im kinda new to harleys but it looks like every few years harley upgrades their standard motors to whatever the screamin eagle motor was. so if thats true how far out will the upgrade be, guessing of course?

 

How large do you want it?
Engineering problems aside, you could probably make a Harley engine 3 litres but the inertia of those pistons and the type of cooling needs would make it impractical.
You can get 124 cu in displacement now, aftermarket, or larger, but my sense is that the motor company might look at the requirement for beefed up lower ends and stronger components to handle the issues like inertia, and decide to be true to the heritage and not go much bigger. After all, most of us don't ride our irons like a sport bike, so why bother?

 

The biggest I know of is around 170" - how big did you have in mind?! You can upgrade your current bike to 124" quite readily, which may be big enough for now......

As it happens the habit of adopting the SE motor size is quite recent, not something that has been going on for very long.

 

I loosely speculate that a size change, likely an increase, will come at the same time as a complete conversion to water cooling. And I'd say it will come likely in 2-3 years.

 

The 110 has been the current CVO motor for about 9 years. That's a long time CVO wise. Before that it was the 103 for only like 4 years and the 95 for something like 3 years.
HD just recently submitted the 120ST for Carb approval.
So it probably won't be too long that the 120ST becomes the new CVO motor and all standard production bikes will be bumped to the 110 probably...

 

I think Direct Injection must also be on the roadmap for Harley as well. Anything you read about gas engine developments includes direct injection technology. The added power as well as EPA required clean burn are driving it.

 

..... particularly now that Indian is selling 111's as a stock motor.

 

My thinking as well.

Polaris has pretty much confirmed that aircooled V-twins are here to stay for a while. Indians are selling as fast as they can be delivered.

Beary

 

Maybe the new Roadglide Ultra ( if it ever gets here) will have the 110 as standard engine.

 

Not true. The early cvo/SE motors were 95ci (88ci with big bore kit) Instead HD went with a stroked 88ci becoming 96ci for their standard offering.