Harley Davidson CVO Street Glide VS. Street Glide Special| Worth the upgrade?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] what's going on guys welcome back to the channel as i promised you in the review i did of the cvo street glide i want to compare it against a street glide special now depending on the color that you choose for your street glide special you're going to be at about a 13 500 difference in these two bikes so the goal of this video today is see if we can find that extra 13 500 to see if the cvo is worth it or if the street glide special is going to be a better fit for you personally now really quickly before we jump into that i want to remind you guys to check out first manufacturing and make premium motorcycle riding apparel that make casual apparel as well if you use my code snipes 15 at checkout that's going to save you guys 15 on your total purchase let's jump into the video okay before we start comparing things we'll do a quick walk around of the two i mean already you're seeing a huge difference because the paint on the cvo just pops so much more than the special also i wanted to use a blacked out street glide special but this is the only special we have right now like i said the beginning of the video bikes are hard to come by so we're using what we have hey at least we have one right so i'll kind of show you the bikes from all sides the best i can to kind of compare them and the reason that i say i want to use a blacked out one part of that is the forks which obviously we'll point out in just a minute on the chromed out street glide specials you still get those machined lower legs whereas on the blacked out street glide special you get the black fork legs like the ones that are on the cvo which makes a huge difference cosmetically to me when you're just looking at the bike from a distance [Music] so as i'm sure you've noticed good many differences in these two bikes so it's going to take us a minute to go through these but that's what you're here for right okay so let's start with one thing these bikes same frame um pretty much everything's gonna be the same obviously the engine is different on the street glide special you're going to have the 114 cubic inch milwaukee 8 whereas on the cvo you're going to have the 117 cubic inch milwaukee 8 but other than that everything's going to be the same it's a lot of fit and finish difference honestly it's kind of what we're looking at on this to see if we can find that 13 000 price difference so we'll start with the wheels two very different wheels but honestly this one is a toss-up i think it's going to come down to personal preference i like these wheels on the cvo like i said my review i did a full review on this cvo as a standalone video i'm a big big fan of these wheels guys not just for harley or for this bike but in general i think they did a great job on those wheels however i don't dislike these whatsoever either i think they look really good the other ones seem a little bit stronger to me and what i mean by that is the spokes kind of come down to a pretty narrow point here and then make you know fewer contacts on the outside of the wheel and i'm no engineer in case you haven't guessed so i don't know you know structural integrity wise what that would actually mean or if that would translate or if there is a difference because these are thin as well as you can see but it's just seems like it makes more contact and it's a little bit thicker here so don't listen to me as far as how strong or durable the wheels are but styling wise i kind of like the ones that are on the cvo as well as these brake rotors so i like this solid centerpiece here i think that looks really good versus your street glide special where it's cut out i mean that's cool too weight savings what have you but i tend to like the one that's on the cvo like i mentioned a second ago these lower fork legs on the specials i really wish harley would offer these in chrome if you get the chromed out version of the special it would make such a huge difference on this bike and it's a pretty big pain for the customer to have to do that so i'd like to see harley do it from the factory because if you get the black special you do get the black lower legs like on the cvo so i'm not sure why they've done that i also want to point out the lights on the front of this so on my video review of the cvo street glide i was not familiar with this headlight so it is a daymaker style headlight but these additional little led bulbs which are hard to pick up on camera with all the reflection i asked people to help me out with that i mean even this little ring around the edge wasn't familiar with when they started doing that and i wasn't sure if that's what the new like day maker was or if this was a special light but as you can see from the street glide special that's the day maker that i'm familiar with so that must be a cvo only style day maker i'm sure you could buy it but i mean this one i know when this one came out it was like 500 bucks and i think it's about the same so i would hate to see what that other one cost and as you've probably noticed halogen turn signals which i always slam hardly for in these videos but on the cvo not the case so fairings on these bikes going to be exactly the same obviously just painted different you do get the same vent different windshield fairing and all that is the same though so you get this nice contoured windshield over here on the cvo because if you got your standard windshield here on the street glide this fairing blocks so much wind oh my street glide i never really cared i always ran that stock fairing because i lot or the stock windshield rather i like that it's smoked i like that it's low profile when it was super cold so for me like once it starts getting below like 50 45 maybe i would switch to a taller windshield that had a little more kick and that kept more of the wind off of you one thing to keep in mind when you're swapping out your windshields is you need either tall or short based on your height because what you don't want is the the top of this windshield right in your line of sight you either want to look over a windshield or through it you don't want to have to kind of compete with it so keep that in mind i know most dealerships i know tim's does it for sure have demo windshields you come in they'll put it on your bike you can ride with it and see if it's going to suit your needs [Music] before you buy it and that's a really nice feature one last thing while we're on the fairings you do get this nice metal trim piece here on the cvo and i like that they did that because it's always felt like on the street glide models both standard and special you get these black screws that look like they came from the local hardware store but just this little indention here makes it look like something's missing like you took some kind of trim off and never put it back on and they do sell you know chrome and black and i'm sure after market companies make all kind of different designs and stuff on there so you can change it and put whatever you want but i wish harlow would have done one from the factory because this is a really nice touch not to mention on this particular bike the black and the white with the contrast it just kind of ties everything in so good job on that one harley now on your street glide special you do get the painted inner fairing however it's never painted to match unless you just happen to get a black bike and then it's going to be gloss black and it will match all the specials have painted fairings and they are all painted gloss black which looks nice but one thing i found is it's not a huge deal so don't make this into a thing you know like oh don't get a special because of this but i notice when i ride the standards it's got the matte finish on the inner fairing which doesn't reflect the sun into your face as much now the only time you're really noticing that is when the sun is literally right behind you hitting your dash so it's not a thing it's not all the specials because the road glides have it too before we jump into the comments street glide versus road glide which i've also done a video on and the comments got fun when i compared those two it's got the same thing not a huge deal just something i've noticed point being guys i think this interfering looks really nice i think the gauges look great you've kind of got these like chrome trim rings i like the font that they've used for all the numbers speaker grills look good everything back here looks really good however when you move over here let's climb on this bike so we can get a better shot and this video is probably not doing it justice these gauges are like something out of a sports car or like a really high-end watch they are just absolutely next level you see you have this very contrast looking feels like ah hard to say if that's really thin metal or if it's plastic either way it looks really good speaker grills look better another big difference here on the cvo though is going to be the rockford fosgate collab speakers that they've done with harley for these bikes these things sound amazing i never had a problem with harley's factory speakers which they've upgraded you know throughout the years i never had an issue on a street glide wearing a helmet possibly doing triple digit numbers on the highway i could always hear my music without having it all the way cranked up these are on a complete another level though you definitely don't need to turn these all the way up and this being a cvo you are going to have the speakers and the bag lids as well so audio definitely not a problem on a cvo but the point of this quick little comparison was just to show you guys the back of these fairings the mirrors i pointed out in my cvo video but i want to show you in case you haven't seen those so the way these mount to me looks really good i'm a big fan of how these operate so a little stiff just because this bike is new and also so that way when you move it where you want it it's not moving around but these are really clean this is a metal um bracket here your mirrors are metal it's got a really nice shape and look to it compared to this street glide special these don't look bad until you look at the cvos and these still move fine they're going to stay in place they're not going to move around but man talk about a big difference in fit and finish probably about the same size mirror real estate wise i think this special is going to give you just a little bit more but i kind of like the low profile look of that cvo on street glides i tend to prefer a 12 inch handlebar if you do that you're going to put your hands right here in front of the mirrors so you can't see anything the fix for that is you take these off and if they're the ones from the special you throw them in the garbage um no i'm just kidding but they make a plug that goes in here that fills in that hole and then what i've done is taken stock mirrors off of say like a soft tail we'll use this low rider for example you take these mirrors or this style mirror you take whatever kind you want but these are readily available because people always change them out take this side the right side put it on the left but have it hanging down so then the left will go to the right and it's going to mount in that same hole you can't see with the keys here it's going to mount in that same hole there but then it will hang down and here some guys say they can't see well like that i could see better the point of that is when you look at this bike from the front if you go with 12 inch bars and then you mount your mirrors they do have the hole you can see you can mount them you know just straight how it comes if you mount them up it sticks over the front of the fairing and it just looks like ears or something on some kind of animal so if you drop them below it keeps the front of that bike looking really clean now as far as the tanks on these bikes uh with the new console that harley's done on these bikes for 21 you see how low profile that is compared to i don't have one on the floor to show you how they used to look but this looks so much better and then on your bigger console you had your gas cap built into the center here which didn't look bad and it kept your tank clean however now they've moved it off to the right and i've always said if you get this you know if it's your deal and you want you know clean simple lines go with the flush mount gas cap and you will still see it you get a chrome one you're gonna see it from above but from the side profile it'll really clean up that tank that's essentially what harley has done on your cvo so again as it should be the dash on this low profile really clean looking obviously a little nicer but they've done that flush mount gas cap so from the side you can barely see it stick off that tank and that one being black really blends in well to keep this bike really clean [Music] versus just the normal gas cap that sticks off both six gallon tanks like i said guys almost the same bike but a ton of differences so all your big stuff like that is gonna be the exact same so on your handlebars the grips that they put on these bikes in my opinion were designed to be taken off these weren't designed to be your full-time grip but grips are very subjective man people like different stuff different styles different feels different textures so i think harley was right to just go with a real cheap grip not drive the price up on these bikes that way you can choose whichever ones you want you'll see your controls i mean buttons fit and finish is good that's one thing i will say is anytime i get on a non-harley bike i'm not strictly die-hard harley guy by any stretch of the imagination but i will say harley's controls the fit and finishing stuff the housings of the controls are so much better than pretty much anything i've been on or anything that comes to mind anyway we do need to give them some credit for that because those are really really nice so you jump over here to your cvo you'll see we have the same controls with the exception of you do have an intercom so that's this extra button here that you'll see but they've gone ahead and put some really nice grips on here now even when it's hot i ride in gloves i ride like a light little motocross style glove just feels better to me so this would be an issue for me however if you don't ride in gloves one thing i want to point out to you guys is metal metal metal which is nice feels nice looks nice but if you park this bike in the sun on a hot summer day that's going to burn your hands so keep that in mind another thing being a cvo 40 000 bike you do get heated grips none of my personal bikes have ever had heated grips i don't knock them if you've got them i mean there's been times where i'm sure it would have come in handy for me i just go with a little bit thicker glove i was curious when i heard about the whole clutch debacle harley going back to the cable clutch from the hydraulic clutch if cvo models would keep the hydraulic i was hoping they were i prefer the feel of a hydraulic although i don't have 40 grand to buy cvo so i guess it doesn't really matter you did get the cable on the cvo as well as the special and every other touring bike that's gone back to the cable clutch so moving on back to the seat this is one of the places where you're going to notice the biggest difference in the fit and finish on these two bikes i put maybe 15 000 miles on one of these stock seats and had no trouble with it except for something that i think is more personal to me is that my butt is a little more sensitive to heat than some people's apparently so all i did was take my seat off real easy to do is just that one little screw right there and then you got to pop this little thing off which i had taken off of mine anyway and then i lined the bottom of my seat with that heat reflective tape so it would kind of keep some of that engine heat from transferring up into my seat no one else i know has ever complained about that and when i talk about that they say it's never bothered them so i think i'm just a little more sensitive to that but you look at the seat over here on the cvo and this thing is shaped to fit i like that it's a little flatter here it lets your legs get a little closer to the bike which gives you more leverage obviously looks wise try to get them both in the same frame this thing looks so much better you get the nice metal harley-davidson thing it's pretty tucked in there but again with the heat and the sun just be careful of that that may suck so this seat looks like it's perforated i don't know if that would be good or not it seems like it would be good for airflow but then bad if it was to get wet it would hold water whereas right now you know if your seat gets wet you can wipe it off you're good so i guess it's probably good that those holes don't actually go through then your passenger pillion you can see is separate from the seat two separate pieces you just unscrew your screw here there's another screw for that front seat whereas your street glide special is a one piece design here and that's not a bad looking seat honestly like i said i mean i think the last street glide i had i kept the stock seat on there the whole time now having ridden you know on custom seats so much since then i would definitely spend the money i know seats can get spendy you can spend up to about a grand on a really good seat you don't have to but i've seen them go for up to a grand it makes a big difference think about it you know you're sitting down the whole time you're riding the bike go ahead spend the money get a good seat especially if you've got a passenger because then you're not just doing it for you so like we talked about you do get the speakers and your bag lids on the cvo obviously you don't on the special these things sound good they look good they are waterproof i've heard a lot of people ask that which seems silly to me because if they weren't how do you wash it what do you do if you get caught in the rain i know it seems counterintuitive for these to get wet but think of them like boat speakers they are designed to be waterproof watertight they keep the water out of your bag so you don't have to worry about any of that you don't really lose a whole lot of space you can see it's right at the depth of the bag lids it's not taking up a lot of space plus you're getting all the extra sound obviously with all the speakers you do get an extra amp here both of these bags are stretched so it's going to be the same bag just painted different so same storage capacity the difference being in your cvo you're going to get these bags that are shaped the shape of the saddle bag so if you're traveling it's just an easier way to put stuff in it and it keeps you in check i found so you can't over pack because you know pretty much if you can't zip that bag up that inside bag then your saddle bag's probably not going to be able to close so it's just a nice way to store that that box just contains your headset you do get we locked it up you do get the nicer key fob on here it's got the flip out barrel key lock and unlock for your saddle bags as well as setting the security on the bike this thing feels really premium it looks nice it's not overly big or unnecessarily big i really like the cvo key that they did on that let's see and just for comparison if you're not a hurley person or haven't owned a lot of different bikes you may not have seen so this is your regular security fob that you get on any harley-davidson that has security on it there's no button or anything to mash you walk away from the bike it arms you come back up to the bike it unarmed so basically if this is in your pocket you're good to go you don't need to worry about anything your standard barrel keys that harley's been doing since i was a little kid wearing diapers i think but you can see the difference in the cvo in that one in this other saddle bag obviously they give you another bag to fit the saddle bag which is nice but they also give you this really high-end bike cover so these things are super nice the at like the bike covers that harley sells that you can buy aftermarket just kind of generic those are nice they're durable but this is a really premium looking bike cover looks nice so if you want to cover it up say when it's in your garage just to keep dust off and stuff please if you can help it do not keep your motorcycles outside guys even with the bike cover on rain still bouncing off the ground the weather still gets to them the wind kind of blows the cover around kind of rub some you know raw spots on your paint if at all possible do not keep your bikes outside i know sometimes there's no way around it but do the best you can to keep it out of the weather that's going to keep your bike looking nicer it's going to help your trade value resale value whatever you want to do just good idea to keep it out of the weather but that cover's great like i said if it's in the garage and you just want to keep dust off of it so you don't have to clean it every time you're getting ready to ride although i don't know that i've ever cleaned my bikes before ride i just clean it when i've got some time so we pointed out the difference in grips those match the same collection so you see they've done these really really nice floorboards you get the nice shifter with the rubber there your passenger pegs are really nice and then on this end these are not bad um i also like to change these but i've ridden with them stock plenty and on certain bikes just never changed them at all they don't look terrible your feet go on them guys at the end of the day doesn't really matter this is much more premium yes i will agree it looks a lot better however those are fine i just change these out if i change out floorboards i change some that my feet don't slide on as much say when they're wet and whatnot these passenger pegs again not bad they feel pretty good these particular ones are chrome if you get the blacked out special they're going to be black they don't look bad they match the front but one thing i do want to point out is say like your shift linkage here you see you use nice chrome fasteners you've got this nice black coated shift shaft here whereas when we go over on the special i mean i guess it's semi polished but it's just more of a raw metal not nearly as premium looking same thing with your shifter also you do not get a hill shifter on the touring bikes anymore apparently unless you want to spend forty thousand dollars so that's a really expensive hill shifter i hate them i take them off i would give you one if i had one laying around just because i personally don't use them i just want to get it out of the way but i know a lot of the old-school guys really really like their hill shifter engine guard going to be the same on both bikes which i do like the smaller engine guard you do get that really really nice chin spoiler on the cvo whereas again not bad but you know just a plain black plastic not quite as big and as nice as the one on the cvo so we talked lighting on the front of these bikes we'll show you the lighting on the back you do have your little lights down here as well as your turn signals and brake lights integrated into one i really like when motorcycle manufacturers do that and don't add unnecessary lights there's no reason that you can't put the two together and it keeps the back of this bike fairly clean but on your cvo you get these nice long really clean again same built into one but just looks a lot better keeps the center of that fender clean without this chrome bracket and then on the back on your exhaust like we said same stretch bag so you're going to have the same cutouts i'm not the biggest fan of the stretch bags only because i prefer two into one pipes so i don't have a pipe on the left side which leaves a cut out for no reason which just looks kind of funny not the biggest deal in the world on your cvo you're going to see they do put these nice harley branded tips on there looks really good however this is a factory exhaust so extremely quiet regardless you're probably going to end up changing those out anyway so one of the big things that you're paying for on the cvo is this paint job i'm normally not the biggest fan of cvo paint jobs they've just been a little too loud or over the top for me in the past however this year like the bronze armor that they did that kind of greenish tannish whatever looking color that is just solid color i know a lot of people said hey that's a cvo it should have more pop than that they didn't like it i personally love that and i also really really like this one out of this the cvo street glides this one's definitely going to be my favorite of the three and it's hard to pick up in the video but you've got really fine metal flake and all the red as well as the white whereas the black is just a normal gloss black so i like the contrast and i think they did just the right amount of black white and red on this bike to really make it pop now there are two-tone color options in the street glide special the gauntlet gray and vivid black colorway to myself and a lot of other people they said hey that kind of looks like a cvo from a distance and it does look up the garlic gray vivid black street glide special check out those pictures and tell me that doesn't look like you know a calm down paint job on a cvo but the paint on these cvos guys is next level another thing you know we talked about harley being so good about their fit and finish on their controls paint hardly even on like their standard models any bike harley puts out even their little sportsters and stuff the paint department is where they really really shine and excel over other manufacturers and i think everyone would agree whether you love harley hate harley you have to admit their fit and finish even on their lower end models is much much better now you do pay more for harley's than other brands but again just like we're comparing these two bikes that's what you're paying for is a much more premium refined product now we do need to talk about to me what's the biggest change in the two the 117 over the 114 doesn't sound like a lot and honestly the 114 has got so much freaking power all the harleys nowadays like the street glide standard with the 107. dude those bikes are so good out of the box that 107. i had a 103 that i did a full stage one two so we tuned it had it on the dyno for like six hours full exhaust different air cleaner and stuff that stock 107 still made more power and was noticeably you know better smoother quieter than my 103. so all these new motors have plenty of power at this point we're just adding power to say we've got more you are going to get a little bit more on the 117 obviously it comes with that air cleaner i know that was popular on like a lot of the choppers and stuff with this little elbow that sweeps it out to collect a little bit more wind normally i don't like that style but only cvo bikes man i really do like the air cleaner i think they did a great job however we've got the sock on here right now but you take that rain sock off that looks pretty dang good especially with that chrome and the light looks really good so you get this black textured finish on the engine whereas on your cvos for a long long time you've got this gray i like the gray i think it looks really really good especially against that black but that doesn't look bad so obviously just for you know pure cubic inch wise your cvo a little bit bigger bigger and to me a little bit better however wouldn't justify the cost alone just one more piece of the puzzle that's kind of getting us to that thirteen thousand dollar gap now like i said i would change my exhaust especially on these stock exhausts they're just they're quiet and people have commented on my videos or i've heard it when i've been in the dealerships they said man that's really quiet for harley that's based on emissions guys trust me i'm sure if harley could make them now they wouldn't make them you know blow your eardrums out from the factory because not everybody's looking for that and some people actually like the stock sound but they're quiet based on emission regulations which are constantly like getting tighter and tighter tighter so harley's having to choke these bikes down a little more and a little more just so they can meet those emission regulations so keep that in mind but regardless i like those bronze heat shields that they do on this bike although i'd swipe the exhaust and they would be gone looks good harley did good and for a lot of people man they're just gonna change the mufflers on the back end so you could spend anywhere from 500 to a grand to do that get all the sound you want and not have to change the head pipe not have to re-tune the bike and then you can maintain all those heat shields that look so good all right so we've gone over these bikes in pretty good detail i'll give you one last look try to fit both of them in the frame now before i tell you which one i would lean towards i'd love for you guys to leave a comment down below let me know which one you're going with and why i get the cvo is super super nice 13 000 price difference which i mean ultimately if you're building that street glide special and your goal is to end up with something like this with this really nice paint all this stuff you're not going to be able to do it for thirteen thousand dollars trust me i see people come in here and do that all the time so engine paint all this stuff it's just not gonna happen okay so let's try to summarize this the best that we can if you've watched any of my other versus videos you know a lot of time it comes down to you personally what you're going to be doing with the bike what your end goals are this one no different guys depends on your end goal so if your end goal is to end up with this start with this definitely don't start with this because like we said in the beginning of the video roughly a 13 500 difference in the two however you're not going to turn this into that for anywhere close to that amount of money even just the paint guys just the paint alone is going to cost you thousands and thousands of dollars just to get to that point so if your end goal is to end up with the best fit and finish all the floorboard collection new seat speakers in the bags bigger motor all this stuff just go ahead and get the cvo it is worth it they're doing less cvo's than they've done in the past so they are a little more exclusive especially right now as you know if you're watching this video and you've tried to get a cvo it's hard i'm super surprised this one wasn't sold before it got here that's why it's taken so long to do a video on the cvo period is every time we get one or we see that we have one on the way someone puts a deposit on it or they just go ahead and buy it outright so as soon as it comes off the truck it gets assembled you know checked out in the back cleaned up and it goes right out the back door never even makes it to the showroom so they are pretty hard to get however any bike is hard to get as you can see if you've been to a dealership most of their showrooms are pretty bare right now and that's just based on everything that's going on however if you don't care about a lot of things that this bike has you know say the gauge cluster and whatnot like it's nice but you don't have to have it and you keep tell you know you keep finding little things like that and say well it's nice but i don't really need that or that's not really important to me then look at this bike with a thirteen thousand five hundred dollar bag of cash in your hand and say what would i do to this to make it mine now you may be a performance bagger guy and you want to dump all that money into the suspension the engine the braking of this bike you're going to have plenty of cash to do that you're going to have your performance bagger if you're into the big wheel thing you want to put a bigger wheel and a fitted front fender on this thing you've got some cash to do that if you want to do air ride suspension whatever it is you want to do 13 grand is a lot of money to play with to turn this thing into your own personal bike so for me personally i'm probably gonna go with the special and i would go with the special over the standard i thought about including one of those so we could compare the three but that would just make this video entirely too long i did compare the standard and the special in a separate video i'll put that link down in the description if you want to check that out my choice was the special over the standard and in this situation i'm personally choosing the special over the cvo and that's just because with that thirteen thousand dollars i'm going to do a lot more to this to make it more mine than what i'm going to spend on this and still not quite have the bike that i want let me know down in the comments which one you would choose and why or if you're already riding one of the two bikes let me know why you chose that one thanks for tuning in guys i'll see you next time

Channel: Throttle Blip

Views: 143,020

Keywords: #FLHXSE, #FLHXS, #HARLEYCVO

Id: 9ZkM6Zd7bTc

Length: 36min 35sec (2195 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 15 2021