Riding A Comet
RIDING A COMET
RIDING IMPRESSION
Confession of a relutant astronaut
IT'S NO SECRET THAT I'M NUTS ABOUT FOUR-STROKE dirt bikes, especially lightweight, one-off specials and Husqvarna’s 1987 510s. But my interest in off-road four-strokes that weigh over 300 pounds is usually limited to the mechanical features of the machine. When an off-road machine is that heavy, its handling usually is poor at best.
Three days in the saddle of a BMW Paris-to-Dakar machine a couple of years ago reinforced my opinion of heavy dirt bikes. The BMW handled like a streetbike in the dirt; the steering was slow and required a lot of muscle, normal dirt-style cornering was impossible, and I had to saw my way clumsily around smooth fireroad turns. Yes, I know, BMWs have been extremely successful in long-distance desert races, but I don’t enjoy riding off-road bikes that require completely different riding styles to master.
When I got my first look at Harley’s Comet, I couldn’t help but admire the careful fabrication and huge amount of work that went into building it; it’s a masterpiece. Still, one question kept popping into my head: “Why bother?” Surely, this was a classic example of an exercise in excess. And I certainly had no desire to ride the bike, for I knew that a 400-pound dirt bike would be an awful handful. I couldn’t stop wondering what would happen if the monster got out of control and landed on top of me. So I kept conjuring feeble excuses, like that I was too busy or had an appointment to get my truck washed.
Finally, I ran out of excuses and agreed to meet Jim Jackson, the Comet’s builder, in the Mojave Desert. I picked an area that has a lot of Baja-type roads, fully convinced that I was going to have a miserable time.
Wrong.
As it turned out, the Comet was a pure blast to ride. Within my first mile of riding it, I was confidently charging into sand turns and bashing across deep ruts with the same enthusiasm I would feel on a “real” dirt bike. Above about 20 mph, the bike’s sheer size and weight weren’t that noticeable, and it actually handled better than most of the 600cc Japanese Singles that weigh 100 pounds less. The chassis was solid, the suspension worked great, and the bike turned and slid like any good off-road machine should. And it was amazingly agile at speed; it could be tossed around pretty easily when dodging bushes and rocks, all the while maintaining good straight-line stability.
But the thing that really made the Comet fun to ride was its wonderful exhaust note. The lightly muffled V-Twin rumble that comes out of the exhaust was sheer music, like an exhaust symphony that I listened to all day long. The bike had its little glitches—the shifting was sticky, the shift-lever throw too long and the footpeg placement too high and far forward; but I found myself ignoring those things and concentrating on twisting the throttle back and forth just so I could listen to the satisfying music rumbling out of the exhaust pipe.
So, an exercise in excess, the Comet definitely is not. This old desert dog was wrong; Fd just love to go on a three-day dirt ride on this over-300-pound dirt bike. —Ron Griewe
