Harley-Davidson Street Bob Vs. Victory High-Ball
Harley-Davidson Street Bob vs. Victory High-Ball
PLANET OF THE APES:
Axilla of Evil
JOHN BURNS
I THOUGHT I WAS BEGINNING TO GET IT THE OTHER DAY AS Cernicky and I were enjoying an upscale luncheon fiesta on the verandah of a Del Taco in Glendora, when a guy pulled up at the light on a typically loud-piped, purple-flamed Harley chopper. “I still don’t get it,” I said. Cernicky looked at me like a man examining a growth. “What’s not to get? Women love Harleys. They’re big and loud and vibrate a lot. They appear to be dangerous. Women love the bad-boy thing. And look how low the seat is. Easy to climb on back, even in chick shoes, and doesn’t make your butt look big, even if it is.”
From the mouths of babes, there it is. If Eve never thought of Hog as sexual attractant, it’s a strange thing, because Eve certainly spent my share of time seeking things that are. Cernicky is, no doubt, right. But now Em confused again, because neither the Street Bob nor the High-Ball comes with passenger accommodations standard, except maybe the handlebars {à la my old Schwinn), and that’s got to be illegal.
So, why would you want to rumble around displaying your armpits if not to meet girls? Comfort, that’s why, or at least that’s the answer I repeatedly came upon while exploring the allure of the apehanger, a topic that has fascinated me for years but never enough to trigger investigation until now, my first big chance to “review” a pair of apeequipped bikes.
First things first: To ape or not to ape depends on how fast you ride. On either the High-Ball or Street Bob, the wind’s not really a problem up to around 65 mph or so unless you’re wearing a cape or a feather boa. Rolling faster than that, you (I, anyway) increasingly feel like the entertainment-deprived locals I saw on Extreme Airports the other night who like to hang on the fence at a certain small island airport to experience the jetblast of departing aircraft. I enjoy doing this painful thing because it feels so good when I stop...
It’s also a simple matter of physical stature. If you’re a short-armed 5-foot-8 runt like me, the High-Ball’s 15-inch (plus risers) handlebar literally hangs you out like a sail. But if you’re 6 feet tall or bigger, with longer arms, the ergonomic picture changes considerably. Apehanger adherents go on and on about how the back pain they once experienced vanished with the addition of their high bars. And if you’re sitting there with your feet on the way-forward “highway pegs” those guys also seem to favor, it almost makes sense that raising the grips would uncoil the spine a bit, no?
Meanwhile, back to Freud: Let’s face it, the ladies like tall. What better way to exhibit your wares than upon a mobile display rack that showcases your length to best advantage? The High-Ball is the motorcycling equivalent of the flashing bluelight special: look up and look at me.
CW COMPARISON
Well, riding around public roads in a position more suited to reclining in a hospital bed with your arms in traction will never be optimal for control, but it’s all about giving the American People what they want; and if what you want is a Harley-Davidson with apes, then you’re in luck, because the 2011 Street Bob is the lowest-priced Big Twin you can get (along with the Super Glide Custom), at $12,999 for Vivid Black (plus $375 for our Silver version or Cool Blue Pearl or Black Denim). The High-Ball will run you $13,499 and is what it is: rattle-can matte-black with white inserts.
In fact, the Street Bob’s bar is what H-D refers to as a “mini-apehanger,” with a rise of not much more than about 12 inches (the highest “rise” in H-D’s online handlebar catalog is only 12.5 in.) and grips that turn back down and toward the rider at a comfortable angle. The distance from seat to bar is also shorter on the H-D than on the High-Ball, and with its mid-mount foot controls, even a short person with 30inch legs like yours truly feels not too stretched out at all on the Street Bob.
Overall, the Bob serves up a more compact ergo triangle than the Victory, making it the more comfortable bike for us shorter apes. The beauty of the engineering, uhh, stability that is the hallmark of Harley-Davidson is that The Motor Company knows after all these years what works and what doesn’t, and if you wanted to, you could putter around on the Street Bob all day from bar to HOG meeting to wherever without too much stress. I wouldn’t want to travel on it, personally, because I can’t ride 65, but then, H-D and Victory both build great long-distance motorcycles you can cruise at 80 on all day.
The upstart Victory High-Ball’s more ambitious apehanger is, like, 15 inches tall, and while both bikes place your thumbs about 27 inches from each other, the stretch from the Victory seat to its grips is 3.5 inches farther than on the H-D, making this one the bike for long-armed basketballers or for normal-sized people who like to look like they’re running away from the circus. Or advertising for it. Average-sized riders look like the opposite of the iconic “monkey with a football” when they’re on the High-Ball, more like an early Sputnik experiment before either the rockets or the dog were ready.
Which is a shame, really, because everything works pretty dang well on the High-Ball, especially its 102 dyno-measured foot-pounds of torque at just over 3000 rpm. When you whack its throttle open from a stop, you best be holding on. The High-Ball peels right out, and when you literally bang in the next gear, it’ll do it again. Both bikes shift like well-oiled cell doors slamming shut, and grabbing the Victory’s non-adjustable clutch lever is easier if you have long ape fingers at the end of your long ape arms.
Performance-wise, the Harley’s 96-inch (1584cc) four-valve V-Twin is no match for the Victory’s 106-inch (1731cc) eightvalve one in spite of the Harley hauling 34 fewer pounds. Both bikes inject and run cleanly from idle to redline.
Harley-wise, the way the Street Bob’s rubber-mounted Twin Cam 96 vibrates at idle and jiggles the big front wheel is a mating display the smooth-running counterbalanced Victory can’t hope to match. Once either bike is rolling, vibrations are no problem. Some lowfrequency vibes filter through the grips of both bikes at certain rpm, and there is a little foot massage through the pegs, but never enough to be a problem.
The Harley is your basic twin-shock Dyna platform, and the High-Ball’s 3 inches of rear-wheel travel are controlled by a single shock hidden from view; and when it comes down to it, both bikes use their 600-pound-plus dry weights to crush whatever opposition the road throws. And though you won’t be dragging your knee on either one, both have enough cornering clearance to be fun to scoot around upon. The Street Bob’s mini ape means it rides just like a normal Dyna, which is to say that whatever its image might project to the world, it’s a pussycat to ride, with light, easy controls and neutral steering once past walking speed.
The Victory’s a tad more firm and aggressive feeling, as befits its extra power. It’s also a little bit awkward in tight turns just because you have to reach so far to the outside grip, but you adjust and feel relatively normal quickly enough. And the saving grace is that when you get tired of being Johnny Depp, you can loosen the risers and lay the big handlebar back like on a Jet Ski, rotate the switchgear into place and cruise just like on a regular Victory, with your hands closer to where they belong for a slightly more evolved hominid riding a motorcycle. There, that’s better—but the angle of the High-Ball’s grips remains wonky no matter the position of the bar itself.
Does it make sense to replace the handlebar on a bike whose main selling point is the handlebar? After careful contemplation, we apes agree it makes more sense (is this about sense?) to replace the High-Ball with the highly refined, tripledistilled, aged-in-oak Street Bob (and a little aftermarket horsepower).
The Harley’s just easier to come to grips with. □
HARLEY-DAVIDSON
STREET BOB
$13,374
VICTORY
HIGH-BALL
$13,499
