I always wanted to know why the rubber mounted engine in touring models are not replaced with the rigid mounted balanced engines that are in the soft tails? Why the two different types at all! It would seen to me that the touting models would have the balanced, non-shaking engine in the first place. Any thoughts on this?

Mark

 

Softails are a different line sold to wusses. Real men buy cruisers and it would hurt the company's bottom line if they had a TCb motor. The Softail has a rear swing arm independent of the motor were Cruisers and Dynas rear swing arm is attached to the motor.

 

I'm not going there..

 

From what I understand, although the touring models shake while at idle, they are smoother while rolling down the road. Where as the softails don't shake while you are at idle, you actually feel more vibration while rolling down the road. I personally haven't spent enough time on a softail to be able to tell the difference.

 

I have owned both and that is absolutely true.

 

Plus I like the shake anyway.

 

My 13 Softail is smooth at the light, while cruising, and smooth with the ladies.

 

The shake is nice "if" there is bewbidge over the rear wheel.

 

I have both and the touring bike is smoother cruising. It also has more power because counter balancers rob power.

I have heard that the Softails are solid mounted because that's the only way to fit the engine in the frame, otherwise they would have not counter balanced and rubber mounted them instead. The EVO softails were a source of vibration complaints and I believe that is why the TCB's were manufactured.

 

The touring frame goes back to 1979, when the only big twin HD engine was the Shovelhead. The rubber-mounted frame was quite an innovation (at least for HD) at the time. It's roughly the same design that they're using today, with revisions, of course.

That frame lasted from the Shovelhead through the EVO years, and into the TC years (88, 96, now 103). It pretty much "worked" so they didn't change it so much as refine it.

When they introduced the TC88b (counterbalanced) motor in 2000, I thought they might incorporate that design into the rubber-mounted frame as well (to produce a motor with as little vibration as possible throughout the rpm range), but didn't work out that way. Guess the factory and designers figured they had a design that had sold bikes for decades, so why change it?