1964 Harley-Davidson FLH Duo-Glide - 4-Page Vintage Motorcycle Road Test Article

Description

1964 Harley-Davidson FLH Duo-Glide - 4-Page Vintage Motorcycle Road Test Article
Original, vintage magazine article
Page Size: Approx 8" x 11" (21 cm x 28 cm) each page
Condition: Good
Even though the post-war flood of English and Euro-
pean machines (and more recently those from
Japan) has fairly completely reshaped American thinking
regarding the size and form of motorcycles, there are still
those for whom the lightweights, however fast and agile,
are just toys. A “real” motorcycle, for these people, can
be nothing less than the biggest, most powerful model
Harley-Davidson has to offer — and that is a lot of both
Big and Power by any standard. Today, as it has for
years, Harley-Davidson is building exactly what these
folks want: a motorcycle which, in terms of size, weight
and power, yields nothing to anything else on two wheels.
The Duo-Glide FLH is Harley-Davidson’s ultra-plus-
ultra model for the heavyweight fancier, and to get a full
understanding of just what it is that attracts so many
road-riders to the H-D banner, we were furnished one of
these machines for a road test.
It was obvious (to us, at least) that the makers of
the FLH had not concerned themselves too much with
the usual design goals of reducing size and weight —
which is no more than reasonable, considering that those
are precisely the qualities that the customers want. The
FLH has a 61-inch wheelbase (substantially more than
has been found necessary on even the largest of foreign-
built motorcycles) and the various mechanical elements,
tanks and plumbing are spread about to fill solid the gap
between those widely spaced wheels. Add to this the Duo-
Glide’s swooping fenders, massive front forks and 5.00-16
tires (made specially for the Harley-Davidson by Good-
year) and you have a veritable giant among motorcycles.
What is not fully appreciated among those who have
not tried the big H-D is that the bike’s engine is entirely
capable of moving the Duo-Glide down the road in a
truly spirited manner. Of course the bike is heavy, but
its engine displaces no less than 74 cubic inches and
develops a healthy 60 bhp. The torque is 65 Ib-ft, at
3200 rpm. With so much urge, the Duo-Glide has to be
fast — and it is. We went to the Long Beach Lions Club
drag strip with the Duo-Glide, as we do with all test
machines, and gave everyone something to think about
with an 83 mph run through the “standing-quarter.” The
elapsed time was a creditable 15.8 seconds.
Our test riders were a bit apprehensive about doing
flat-out acceleration trials with the Duo-Glide. The ma-
chine had showed us, from the beginning, that it had bags
of power, and the clutch was decidedly “snappish.” This
combination virtually guarantees a lot of wheelspin when
getting away from the line, and we have had problems
in controlling the snaking and weaving of comparative
lightweights under such conditions; the massive Duo-Glide
gave promise of being a real handful. Our fears were all
for nothing. The clutch snaps in all right, and the wheel-
spin that follows is considerable, but the big Duo-Glide
sails down the strip without a wiggle.
While the engine that supplies all this push has been
around for some years, it has undergone frequent refin-
ing modifications and is today quite a “modern” unit.
The FLH is one of the last examples of the V-twin, a
configuration that has a lot of merit. A 45-degree V-
angle is used, and this gives reasonably even firing im-
pulses at the expense of crowding the bottoms of the
cylinders to the extent that a rather unfashionable bore
and stroke combination are necessary. A gear-driven cam-
shaft, with pairs of intake and exhaust cams, is housed
down in the crankcase and operates the valves through
pushrods and rockers. The cam followers are of the...
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