2022 Harley-Davidson Fat Bob TEST RIDE

What's up guys, welcome to the test ride and review of the 2022 Harley-Davidson Fat Bob. So for those of you that don't know, this is a soft-tail model, has the 114 cubic inch Milwaukee 8, which is not Harley-Davidson's newest, but the second newest engine. It's called the Milwaukee 8 because it has four valves per cylinder, so a total of eight valves. Also has two plugs per cylinder, so four plugs total, spark plugs. But if you guys want all that tech knowledge, the tech specs and all that stuff about the Spike, be sure to check out the link down in the description below after watching the video, and I'll have you guys link through to all those specs. This is a great bike. I'm a big fan of it. I actually almost bought it a while back before I bought my soft-tail Lowrider S. The reason I didn't end up buying this is because they actually released the soft-tail Lowrider S, and it has a larger tank. But yeah, like I said, if you guys are interested in those hyper-detailed tech specs, fuel capacity, rake angle, lean angle, all that good stuff, check out the link down there. So we're gonna go ahead, hop on the bike. We're gonna head out. We're here in Cochumba Lake or something. So we got Brandon Picasso over here. He's doing a video on the Harley-Davidson Lowrider ST. You guys be sure to go give him a follow. And behind him, sitting over at the tables, you've got her two wheels. And she's on a 22 Harley-Davidson Street Bob. Anyways, absolutely beautiful bike. Brandon actually said, seeing me ride it, he said he thinks he wants one now. I told him it's not the bike, it's me that he wants. The bike's more affordable, especially in the long run. Yeah, let's go ahead. We'll jump on the bike. We're gonna head back to Santa Barbara. And on the way back, I'll give you guys my thoughts, opinions on the bike. I've done easily over a hundred miles on this thing since we got here to California. We picked it up in Compton. Roll the intro. Let's get to it. All right, we got kickstands up. It was called Cochumba Lake. So Cochumba Lake Marina, boat rentals, cafe, bait, and tackle. All right, so waiting for them to gear up. We'll go over the controls real quick. Left side, we've got selection switch, which changes trip A, trip B, and all that stuff in here. You've got your horn, high beam, low beam indicates there. And then press in for the flashlight, or the pass light, left indicator. There you go. Maybe a slight of slashing because we're not moving yet. You've got your on, off. So that's on. It is a fob, so no actual key that you put in, unless you want to use the key to lock the forks. And then you got your caution or your hazards, and then starter and right indicator. Within the gauge, it is RPMs up top. Then at the bottom, you've got your miles per hour. You've got your fuel gauge as well. And then at the bottom, you've got your option settings. So you've got trip A right now. You've got trip B, remaining mileage, 80, the time, RPMs. And odometer. Since we have the RPMs here, we'll go ahead and leave that on trip A. Also here on the bars, it's funny, cause they're kind of like pro taper fat bars, but they definitely go a lot thicker in the middle. I think they could drop down to one inch. Pretty traditional for Harley to have like one inch grips and stuff. But then in the center, you've got this thing which measures the degree of angle. So if you want to loosen these top clamps, you can basically change the angle here. All right, let's go ahead and start it up. Easy to find neutral, very positive confirmation in the shifts. I actually really like the graphic on this tank too. Normally I'm not a fan of, you know, like lighter bikes. I like, you know, black and gold. Yeah, this one looks pretty good. Now it does have forward controls. I don't know if mids are an option on this. I think they might be, but I'm actually pretty comfortable with the forwards. They actually don't like hyper feel like forwards. So the story behind me having this 2022 Harley Davidson soft tail fat bob, ended up coming to California, needed some bikes to get from LA to Santa Barbara for a press event. And Harley Davidson hooked it up with the fat bob here. We basically got dropped off in Compton and ended up picking up the bike, went to the bike shed and up to Malibu, to the pier, up to PCH. Got a good amount of seat time with this bike, but I think this is probably one of the last times I'll be riding it. So we basically came up here to Kachuma Lake, wanting to enjoy some of the amazing weather that California has right now and some of the awesome routes as well. Since, you know, I'm from Florida and we ain't got nothing like the routes here. Curvy mountain roads, it's amazing. So I did go over a couple of really good speed bumps back there just to talk on the suspension of the bike. Suspension on this bike is great. It's not gonna be the most best top tier, obviously most amazing like cushy suspension. It is adjustable though. It feels really, really good to be honest. You do have inverted front forks, dual disc front brakes. You do have Meteor tires, water profile tires on this thing. But despite the larger tires on it, it still handles incredibly well. It doesn't feel, you know, like a chore to basically get it to like lean over and throw around. It goes into the corners really well. Lean angle on it feels incredibly nice. Overall, in my opinion, great bike. For those of you that don't know, I did own a Harley-Davidson FXDR for a short period of time. Whenever I bought it, it was fitting for the environment that I was in in terms of like the location. Cause I pretty much lived in the city of Orlando and I moved out of the city and then my commutes were a lot longer. That was not a good bike to do like long commutes on. It wasn't that comfortable. So I started looking for a new motorcycle and that was whenever my quest to get a bagger started. I didn't end up with a bagger. I ended up with a Harley-Davidson Softail Low Rider S, what is now known as Goldzilla. 131 cubic inch Milwaukee eight, pushing 151 horsepower, 150 torque out of her. Just absolutely great bike. But Harley-Davidson had just barely announced that motorcycle whenever I was making my decision of trading in the FXDR. And so I had actually already made my mind up to get the Harley-Davidson Fat Bob before that. So almost had a Fat Bob. If you guys don't know, Harley-Davidson did have the Fat Bob model, saw it in the Dyna line. So there was a Dyna Fat Bob and Eric, AKA Bagger Bro, he had a Fat Bob for a while. Whenever I met him, that's the bike that he had. Really liked the aesthetic of that bike whenever it was in the Dyna platform. And I also enjoy the aesthetic of the bike in the Softail platform. It just has kind of like a really stout kind of stance to it. It looks muscly, but like not too much of a muscle bike, you know, say like a V-Rod or something would. I think it's a nice balance with the aesthetic in terms of like how it looks, the geometry of the bike makes it feel like it handles really well. In terms of the ergonomics, it's incredibly comfortable. Like I'm sitting upright. It doesn't feel like I'm leaning too far forward. My feet are up. It feels good. Like I said, I have done a little over a hundred miles on this thing. I was maybe even closer to 200, being on it for over an hour or so. It's like, it really doesn't feel that bad. The seat is actually pretty comfortable. I have caught myself kind of moving around back and forth on it, just to kind of like keep from getting like saddle sore or something. And then fun thing with the rear pillion, it does have a little bit of like a kind of a rear passenger seat area, small, but whenever I was wearing a backpack, the backpack kind of set on that and it took the weight of the backpack mostly off of my shoulders, which was nice. So I don't know, that's an option if you guys are traveling with a backpack, I guess, and you're interested in this bike. Also has passenger pegs. And while you're riding, you will know that, you know, if you've ever done distance before, your legs kind of get tired of being in one position, you know, if you're going a couple hours. And so it's nice because you got the passenger peg and you can pretty much lock your heel on it and have your legs back here. Now you do want to be mindful that the exhaust is back there too. So don't set your leg or your shoe right against that or burn your leg or anything. But it is nice that there is the option to like kind of put your legs back. And then also, if you're on the highway, you're going pretty fast, you're getting like some headwinds or anything like that, or you just want to kind of take it easy a little bit, you can put your feet on those rear pegs. And what I was doing, because we were traveling up the Pacific Coastal Highway, the PCH, and we were getting some pretty strong headwinds between like 20 to 30 miles an hour. In some spots, they were actually saying it was gusting between like 40, 45 miles an hour. And so what I did is I put my feet on the rear pegs and I basically laid my arm across the tank like this and I set my chest on my arm so that I was just locked in like this. Unfortunately, no cruise control. So if you do have cruise control, you could do that and you could rest either hand or arm. But unfortunately, no cruise control. It can be installed though. It is an option like that you can upgrade to, but I heard it's on like crazy back order. So I'm in sixth gear right now. You do have a gear indicator there on the right. If I drop a gear, it gets us up and going pretty good. So the power delivery on a stock Harley-Davidson Milwaukee 8 from the 107 to the 114 to the 117, it's a very linear power delivery. So this is the 114. They just recently started releasing the 117 onto like bikes that don't have the CVOs. So the new ST line, so Road Glide, Street Glide, and Lowrider ST, they have the 117 cubic inch Milwaukee 8s. And the engines on these bikes are great. It's real easy to like get a lot of power. You can drop a cam in these things. It doesn't take too long in terms of like labor time and you can get an absolute ton of power out of these. We're talking 130, 140 horsepower and torque around there, depending on what cam profile you go with and all that, get it tuned up. It's one of the more common modifications that we do at the Blockhead Garage. For those of you that don't know, we do have a motorcycle shop in North Orlando. We do custom builds and all that stuff. We can do from stage ones to stage fours, custom paint. You know, we can build a motorcycle from the frame up. So whatever you're wanting done, we can do it. If you guys are interested in getting any of that done, willing to come to the shop from wherever you're at, you can go to blockheadgarage.com, fill out the form and we'll get you on the schedule. A stage two in these engines opens this thing up like crazy. It really, really wakes up the motorcycle. One of my favorite things as a shop owner is whenever people come in and they, you know, want a stage two or a stage three or a stage four, whatever, a stage one, like you can kind of feel it, but a stage two, massive, massive change on these motorcycles. And so people will get a stage two. And one of the requests that I always ask of them is go ride the bike and then come back to the shop. So go do a loop and then like come back. Cause I want to get, you know, their thoughts and their reactions on how the bike is. And they always come back and it's just like a huge grin. And this has actually happened more often than not. I think they'll get off the bike and they'll hug Chris, which is funny. And so like we've basically said like, oh yeah, free hugs with installation of a stage two kit. Cause people come back and want to hug him. Horsepower bay, you know, that's the effect that he has on people with his horsepower magic. So yeah, great engine. The weak point in these bikes, and this isn't a knock on Harley-Davidson, but the weak point on this bike, if you do decide to go beyond like a 131 cubic inch Milwaukee eight, you know, you're going to turbo it. I mean, they've turboed lots of them. The weak link is the transmission, specifically third and fourth gear. But the great perk about Harley-Davidson in general is the fact that there is an absolute ton of aftermarket support for these motorcycles. So whatever you want to do to these bikes from bars to exhaust, wheels, gauges, engine kits, fairings, like they make a fairing for this bike, even though it does have the rectangular headlight, Memphis shades does make a fairing for it that fits. You can also do a headlight conversion if you want to go back to like the round headlight. But yeah, there's an absolute ton of options that you can do to basically make the bike your own. Who's going to buy a motorcycle and not customize it? I mean, I'm sure there's a number of people out there, but a lot of people want to, you know, start customizing it and they got to do an exhaust because you got to be able to hear the sound of the M8. It's a good sounding bike. Now stock, obviously it's a little restricted because they have to meet those like EPA guidelines in terms of like sound level, but I'm not sure if you guys can hear that. It's actually a really good sounding bike. Even stock, it's got some really nice gruntiness to it. Normally in my test ride videos for motorcycles, I like to include two things at the very end of them. One of those is a criticism of the motorcycle. The other one is would I buy the bike? So criticism of the motorcycle, honestly is probably the seats just because it does feel comfortable, but it's almost like, and this is going to sound really weird. It's almost like it's too soft that it doesn't have quite enough support. Like I almost wish the seat was like a little bit more firm, but the seat is one of those incredibly personal things. It's like a pillow, you know, that you sleep on your bed with. And it's like, some people like more of a firm pillow. Some people like an incredibly soft pillow. I'm not one of those people that likes an incredibly soft pillow, but I don't want a rock hard pillow either. So like with my seat, obviously I don't want it to be like a pan or a tractor seat. With this one, it is incredibly comfortable, but I feel like when it comes to the support, especially like maybe towards the center of the seat, it feels a little bit too soft for me. I'd like just a little bit more firmness to it, which is really weird. I don't know that I've ever said that as a point of feedback for a motorcycle. I guess that would be my criticism. And you know, it's one of those things that's really easily fixable because there's an absolute ton of aftermarket seat options for these. You know, you can pretty much go with something more firm, custom stitching, custom graphics, all that stuff. Like whatever you want to do, you can probably find it. Saddleman is like a company that we've worked really closely with. They do offer like custom blockhead seats as well. I'm a big fan of the Saddleman Step Up. It does feel firm, like kind of in the beginning, but then as you ride with it, it kind of breaks in. You get acclimated to it and it has real nice like back support. So with this one, even though it does have like a good lip, you know, if you're getting on it, it's gonna hold you in, but I just feel like it doesn't really have like support for me. That's gonna vary from person to person. I think that's probably my only criticism of the bike. It's just so hard to find like a bike that isn't like a good bike recently. It's like gone are the days of, you know, carbureted, finicky motorcycles that like don't have the geometry correct to where, you know, it doesn't feel good. But like bikes these days, man, it's just, they feel really good. It feels incredibly like predictable when it comes to acceleration, shifting, braking. It's one of those things that I say whenever it feels linear and it feels predictable, that instills confidence in the rider. All those things do add up to making it feel like a really great bike. Seat height isn't too bad. I'm five foot 10. I think I'd mentioned that earlier. Don't know my inseam. Sorry about that. It's been a long time since I've been to a tailor for a custom suit. Next time I go, I'll be sure to note my inseam. There we go. I really wish we had something like this in Florida, man. I guess I'll just have to keep going out of town for press events. On that note, big thanks to Harley Davidson for the opportunity to come out here to California and ride motorcycles. It's funny because this motorcycle isn't one of them that are volunteering up for the press event. This is just a bike that they sent me up with to be able to get from LA to Santa Barbara, which is about 85 miles or so. They were basically like, okay, we can search out with a Fat Bob or a Street Bob. So Jess, her two wheels back there, she chose the Street Bob and I took the Fat Bob. And I gotta say, big fan. I don't think I've ridden a Fat Bob as much as I have here, but I think I'm gonna put more miles on this bike than I am any other bike that I'm here for because we're gonna be riding the Harley Davidson Lowrider STs, and then we're also riding the new Harley Davidson Nightster, which is their new Sportster. Oh man, the leans just feel great on this thing. Super confidence instilling motorcycle. Just really, really love the feel of it. On that second question, would I buy the motorcycle? Like I said, the story earlier about me almost buying the bike, but the only reason I didn't is because as I was in that decision-making process, you know, and I was gonna buy a bagger, but I didn't need everything that the bagger had. I didn't need the infotainment system, I didn't need the speakers, I didn't need anything else. You know, the bags that the baggers came with, like my work stuff didn't fit in it. So it was just like, okay, well why don't I buy like a soft tail and I'll throw a fairing on it, I can buy some bags for it. I knew Memphis Shades was coming out with a fairing for the Fat Bob, and so I was like, you know what, I'm gonna buy the Fat Bob. And then a salesman came up to me and they were like, well, you know, if you're buying the Fat Bob and you're looking to basically like buy this to alleviate miles off your truck, why don't you buy the Harley Davidson Lowrider S because it has a larger gas tank. And so I was like, you know, that's a good point. And so that's whenever I bought Goldzilla. On that note, had the Lowrider ST been available whenever I purchased my Lowrider S, I would have bought that motorcycle. But it's a new bike for Harley Davidson in 2022, looks great, got to ride it briefly on a ride that we did yesterday, which should be a video that's up on the channel called Harley Davidson Lowrider ST and Lo-Fi. It's just a chill ride, man, you know, like treated it more like a throttle therapy video because, you know, I want it to be like therapeutic. I feel like I'm getting off subject talking about another motorcycle. We're talking about the Fat Bob here. So do me a favor, let me know y'all's thoughts on the Harley Davidson Fat Bob. If you guys are considering purchasing one, if you own one, let me know y'all's thoughts and feedback on it. I would greatly appreciate it. I think it's a great bike. First and foremost, aesthetically, I really like it. Performance of it is great. Six-speed transmission, Milwaukee eight, plenty of power, great stopping, good suspension. You got inverted forks on this thing. Once again, big thanks to Harley Davidson. Greatly appreciate the opportunity to be able to ride this bike and get more of an in-depth look at it. Y'all be sure to check these guys out, Brandon Picasso and Her Two Wheels if you haven't already. They've got some pretty cool bike reviews and perspectives on motorcycles as well. If you guys aren't subscribed to my channel and you do enjoy motorcycle content, do me a favor, be sure to hit the subscribe button, hit the bell icon while you're over there so it sends you notifications of future uploads and activity. If this episode on this Harley Davidson Fat Bob was insightful, do me another favor, hit the like button. Hitting that like button lets YouTube know that we're doing a good job. It'll help to recommend it to other people. On note of recommending it to other people, if you've got any friends out there that enjoy motorcycles, be sure to share the video with them as well. I know it's a lot to ask of you guys. I know, I know. I'm out here doing some hard work, riding motorcycles, you know, and uploading them to the YouTubes. And you guys are laughing at yourselves right now, saying, ha ha, riding motorcycles, that's not hard work. Suck it, blockhead. You're right, this part isn't the hard work. It's the editing and all the rest of the stuff that's the hard work. But yeah, if you guys could do some of those things, you know, it really helps us out a lot. Hope you guys enjoyed it though. Thanks for watching. Until next time, you guys ride safe out there. Stay vigilant. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.