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| Buell X1W White Lightning – Harley’s Comet |
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Dave Abrahams February 04 2002 at 03:08PM |
Get IOL on your mobile at m.iol.co.za |
Forget the wisecracks about making a silk purse out of a Hog’s ear; this is the fastest Harley-engined motorcycle IOL has reviewed. It’s big and it’s brash and it pulls through the mid-range like no other American motorcycle; it’s mechanically noisy and hugely vibratious but it oozes character and after a while it grows on you.
The X1W’s motivation comes from a modified Sportster engine. The crankshaft has been lightened to improve response (and reduce engine weight!) while the cylinder head, dubbed the Thunderstorm head by Mr Buell, has been reshaped with larger valves and gas-flowed ports and its compression ratio has gone up to 10:1. A special camshaft increases lift and duration of valve opening. Induction is by means of the Saab-developed fuel-injection system that serves so well on the 88-cubic inch ’Glides, with an interesting tweak: the huge air box uses resonance within the intakes gases to pressurise the inlet port just as the valve is opening, forcing extra mixture into the cylinder. It’s called the Helmholtz principle and it works like a two-stroke expansion box - only in reverse. All of this liberates a remarkable (by Harley standards) 75kw at 6000rpm with an even more impressive 122Nm of sheer stomp at five-and-a-half. Throttle response is instant, if a little jerky at low revs; that tends to get lost, however, in the ferocious vibration.
Above 3000rpm the motor smoothes out considerably, although the vibrations never quite go away - there’s no “sweet spot” and the torque takes over. From three to the orange line at six the Buell pulls like a steam train; for sheer grunt this thing has few equals. Exuberant wheelies are no more than a twist of the throttle away, in any of the first three gears, and up to about 125km/h the White Lightning will stay with most big Japanese fours, which probably accounts for their cult following among the “anti-rice-burner” brigade in the US. The motor continues to pull strongly well beyond the point beyond where most Milwaukee iron runs out of steam – during performance testing I saw 215km/h on the clock, which translates to a true 205, a record for a standard American motorcycle. The rest of the drive train is standard Sportster stuff; something of a tribute to the original 1984 Evolution layout that it can handle this hooligan motor without complaint. The slightly weird upside-down and back-to-front gearshift linkage (a lot of things about this bike are slightly weird) has a longer throw than the original short Sportster lever, with a somewhat vague feel, but it’s a vast improvement over the clumsy rearset fitted to earlier Buells. Final drive, of course, is by toothed belt; it’s clean (important on a bike with a white frame), durable, quiet running and obviates the need for a rear cush drive. I can’t think why more bike manufacturers don’t use them. All of this is mounted in Buell’s Uniplanar frame, a complicated and undoubtedly expensive system of link rods with ball joints at each end and big rubber bushings. The idea is to allow the motor to vibrate to its crank’s content, moving around in the frame while maintaining the correct alignment between the sprockets in the vertical plane – hence the name. Unfortunately I have to go on record as saying that it doesn’t work; the X1W is by far the most vibratious bike I’ve ridden and I’m half-convinced that it would shake less, not more, with the motor rigidly mounted – if the bike were mine I’d probably try it. The mainframe is a Ducati-esque tubular steel trellis but the rear sub-frame is different; instead of being hidden under the body panels it is the body panels, a huge, beautifully finished alloy casting that swoops around the perimeter of the saddle. He swing-arm is also aluminium, fabricated from four chunky castings, with the bell-crank for the underslung rear shock an integral member. The front suspension, a pair of Showa inverted forks, is adjustable for compression and rebound damping, but not for preload, which is a bit of a pity because the springs are a little soft for the bike’s 200kg and the front has a tendency to pump down under hard braking. The rear shock, also from Showa, lives alongside the silencer box under the motor but doesn’t seem to suffer from heat transfer, even after a couple of hours of hard riding. It’s tunable for bump, rebound and preload; the factory median settings, a little harder than the front, are harsh around town but work very well out in the twisties, so that’s where I left them. The back wheel can be made to patter under power coming out of a bumpy corner but it’s always controllable and just lends more emphasis to this bike’s essentially hooligan nature - a Buell will bring out the worst in any rider. Buell brakes are also different: where everybody else is using twin front discs, Erik has gone for a single huge 340mm platter with a six-pot Nissin calliper, ostensibly to reduce unsprung weight. Braided stainless-steel hoses are standard so feel and feedback are superb and the brakes are strong enough to bottom the front suspension with ease, leading to monster stoppies. They are in fact one of the bike’s better features, well up to European standards. Even the rear brake, a single-piston caliper on a little 230m disc, has more feel than I expected and I wound up using it quite a lot to settle this tall and hefty bike for fast corners; it’s not just for hill-starts. All the bodywork is plastic, including the dummy tank (the real fuel tank underneath is also plastic!) and a lot of it is a bit flimsy. The instrument cowl and front mudguard in particular flex all over the place, as do the drive belt cover and the silly little belly pan fairing, which also conceals an extra frame brace from the motor case to the output sprocket cover, Buell’s only precaution to protect the beefed-up motor from harming itself. By contrast, the black air box and engine cowl, as well as the rear number plate mount, are tautly moulded and gratifyingly solid – plastic componentry at it’s best. The seat, hard and angular, is high at 787mm, and the wide, flat bars make you feel as if you are sitting on a giant motocrosser; in some ways, even though it doesn’t have the off-road styling of the genre, this is the ultimate supermotard. But the geometry lends generous ground clearance, the masses are well centred and the ultra-short 1397m wheelbase makes this big motorcycle amazingly flickable; on good surfaces you can throw it around like a GP bike and you might just surprise some race-replica pilots on tight bends. The excess weight and high centre of gravity make the Buell a bit skittish on bumpy roads but that’s part of the fun. In a straight line the bike is stable up to 200km/h; after that the steering becomes vague and the test machine picked up a slow headshake at terminal velocity that persuaded me not to try it twice. The small parts are gratifyingly solid; the switchgear and levers are chunky and positive in operation, plain and straightforward in layout. The two simple white-faced instruments are superb, among the prettiest and most legible I’ve seen but I kept wishing for a less vibration-prone mounting so that I could see them properly. The warning lamps were also badly placed at the bottom of the instrument panel, away form the rider’s eye-line. The headlight was a surprise: it’s a 210mm searchlight not only identical to the one on my 1981 Laverda Jota but it carries the same Bosch part number, which is very good news indeed for Laverdisti. It’s a superbly effective headlight, though, and not at all out of place on the chunky Buell. This is no electric armchair; it’s an intense, vibratious, very quick hooligan bike that gets your attention and encourages you to be very, very naughty, not least because of its in-your-face looks. It has a definite kit-bike feel as if it were made out of something else – which it was. Where else are you going to get a motorcycle with bright blue pipes and a white frame? The frame might be a pain to keep clean but it’s worth it, beautifully welded and finished, as are the white wheels. Whether you like the styling is up to you; the only jarring note is and absence of side covers – I don’t think that it suits the bike to have the unadorned battery as the central focus of attention. The Buell might be uncomfortable, unsophisticated and outrageously styled but it has enormous Grin Factor and I didn’t want to give it back. Thanks to Ad Keukelaar at Harley-Davidson Cape Town for the loan of the test bike. He’ll put you aboard a White Lightning for R115 000. Click here to use IOL Motoring's repayments calculator. SPECIFICATIONS – BUELL X1W WHITE LIGHTNING Motor: Air-cooled 45-degree V-twin four-stroke. Capacity: 1203cc. Bore x stroke: 88.8 x 96.8mm. Valvegear: Two overhead valves per cylinder, pushrod operated. Compression ratio: 10.0:1. Power: 75.3kW @ 6000rpm. Torque: 122Nm @ 5500rpm. Induction: Dynamic digital electronic fuel-injection. Ignition: V-fire electronic. Starting: Electric. Clutch: Multiplate wet clutch. Transmission: Five-speed constant-mesh gearbox with belt final drive. Suspension: Showa inverted forks adjustable for compression and rebound damping at front, Showa extension type damper adjustable for preload, compression and rebound damping at rear. Brakes: 340mm disc with six-pot opposed piston calliper at front, 230mm disc with single-piston floating calliper at rear. Tyres: Front: 120/70 - 17. Rear: 170/60 - 17 Wheelbase: 1397mm. Seat height: 787mm. Dry weight: 200kg. Fuel capacity: 15.8 litres. Price: R115 000 Click here to use IOL Motoring's repayments calculator.
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