[Livin On]

Found a couple on location pics of the Street 500 from Daytona bike week over on the XL Forums, thought you guys might like a looksie.

The boys over there are actually being relatively fair to the Streets One thing is abundantly clear however, that tail section really needs some love as does that civil war era looking pipe

 

[basuroy]

Do we have any reviews/feedback from this event regarding the bike ? good pics though the 500 looks really bland , as if someone dipped it in a bucket of black paint. HD sacrificed way too much in the name of budget .

 

[fkystreet]

sweet. thanks for sharing

 

[StoneFree]

Do we have any reviews/feedback from this event regarding the bike ? good pics though the 500 looks really bland , as if someone dipped it in a bucket of black paint. HD sacrificed way too much in the name of budget .

Black has always been a basic Harley-Davidson color but I agree.

That's one of the things I'm addressing on my Stone Free II tribute bobber build project. We're going to strip the black as much as possible and replace with polished aluminum and chrome. We don't know how hard that will be for the engine casings and barrels but we're going to find out.

I anticipate that Harley-Davidson will change this in the future but they are trying to build a market initially so it's understandable to keep it as inexpensive as possible right out of the box and black is a lot less expensive when compared to polished and chromed.

On the flip side it gives the new Harley owner something to play with right away that is easy to do (in many cases) and not too expensive to make their new Harley unique. If it wasn't for the fact that my Street purchases will be for customization the first thing I'd do is custom paint the motorcycle. A decent custom paint job can be done for about $1,500 (and up) and it would be worth every dime to make the motorcycle unique.

 

[StreetTracker]

I think they know the stock exhaust will be one of the first things to get changed... I think Harley just invested the least amount of engineering time in that, just give plenty of volume to pass noise & emission tests, make it simple ( and cheaper to manufacture ) ... Kind of like a lot of all the other stock Harley model mufflers. Dealers have tons of them they scrap. I saw one dealer build a chrome Christmas tree from all the leftover stock mufflers he had laying around, a couple of years ago!

 

[Desert Tortoise]

Yes, of couse Harley invests no effort in the exhaust. That explains why the majority of the after market exhausts people will put on their Harley make more noise, but actually make less horsepower and torque than the stock part. Very few accessory exhaust systems do better than stock in terms of power delivery, probably because there are no engineers in those companies, and no dyno testing of prototypes. Lets not talk about rust and rivets fretting and falling out of the baffle or cracking of thin wall lightweight tubing with use. But of course those are always and necessarily better because someone other than Harley made them. I mean, everyone knows Harley has no engineering talent. Right?

 

[Livin On]

Yes, of couse Harley invests no effort in the exhaust. That explains why the majority of the after market exhausts people will put on their Harley make more noise, but actually make less horsepower and torque than the stock part. Very few accessory exhaust systems do better than stock in terms of power delivery, probably because there are no engineers in those companies, and no dyno testing of prototypes. Lets not talk about rust and rivets fretting and falling out of the baffle or cracking of thin wall lightweight tubing with use. But of course those are always and necessarily better because someone other than Harley made them. I mean, everyone knows Harley has no engineering talent. Right?

who does make a good aftermarket for HD?

 

[Desert Tortoise]

who does make a good aftermarket for HD?

That depends. If you are talking about Sportsters with highly restrictive stock staggered dual pipes, the choices are more and different than for a V-Rod with it's already excellent flowing stock exhaust. A Supertrapp two into one will always make more power over a wider rpm range than staggered duals. You won't bash the front muffler any more on right hand corners with a properly designed 2 into 1.

While you can drop 7 to 14 kg off the weight with a couple of the aftermarket V-Rod pipes, darn few make more power and even then, we are only talking 3 - 4 more rear wheel horses. The stock V-Rod header is so well designed that you can get as much power increase out of less restrictive replacement end cans as you can from any full system (you just can't get the weight reduction from end cans that you can get out of some full systems). Too many end up reducing output for the sake of styling. You can get three or four more horses with intake mods and remapping the ECM for a lot less money than you would spend on a pipe and even with a new pipe, you still have to remap the ECM or it won't run properly.

 

[Yusef]

I think that I am going to switch the exhaust pipe to something else. I am bored by the long black one that comes stock. It just looks lie it needs something that is more exciting. The entire Street 500 looks black right now, and that's not terrible, it just leaves a good basis for adding something to make it more exciting.

 

[gongchuan]

I was there for the V Rod meet and greet on Thursday. Was first in line to sign up for demo rides because I wanted to ride the 500........ sorry we are not demo riding the 500s today I was told. What a bummer. Spent quite a bit of time looking at and feeling up the bike, all in all I liked what I had seen. A few areas that need some attention quickly are just below and behind the right foot peg near the master cylinder and same side of bike the wires and tubes from the bars to under the tank down the spine of the bike were hidious.