2019 Harley-Davidson Tri-Glide Ultra (FLHTCUTG) │ Review and Test Ride

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] what's up guys found a light here coming to you from late lost harley-davidson LA area's oldest largest and finest harley-davidson dealership just celebrated our 60th year here in LA County so today we're doing a video on the 2019 tri Glide so there's some pretty significant changes this year things like suspension changes a bigger engine now you got the GTS infotainment system as well so I'm kind of going over that and talking to you guys some of the main points about the bike and also if you guys are in the market for a harley-davidson hit us up on our website or direct message me on instagram for our no BS pricing and widget bullet on a brand new bike so let's get on the bike and we'll take you out and we'll talk you through some of the brand new features on the Tri Glide alright guys so let's start off with the front of the bike so I told you they upgraded the suspension this year so they did do a big upgrade on the front fork so what they did was this is a show us dual bending valve suspension in the front this is the system that's been in place since the 2017 model year when they introduced that to the the two-wheel touring motorcycles you've also got the the dual bending valve suspension on the the new softails as well so a lot better fork that's sprung for the trike specifically and you've also this year got the ABS brakes you've had the ABS brakes in the past but they've been hydraulically linked now you have the electronically linked ABS brakes on here as well so a little bit better braking so you've also got a bump in the engine this year so in years past in the 17 and 18 model years you had the Milwaukee eight 107 cubic inch so this year they bumped up to 114 cubic inch so you got about 10 percent more power than the previous model year as always on this bike since the 2014 model year you have the twin cooled engine so you've got your coolant you got your radiators down here it circulates coolant through the heads and cools off the exhaust ports and the hottest part of the engine you've also got while we're up here on the front you've got a steering a front steering stabilizer this is really important on a three-wheeled vehicle because especially when you get up to speeds I got on the freeway without the steering stabilizer it's easy for that front-end to dance around but with the steering stabilizer you know it alleviates the front end from condense around on yeah so under the seat I'm gonna pull off the seat in a minute you've got a hand knob adjuster that's similar to the other touring bikes like your street visor and row glides that's you you can dial the preload in the rear end you've got the gas emulsion coil over shocks again similar to the other two wheel touring bikes and so the the knob underneath the seat it's a lot more convenient than the air shocks that were on the trike in the previous model years previous model years you had to take out the side cover and there was an error valve there you had to take out the hand pump and pump in some additional air based on the the load of the bike whether or not you had a passenger on there and your weight of the rider as well so a little bit easier nice to take off the seat and you just turn the the preload on the knob and so it's it's a little bit easier you don't have to have any specialty tools like the hand pump you don't have to worry about the air being released out of the shocks over time so once you dial in the knob on the coilover shock it stays at a static preload you're not to worry about it going out of adjustment so we'll go around to the back so you've got quite a bit of storage in the trike nothing changed here since the 2014 model year with the project Rushmore they redesigned the tour pack shape and size a little bit with the bike you get one of the headsets so these are these are the plug-in headsets these aren't the wireless ones but you get one of the headsets where you plug in on the dash on top of the fuel tank there [Music] and you get the normal security on this as well so you just got the regular key fobs that are proximity sensors you can't start the bike and that's one of these sensors within about three feet range of the bike and you have two barrel keys as always you also get one saddlebag liner so this is just a bag that lines the saddlebag and you put stuff in here and pull it out with you if you're going into your hotel room or whatever and some other storage compartments here here's your owners manual for the trike as well and you've got a nice soft liner in here as well saddlebag liner tour pack liner I should say they went to a single large latch in the 2014 model year with the project Rushmore so nothing new there but it's a nice latch that locks there as well with the barrel key I'll pull out the barrel keys actually that's gonna lock it so we'll move around to the trunk here so you've got nothing new here but this is the trunk on your trike you've got quite a bit of space in here you can definitely fit like two full face helmets in here so yeah if you and a passenger riding and that can be locked as well right here so to lock this you just turn it like a quarter of a klick counterclockwise and now that locks your trunk then you turn it a quarter of a turn clockwise to unlock it and then back to nine o'clock that opens it up so you've got two ports on here you got one for the passenger back here again this is if you use the plug-in and you don't use the wireless now harley-davidson has their their wireless headsets that you can get you got to get the wireless headset interface module to utilize the wireless and this feature on that [Music] so you got the footbrake here they change that a couple years ago a lot more convenient being on the left-hand side you can just press it down it used to be on the right-hand side so you got all LED lighting in the front of course passing lamps and headlamp all LED these lights been on for a while the tracks always had the full LED lighting on it so no no change there okay so I'm gonna go into accessory mode two clicks clockwise puts us in accessory mode here so as many of you know harley-davidson came out their new boom audio GTS system a couple things about this real quick cuz you got Gorilla Glass it's edge to edge before you used to have panels right here where there were buttons so it's a lot cleaner display now everything is all flush Gorilla Glass is a lot nicer as opposed to you know the screen protector they had on there before which used to kind of flex a little bit but this is a lot nicer it feels a lot more premium to the touch this new software on here is a lot more intuitive it's a lot faster so navigating through the system is just a lot quicker the navigation has been greatly improved where you can pinch and zoom much like you'd expect navigating that kind of smartphone whereas before you had to really just rely on the zooming out and zooming in buttons there so that can all kind of be known here with your fingers again more intuitive system you've also got apple carplay on here if you haven't already check out my apple carplay demonstration video that i've put out there basically you have to have the audio headset plugged in to to access the carplay feature so i can't really do that right now your phone feature again as you can see i press that and it prompts me to link a phone to the system because there's no phone links right now just a little bit more intuitive so you also have a couple other things that I'll point out so you've got this eye button and I don't really go into this on my tutorial but on this this menu here it kind of gives you some ride info like you can kind of plan your trip and you can kind of see how how many miles you've traveled in a day and it's kind of like a enhanced trip trip meter on the bike this is your engine info here you got a couple things the EIT MS disabled that's your engine idle temperature management system you can also see your distance since your last service and so you can kind of track when you're when your services are due on here and this is another it's kind of a trip summary where you can see how many how many miles your average speed and everything if you're going like a long road trip or something like that I haven't used this very much but again I can't put this on my personal bike because you can't retrofit this radio into twenty eight twenty eighteen in previous model years you got six gallon fuel tank that's all the same 91 octane instrument panel is very similar to all the other touring bikes so you got your fuel your speedometer your tachometer then you're Holtz though this just toggles on and off on your passing lamps you got a hydraulic clutch on this bike again that's not new but I thought I would mention it hydraulic clutch on here that's a lot of the the major features of the bike guys so now I want to move over to a clip that I took at the annual dealer meeting this last summer in San Diego at the Convention Center where they were announcing all the 2019 Bobby Orr bikes I was fortunate enough to take some of the time of one of the lead technical service guys that works for Harley Davidson Motor Company and he was able to take me through a lot of the enhancements that made on the trike platform this year this bike here is the free wheeler but all the changes pertain to the try glad that I'm highlighting in this video here so feel kind of dumb I didn't catch his name but again I want to thank him first spending time with me he goes over some points here that it's pretty much impossible to find this information anywhere else except for maybe in service manuals if you dig or something like that but in none of the promotional materials or catalogs or sales materials are you gonna find this information so I'm gonna let him take us through it and explain some of this stuff like the dual bending front forks that are venatori models for several years of service the same way the new rear shocks so we've eliminated the paracord while you're talking that's fine okay yeah thanks for asking so the new rear shocks so we've gone away from the air suspension we've gone to emulsion shocks okay to adjust the pre though you were actually removing the seat flipping up this preload adjuster down that's cool so there's table on the manual and you just turn this now to just a preload that's adjusting the preload on both shocks so Torrington it has this set up and your suggestion that one this is actually adjusted on both sides good enough that's good after all right so abs has been added so you have two wheel speed sensors Hall effect sensors one on each axle there's actually a tone ring that's pressed onto each axle assembly the new brake calipers in the rear so these are new the way that the parking brake cable attaches is new the parking brake adjustment actually is automatic in these calipers so as the pads wear and you you activate the parking brake it's actually going to worm drive in the the mechanism in there so the thing the service guys have to know is when you're doing a brake pad change you can't just compress the piston in the caliper you need to wind the piston back in like automotive size okay so that's cool the front brake calipers are new but they're 30 they're based essentially carry over touring Brembo front brake calipers okay so the front brake calipers weren't Brembo before not on Triton okay no Brembo brakes rebel brakes now new rear master cylinder to go with the rear new rear brakes there's a new rear reservoir basically the same location but a little bit of a different look okay all right coming back to the module there's it there's no brake switch in the front this for the rear I mean this is actually the rear brake switch and also the rear brake pressure switch so this switch actually monitors the amount of pressure that's being applied for the great battle - the front is also done but that's done internal - with the module so that is part of the calculation for traction control abs as far as how much pressure is being applied to brakes front and rear the brakes are now electronically linked for trike before they were mechanically linked for 1480 now electronically linked like on the Touring models okay so it's gonna apply the appropriate proportion of front rear brake based on the conditions that seeing as far as brake pressure as far as wheel lockup wheel slip so ABS still works the same traction control so ABS is preventing the wheel from locking up in a breakin event traction control is monitoring it the wheel is slipping during the condition we didn't do it burning good night burn on a sniffing Sol with the traction control you're not gonna be able to do burnout if you really wanted to burn on you cancer traction control okay so there's a way to do that okay there is a small module down in the battery box there a small black box is down in the bottom there okay that's called an IMU inertial measurement unit okay so that is actually measuring the lateral acceleration and force how fast you're going one way and in this in different accesses and it's also measuring like yaw and roll and step is measuring that as well so it can use that as a calculation for traction control so if you're going into a turn too fast it'll sense maybe the wheels are starting to slide out or in a sense that the vehicle is rolling too much and then it can then use the brakes as well as throttle control to get that back into control brake or throttle interesting that's a pretty sophisticated yep and then traction control there's the button right here for traction control so there's the same symbol and white in the speedo meter itself so under normal operation that light is going to off in the speedo if you push and hold this just like in a car that light will come on that means traction if the light comes on Josh knows is off okay the only thing that's not off the traction controls is drag torque slippery so the drag toward trip slip control is unwrapping the cell or rap it dumping the block gently down in the wheelchair so now the real slow down too much so we could use a break and actually also apply some throttle that helps a bad guy reverse has moved over to the right side now on the start button so right under the hazard switch you'll see that's now start in Reverse what the function how it works is exactly the same and the free wheeler is still just figure there's the oil cooling and the Tri guide has that twink cool awesome okay well thank you very much like we did that so I want to jump over to harley-davidson comm real quick just to show you guys the colors the first one you have is vivid black and that's just your typical black like that comes in most every other bike so the second one you got is twisted cherry this is a really nice color it came out with it last year in the 2018 model year I'm a big fan a really popular color several years ago was called the black cherry and they kind of brought this back in a little bit different shade here's the next one and this is a color I'm using in the video midnight blue and Barracuda silver I'm a big fan of this color too it looks really nice and then your fourth colors we could read in Barracuda silver and then here's your custom color it's called kinetic green so you pay a premium for the custom color the custom colors usually involving some type of custom graphic on there as well you've got scorched orange and black down this is also a custom color this is where the the paint finish is different so the black denim again is denim and then the scorched orange orange is like a pearl so you've got a combination of denim and like the gloss paint finishes and then this is the third custom color you've got silver flux and black fuse this is a nice color I'm a big fan of this color but again it is a custom color so you pay a premium for it let's jump into some statistics real quick I don't want to spend too much time here but there's some stats I get asked on the survey student I'm so starting off with the price so the price of the bike is 36,000 and $99 that's for a black one as with all Harley Davidsons if you go to something in a color then you go up in price for the trike you go up a little less than nine hundred dollars here and then if you want a two-tone you go up to thirty seven thousand nine thirty seven thousand four hundred forty nine dollars and then from one of those three custom colors I was showing you at the end the kinetic green the black denim scorched orange or the silver flux and black fuse you're looking at thirty seven thousand eight hundred forty nine dollars one of these trikes here so let's jump down a couple other things you get the security system as standard equipment cruise control it's standard equipment on this bike as well this trike I should say you got the 114 Milwaukee a I already told you guys that and so I get asked a lot about the weight so the weights in running order so as you're gonna be riding it is a thousand two hundred and forty three pounds so yeah I get asked that question a lot just to give you guys a comparison the ultra limited or somewhere that 900 pound range so you're about three hundred pounds more when comparing the trike to like a full bagger and within the two-wheel configuration you can torque on this bike 121 for those of you who watch my videos often really at the rear wheel that equates to about a hundred and ten yeah I'm about a hundred and ten foot pounds of torque and horsepower on these bikes with the 114 is just under 90 horsepower for those of you who are curious about the power there you go okay go into neutral - you're in neutral you got traction control this year that's that's enabled with this button right here turn it off and for reverse we've got the reverse button over here now it used to be on the left hand side hold that down and a red are orange of ours gonna tear right there and now it's ready to go so if I were to hold it down again to go in Reverse so I'm gonna go ahead and do that [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] alright guys so we both rode the bike making I both I wrote first the Nick Road second we're swapping over right now but I wanted to go over some frequently asked questions that almost every single time I talk to someone about a trike these questions get brought up so first off in the state of California you do not need a motorcycle license an m1 endorsement to legally ride and operate a trike on California Highways check your local laws because this law is different from state to state I know a lot of states you do need your let your motorcycle license to operate a trike but in California for this particular vehicle you do not now that being said usually to rent one or things like that's a test ride one we do require that you have your m1 endorsement so there's that question second question is people always say well who is this bike for now this this question there's several answers but in my opinion this bike a lot of times gets pigeon-holed into the thought that this bike is just for this trike I should say it's not really a bike but the strike gets pigeon-holed into the classification that it's for people that can no longer ride a two-wheeler maybe they have some type of a physical ailment that doesn't allow them to ride anymore maybe it's their balance is no good move their strength is no good and so the trike is kind of perceived as this vehicle for them to still remain on a holiday bassoons still enjoy a harley-davidson that i don't agree with yes those people this is a great alternative to a two-wheel motorcycle to stay on a road on the road of state on a harley-davidson you still get the overall feel of riding a Harley and it's the exact same engine now the handling could not be more different and for that reason I'm not using my standard rating system that I've been using for the 2019 model year on this video because I started doing it and some of the ratings and everything that was giving the bike just isn't fair because three wheels is completely different than when compared to two wheels verbally I'll just explain some of the stuff but I'm not really gonna associate or classify it with a numeric score but anyways going back to whose bike is for I have a viewer his name is Ken shoutout to Kami's from hong kong and he and several of his friends have a trike club and all of them have two-wheeled vehicles as well they are certainly capable of writing to build vehicles but there was just kind of a novelty and a mystique behind in a history behind trikes it's just a very different vehicle that you don't see very often and so just by having one and operating one there's just a mystique that kind of surrounds having a trike especially a harley-davidson track there's just something really cool about them out on the road just I think this because they're rare and they're a lot different than anything they typically see so I definitely would not pigeonhole this bike into classifying it as a an old man's bike or for people that could no longer ride two-wheeled vehicles for whatever reason so now that that's out of the way let's get into some of the the categories that I'd like to talk about on these bikes so performance first off so the 114 was a nice little upgrade for the trike obviously it's a very heavy motorcycle or a heavy trike I should say the 107 still powered it pretty dang good I didn't feel like the 107 was underpowered on this on this vehicle but 114 is just that much better and out on the highway you know exhilarating was good for performance when I compare it to other Harley's because of the weight you know I'd probably give it a 4 I'm not officially gonna give it a 4 just because you can't really compare the two now my rating system is all about you know comparing to little Harley Davidson to one to another yeah a regular like a Street Glide or something like that a regular touring bike is gonna spank this thing in a straight line like we were riding the street Bob on this day and the street bob is just gonna you know totally pass this thing no problem that being said that this trike it moves it's you know for as heavy as it is it definitely moves now now handling this thing handles like a go-kart and that's for a couple of reasons I'm gonna get into in just one second yeah I just just spin into the front fork it handles and reacts very very sharply it's funny because I was watching this footage back when Nick started moving the steering back and forth which is hard not to do when you first get on these because it's kind of addicting he was just laughing just because yeah it's so reactionary like I said go-kart style handling it's just it's just fun sometimes I rip this thing around like tight turns and everything and do donuts on these things it's just it's a lot of fun I will say if you go like on a mountain pass there's like a lot of switchbacks and everything you can go through a lot of those turns real quickly but it does require more upper-body efforts to keep this thing moving because it's it's none of its leaning this thing does not lean it also way to handle and ride this trike is completely different than the two-wheel vehicle it's not hard and you don't have to be in like excellent physical shape or anything to ride it but it does require a little bit more effort another really frequently asked question I get is what type of rear suspension is on this bike or you know the the excellent a lot of people will ask me if it has independent rear suspension this bike does not have independent rear suspension it has a straight solid axle with a differential on it there's a couple different pros and cons between the two I know a lot of people as I've done these videos over the years a lot of people have said wow that's that's kind of irresponsible of Harley Davidsons not to put a independent rear suspension back there and let me kind of jump into the pros and cons of each so the independent rear suspension it's in a straight line when you start hitting bumpy stuff it's a lot smoother ride and that's because your suspension is only handling its handling a lot less weight when it's trying to absorb that shock when you go over bumps and stuff and on the straight axle like what the Harley Davidson is on when the right wheel hits a bump you're almost gonna fill it in both sides and so it's not as smooth going down the road if you start hitting bumps and things you're gonna feel it a lot more so ride quality on a trike it's not bad and they definitely have improved it with a new front end the dual bending front suspension and the coil over emulsion shocks in the rear that did help out I was really trying to pay close attention to that when I was riding the bike and it did help out quite a bit but still just because of the nature of the engineering of the straight axle you know going down curbs and things like that and the entire bike kind of shakes but here's the advantages so it's it's a lot more simplistic engineering so there's less moving parts it's a lot easier to maintain a straight axle I'm saying it's a lot easier to maintain than independent rear suspension there's a lot less likelihood that then something will go wrong so straight axle is a lot more bulletproof than independent rear suspension and the hey a heck of a lot better socially in the twist days this type of solid axle is gonna be a lot more fun and a lot more spirited than the independent rear suspension yeah I guess the the cons are not quite as good and shock absorption when you're going on bumps and everything because you have a higher sprung weight but a lot better handling characteristics and a lot less you know maintenance and more of a simplistic engineering where less moving parts and everything on the bike as well so in a nutshell guys yeah some really nice changes this year that have that have taken harley-davidson several years to kind of fine-tune the trike first came out in 2009 and progressively over the years they've they fine-tuned it and this year you know I think it's kind of a culmination of a lot of things over here over the years of on-road testing and customer feedback that they've applied to the bike that give it a little bit more safety as well so yeah I'm a big fan I've taken him out on weekends before and done like trips and yeah it's it's a fun bike you know at this point in my life I prefer the two wheeler still but if you want to have that holiday vitsin open road feel the harley-davidson tri light is a really good option if you guys have any questions please leave them in the comments section below I'm pretty dang good about getting back to everybody that has legitimate questions and my subscribers so yeah let me know what you guys thoughts are and if you're an owner of the tri glide or the free wheeler let me know your thoughts are as well and one thing I definitely do recommend is if you're thinking about getting one of these these trikes test ride at first because that will tell you a lot about how it handles and just that's something that people are kind of surprised you know first and foremost they don't realize how different it is from motorcycle although if you think about it for a second you know they're two completely different things but anyways guys things not for watching take care away

Channel: Matt Laidlaw

Views: 1,117,606

Keywords: Harley-Davidson, Motorcycles, Laidlaw's, Tri-Glide, Trike, Harley trike, Matt Laidlaw, Laidlaw's Harley-Davidson, Test Ride, Review, 2019 Harley trike

Id: q0JslwpKmnw

Length: 34min 52sec (2092 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 25 2019