so that's fantastic there's so much talk
and grunt you just go along easily and you can overtake without changing down as all the harleys
are the seats very comfortable i've been riding it all day no issues at all with the seat when you
get to your destination it's a nice bike to ride around the narrow lanes and what have you it's got
a firm ride you've got low profile tyres so the ride is very firm if your purpose for buying a
harley davidson was for touring and that includes long distance rides then definitely go for one of
these if long distance rides aren't particularly necessary i would say you'd be better off going
for one of the soft tail models like the heritage classic if you want the bags or one of the other
soft tails the seat height on this motorcycle is 695 millimeters i am six foot one and this
bike feels plenty roomy enough um if anything it feels maybe less roomy than my soft tail standard
which is something i wasn't expecting to think this has technically got four controls they're
not as forward as some of the soft tail forward controls the little bit sort of in between mids
and forwards but they don't feel that much further forward than my soft tail standard which has mid
controls but this is absolutely perfectly fine for someone over six foot and if you're under six foot
you'll have no trouble here either and you could also move the bars slightly further forwards if
you wanted to have a little bit more arm room or keep them where if you're a little bit shorter
the rake on the touring bikes is 26 degrees and the trail is 175 mil and the wheelbase is 1 625
millimeters which is a tad shorter than the soft tails but because of the steeper rake
you gain that little extra space at the top so it's quite a roomy bike so if you're tall like
me i'm six foot two as you can see i've got plenty of space so it's a nice riding position
the steepness of the rake gives you that slow speed maneuverability so it's got
a good turning circle and you can get around things quite easily and the longer rate gives
you stability at speed it's a very heavy bike we'll give you the weights in a minute
so if you are maneuvering and shunting it about it is a handful so once it tips to a certain point
it is a hard bike to control at low speeds so if you're particularly short uh i'm not very muscular
maybe you want something a bit lighter because it is a handful and i've been to
the gym a couple of times and i still find it quite heavy the rogueking special weighs
366kg which is certainly not light by any means it is a heavy bike and if you're on
flat ground maneuvering it about it feels okay and if you're getting on the bike tipping it
over it doesn't feel that heavy and when you're riding it of course it feels fine
but if you're on a slight slope like this and you want to move it back a bit i'll demonstrate oh
now this is the hard bit it's a full body workout to even get it back six inches it's really really
not easy and this bike could really do with a reverse gear like the likes of the bmw r18
over the big heavy cruiser like this or touring motorcycle it really does need a reverse gear
and that's something harley know how to do as it's in the trike models so i think it would be good to
implement it into the touring and soft tail models and i was dripping with sweat after a minute of
trying to shunt backwards and forwards on a bit of a slope so yeah a reverse gear would be a game
changer harley davidson so hopefully that's on the cards you have the v twin 114 cubic inch
milwaukee 8 engine on this which is 1868 cc and that sounds enormous and it is enormous
but that's what gives you all that lovely talk and the talk uh produced on this is 158 newton meters
at 3250 rpm but you feel that torque right from low revs and it pulls like a freight train from
next to nothing so that's the great thing about these bikes you've got lots of low down torque
and it produces only 89 horsepower at 5020 rpm but it's not about the power the soft tails the
way they're tuned produce a little bit more power than the touring bikes but when you're touring
you just want torque you want grunt and you don't need to be revving it and if you've never ridden
a talky bike like a harley davidson you wouldn't understand what i'm talking about because
it's it's equivalent to being given a piggyback ride by dwayne johnson
you've got so much muscle on this bike that everything it does is just
effortless
one of the things we can establish on this ride is that the harley-davidson road king special
is also very good at the slow twisty stuff as in riding around country lanes like this
where you're not going fast at all first and second gear work blind bends brows etcetera
and the bike's perfectly comfortable riding like this um of course it's brilliant
on a motorway the freeway and uh it's very much at home in those sort of conditions
but if you're touring you're not always on the motorway and
when you when you get off the motorway you want to bite them
explore the area that you find yourself in and this is perfectly good for that
another thing that we always say about harley-davidson's especially the soft sails
and it's the same on the touring models is the stands are very sort of not confidence inspiring
um they're perfectly fine once they're actually in place but it's the worry of
whether it actually is or not and once they go you aren't catching these things they're very heavy
so especially on a little slope which i'm on now you put it down and then it rolls forward about
a couple of inches and you think is that going to fall it might do it might not hopefully it doesn't
because it'll cost us a fair bit of money to uh pay to harley davidson but i think it's all right
and i'm just gonna check if the left fuel cap is a dummy or a real one and uh what is it
oh it's a gauge actually i'm just taking it out it's that it's a fuel gauge i don't even
know that so the left cap is a fuel gauge it's so shiny you can't see it and the right one is
your filler cap the miles per gallon figures for this is 39 miles per gallon which is a little
bit less than most of the soft tails they're mostly 43 miles per gallon and this has a 22.7
liter fuel tank which is a fair bit bigger than a lot of the other harley models the soft tails etc
now let's run through a few things quickly up front you've got double disc brakes
harley davidson logo on the calipers and the stopping power is good you've got nice big mud
guards which actually work so they keep the muck and the wetness off of you and the bike you've got
mini 8 handlebars which are really nice they look nice you've got this massive headlamp
and it doesn't look good it's very stylish it's a nice fat front end a wide tank you've got the
dials on here a speedometer in analog which i always love and you've got the usual harley
davidson things you can flick through on the front of the left handle bar not usually
where the thumb is and you've got your on off switch here and an accessory um position as well
you've got a steering lock which you put your key in the mirrors i could see about half the road
behind maybe less so not brilliant the passenger seat sort of slopes away so i wouldn't want to go
far on that to be honest you really need to trust the person riding or hold on tight um
the saddle bags are brilliant they've got tons of space really good love these saddlebags as i said
before the suspension's not amazing it's okay it's a touring bike it's not a motocross bike
but you do feel the bumps and the low profile tires whilst good on the road and for cornering
form they've got a nice deep low rumble to them of course most people that buy harleys will rip them
off and put something louder on and with a nice end can or a whole system exhaust these things
sound absolutely amazing like a lion roaring absolutely fantastic so personally if you're going
to go to harley davidson you might as well hear it and if you do hear it nothing sounds like it
the clutch has got quite a strong pull to it it's a cable clutch
which gives a nice feel of course but um you will develop forearms like popeye
this bike comes with these crash bars down here and that's a really nice feature to
have especially with a bike this heavy it's quite likely that you'll probably drop it at some point
when you're ownership not that you'd like to admit that but you never know you get caught off guard
you think the stand's on or something and then it falls and that means you're not
going to ruin your lovely deadwood green paint job which i'll say again is absolutely stunning
you're just going to get a little bit of a scraped crash bar which you can always
touch up or you can get them replaced and that really gives you
peace of mind and it makes it easier to pick the bike up once it is down there
the seat height is 695 millimeters uh which isn't high but don't let that fool you because
obviously the riding position is good if you're tall and you can bring your feet
into any position with the floorboards which is nice i do like that so sometimes you just
want to ride with your toes on the end there and you've got multiple positions some people
even hang them over there and you can get an accessory to put your foot on properly
but like i said yes it's got a low seat height but it's a big bike it's very long
and it's very heavy so if you're a shorter person um who is thinking about the bike because of its
seat height you do need to get on one move it around in the car park even just to feel
how you are with maneuvering it because it's not an easy bike in that respect
now if you are looking at this motorcycle you may have some other ones in mind one of which
might be the indian springfield and if you were sort of weighing up the two i personally
think this is probably the best bet i think the production quality on the harleys is a little
bit higher i've noticed some sort of not so good finishes on the indians they do look beautiful
but i don't know if i trust as much as harley davidson in their production quality
and we were actually at a harley-davidson dealership in nottingham robin hood
we stopped there after i did my mob one bike test and we met a subscriber there who was
trading in his indian for a street glide um which obviously says something he had
reliability issues um so that must be one of the reasons that he went for a harley
and i noticed that the front headlight on the indian looked like it had just like a
fairy light round the edge which looked really cheap it looked like it come out of a teenager's
bedroom and they'd stuck it around the inside of the headlight so yeah i do think harley's
are probably better quality but i'm not dissing indian i do think they are beautiful motorcycles
make sure you like and subscribe for all our future content there's loads coming some from
the old man here in wales some from me over in rutland and lots of us together as well and if
you check out our big reveal video you'll see some of our other ideas of what's to come in the future
and this week the old man's new bike is arriving so have a guess down below in the comments
what you think the bike might be it is an off-road bike um but we'll leave it to you no one's guessed
it yet i'll just put it that way so if you want a touring bike and you are a bit of a rebel
uh if you're a bit badass and you don't want all the creature comforts
yet you want the luggage capacity but the looks then this could well be the bike for you
make sure you check out our t-shirt store there's loads of designs on there and if you actually
click on the website and look through although they all look like they're just t-shirts if you
click on them and there's normally other options you can get them in vests some of them are in
sweatshirts long sleeves hoodies women's tees so make sure you have a look as there's all thoughts
on there and we are putting new designs on there as and when we come up with them make sure you
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