Yep there's that eye searing abortion on two wheels....

 

I wish.......

 

I really loved my old Evo powered Heritage too!
If you really love that old school feel, pick up an old Panhead or Shovelhead hands down more soul than the Evo's. Nothing beats kick starting em, solid mounted motors to frames.
Myself, those were the bikes, those were the days but, now a days I really must have ABS brakes, and really like having electronic cruise control with 4 speaker stereo.

 

I keep hitting the rev limiter in 2nd coming up a ramp at that speed.

I forget I'm not riding a sports bike and it's not going to come on cam at 6,000.

 

I'd stick with the Evo. We rode Goldwings for years - owned every model Honda ever built and put almost 400,000 cumulative miles on them over 22 years. Our GL1000 we never had long enough for it to break. Both our GL1100 and GL1200 left us stranded in Colorado and New Mexico respectively with burned out alternator stator. No parts to fix it, Honda dealer says 7-10 days to get one, have to pull the engine from the bike and tear down the rear end of the engine to replace it. The GL1100 we managed to find a junkyard stator but by the time we got back on the road our vacation was done, it had taken a week and $950 in expense (which was a lot of money back in 1982).

Our GL1200 same deal. Except we said screw that and traded it on a brand new GL1500. The Honda dealer gave us a royal screwing on the trade-in, but when you're 2,000 miles from home what do you do?

The GL1500 was a plastic pig. 35 mpg on a good day if you rode it easy. Got 18 mpg with it once pushing a headwind in South Dakota on I90. South Dakota is where it met its demise. Rear end went out of it and we were once again stranded with stripped out pinion cup and driveshaft splines. Again, no parts to be found for it and over $3,000 to fix with new parts. $1,700 and a week later we got it back on the road with junkyard parts. Once again, our vacation ruined and cut short by legendary Honda reliability. They're so damn reliable the dealers don't even bother to stock parts for 'em (we were actually told that). And what's more, Honda discontinues availability of parts 5 years after a model is out of production unless the part is used on a newer model.

We traded the GL1500 on a GL1800 and the frame broke on it two months after we bought it. Honda refused to cover it until two years later when we no longer owned the bike and they finally had a recall on them for broken frames. We traded the 1800 on a pair of 2002 ST1100's and put 160,000 miles on those up to 2012. They were not trouble free either, and quite expensive to replace the timing belt or adjust valves. But they never left us stranded, although mine had a distinct main bearing knock when I sold it in 2012 with 161,000 miles on it. My wife still has hers with only 122,000 miles on it.

When we decided to go back to two-up touring, the H-D Electra Glide was our choice. It's not quite as polished and smooth riding around town as the Goldwings are. But out on the open road is where the big Harley really shines. It's just as smooth as the Goldwings are, handles better, is more comfortable, and gets better gas mileage (and that's comparing our 29 year old Evo to Honda's latest and greatest GL1800). I selected the older Evo because its simplicity is its beauty. No fuel pump or injection computer to go to hell because it don't have one. Virtually anything can break on it, short of the engine bottom end, and it can be fixed in a parking lot without a lot of fuss and no special tools required. I can top an Evo in the parking lot at a NAPA store, complete with new valves and the whole nine yards, for half the money it cost us to get our GL1500 back on the road with a busted rear end back in 2001.

While lot of people have put on over a million miles on different bikes, there is only one documented case where somebody put 1 million miles on one motorcycle over 18 years. That bike was a 1991 Evo Harley FXRT, ridden by our former state senator, Dave Zien. The bike is today on display in the Sturgis Motorcycle Museum and Hall of Fame. What made it possible was the fact that H-D engineered every aspect of the Evo Harley's to be easily and infinitely rebuildable with nothing more than a socket set, allen wrenches, a couple screwdrivers and hand wrenches. And that is why, today, I'll put my faith in a 29 year old Electra Glide with an Evo in the engine room before I'll trust a plastic throw-away Goldwing on long trips.

We're leaving from Wisconsin for Alaska in the morning on our 29 year old Evo with 75,000 miles on it. And not a single worry in my mind about having it break down on the road because I know I'm riding something that can be fixed and will get us there and back home without breaking the bank.

 

The world seems to have forgotten that simplicity is the mother of reliability.

The new stuff (any manufacturer) is just too complicated. That makes for inherent fragility, if not today, then certainly in the future.

There's nothing difficult about keeping a 25 or 30 year old HD on the road today. 30 years from now, there's no reason my 1990 won't still be running. Any one want to place a bet that today's new bikes will still be running in 2045?

 

Especially since the invention of that marvelous, magical, mysterious engine elixir....................

 

Gasoline???????????

 

seafreakinfoam!!!

 

I've never seen seafreakingfoam in the auto stores..
Where do you get it?