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JUNE 2013 HOT BIKE MAGAZINE PAGE 36-40

THE SAGA OF THE FXR



A BUEL'S ERRAND



Most conversations about the FXR tend to treat the Harley's Holy Grail, and when it was launched, that was true. Like the old King Arthur legend though, the pat to this sacred object was fraught with peril. As Bob LeRoy once said:



"Instead of heavy castings, the FXR frame had a lot of welded-steel parts. This was before the era of robotic welding, so it all had to be assembled by hand. It was expensive and difficult to manufacture."



Erik Buell , whose input was instrumental in the FXR's development, let HOT BIKE pick his brain about the development process.



Here was the following Q/A:



WHAT WAS THE OVERAL GOAL IN DESIGNING THE FXR GOING IN?

EB: The FXR was planned to be the FX derivative of the FLT, just as the FX was the FL. However the FLT was so odd because of it's frame geometry that a new frame was designed with a similar mount system to the FLT.



HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED WITH THE FXR?

EB: I was initially involved in testing the chassis and making it work.

When I got there it had very bad handling.

At that time, H-D Engineering and product planning were trying to improve H-D quality, to modernize the product line because it fell so short of the competition in every way and sales were dropping. So they were listening to the engineering group.



WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY ABOUT THE DESIGN?

EB: Me?

I just worked there and did my best to make what they wanted to work as well as I could.

Y'all ought to know by now that big cruisers are not what I like.

I think we made it a lot better than any H-D before.

How would I do a performance cruiser?

Well the would likely will never know!

Well maybe Ed Burke from Yamaha and a few others do, but that's a different story.



WHAT WAS THE GREATEST DIFFICULTY DESIGNING IT?

EB: AGAIN, I DID NOT DESIGN IT;

I was involved in the re-design. Initially it handled much wrse than even the FX.

It wobbled almost continuously around the old Bendix proving grounds.

You would have to have been there to realize how bad. Within the constraints we had on size, style, appearance, it was really hard to make it work.

There was a lot of cool things done to make it as good as it became, but they were not evident to the eye.

To figure out how to fix it, first we had to what was wrong.

We had some theories, but the biggest thing I did was to design a bunch of data collection equipment that allowed us to understand which of the simultaneous equations that were in play were the dominant ones and to quickly evaluate the value of fixes.



WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT THE FXR?

EB: The handling.

We really did get it quite good for such a big bike.

In my opinion, it also had clean styling lines that I liked on a cruiser.

If it had weighted 150 pounds less and been 10 inches shorter, I woulda liked it more.



WHAT WAS YOUR PART IN ITS GENESIS?

EB: More than anything I became the voice and push of the other guys working on it who wanted to make it work.

I brought the intensity and skills of a sport bike / AMA expert rider and a passion to make things right.

I pushed really hard to fix it, both vocally and then by following up proving the fixes worked by building test equipment

and procedures, measuring competitors to set goals, and then doing 80 percent of the performance development bestriding.

I believed it was important to make the bike into a really good one, rather than what we initially had, which was a motorcycle with reduced engine vibration that wallowed all over the road.

Your would have to have ridden one of the prototypes to know how bad it was.

I wish we had a video.



WHO ELSE HAD THE GREATEST INFLUENCE OVER THE FXR'S DESIGN, INSIDE OR OUTSIDE OF THE COMPANY?

EB: The look came first, and I know it came out of styling... probably Louie and another young (at that time!) guy there.

But the function, which is the real core of the FXR, came from riders.

There was a young group of engineers and test guys who actually rode a lot, so we made it a rider's bike.

I remember being approached way back when by some Hells Angels, who thanked me for being part of building the FXR that finally had made a Harley a rider's bike again.

It was definitely a different type of duty cycle than racing, but those guys rode hard and knew that the FXR was built for speed.



WHAT COULD HAVE HARLEY HAVE DONE BETTER ON THE PROJECT?

EB: I think we did well with it.

It got by far the best reviews in the magazines that H-D had done for awhile.

At that time the magazines were technically driven, and not lifestyle.

So the improvements in technology really got those journalists' attention.

The original shovelhead engine was awful, but the EVO Motor came soon.

The FXR got H-D through the dark times until the market changed.

Could we have done more?

H-D was very small and the engineering group more so.

We did everything we possibly could.



