2007 Harley Davidson Street Glide - Living With It

'07 Harley-Davidson Street GlideRoad Test:
Flipping through the last year of Hot Bike Baggers, you may have noticed a Denim Blue Street Glide in the background of several photos or even a shot or two of the bike loaded down like a movie studio's camera truck. Well now that we have hit the 20,000-mile mark, we can let the cat out of the bag. We picked up the Street Glide from Harley-Davidson with the promise to treat it like it was a rental for the first 20k. That means that we weren't gunna do anything but routine maintenance and keep it clean while we put thousands of miles on it - not adding accessories is actually harder than it looks. Of course when the 20,000 miles was up we were going to have to do a report card on the Street Glide after which we could start bolting on all the performance goodies and accessories from the Harley-Davidson Parts and Accessories catalog that our little hearts desire.

But first the report card. To be fair, when we went down to the Harley-Davidson fleet center to pick the bike up, Alan took the time to fit it with a couple of items before it went out the door. First, he installed a Detachable Two-Up Luggage Rack because he knew we were going to be carrying camera bags that wouldn't fit in the saddlebags and he didn't want us to scratch up the rear fender or bag lids. The second thing he installed was a handlebar-mounted Road Tech XM Satellite receiver for those long trips. We firmly believe that no proper touring motorcycle should be without some form of satellite radio because it keeps the rider from trying to change CDs while he is riding and being distracted from the road. Both items are really common on touring bikes and are official Harley-Davidson accessories available from any dealership for purchase when you buy a new bike, so we didn't pitch a fit. But we did add $249.95 for the Road Tech XM Satellite Radio (PN 76390-05A) and another $205.95 for the Detachable Two-Up Luggage Rack (PN 53743-97) to our cost of ownership - no they weren't a necessity but they made our 20,000 miles fly by. Another thing on our list was the routine maintenance that we did on the bike including five oil changes at $100 each and a rear tire that set us back $300. If you want to include the cost to fix our one and only problem with the bike - we had the five machine screws fall out of one of the hinges on a saddlebag lid we spent $2.92 on screws and a screwdriver at a hardware store to fix the problem while we were on a road trip. Figuring less fuel and insurance because those are two costs we all incur that change greatly with age, driving record, and location (we can't really give an accurate prediction) and our cost of ownership for the past year has been $1,258.82.

When it comes to fuel mileage, we have been keeping pretty close tabs on how many miles we went on a tank and how many gallons of fuel we put back in to fill it back up. An average tankful of fuel has given us a little better than 45 miles per gallon. That is a little more freeway riding than city riding. The best mileage we got was on a trip down the coast with a bunch of guys on older four-speed bikes, and the fastest we could go was 65 mph - where we got 51 mpg. The worst mileage we got was on the way to Laughlin, Nevada, for the River Run where we were bucking a headwind the whole way and trying to keep up with a bunch of guys from one of the local shops exceeding the speed limit, and we only got about 40 mpg.