2024 Harley-Davidson Street Glide 117 review | New look for Harley’s classic ‘bagger’ tourer

The Harley stereotype is that they’re ill-handling, wallowing, chassis-flexing pigs away from a die-straight highway. That’s a fair way from the truth: our first ride saw us head for the hills inland of Marseille, on roads you’d love to attack on a middleweight naked, or even a supermoto. Once upon a time, this would be a miserable experience on any of the Glide range, but the Street Glide makes a decent fist of tight turns, direction changes and even higher speed sweepers.

It's clumsy at very low speed, so you really have to mind the weight around town, but once there’s a bit of rolling inertia to help balance it, it’s perfectly controllable, turning accurately, maintaining suspension control and even keeping its undercarriage off the floor unless you make a concerted effort to fluff a corner and send showers of orange sparks from the footboards and frame fittings…

The longer travel rear shocks have gone some way to rectifying the complaints around ride quality, though the low seat/forward controls and high ’bars mean you’re sat with a lot of weight on your backside, and 74mm of travel still isn’t much, so it still jars over really torn or rippled surfaces.

Braking (by Brembo, albeit branded H-D) is good, though such mass inevitably takes more stopping than run of the mill road bikes. Feel and power is good though, and you soon understand the margins needed to get around safely. There is ABS, though it’s not needed too often as the upside of all that weight is that it pins the tyres to the floor pretty hard, and it’s usually brief in its intervention. The rear brake can be employed harder than ‘normal’ bikes for that reason too, and it’s sometimes the preferable option for smaller reductions in speed, making for a smoother ride.

Traction control is there, but basic: in the dry, you won’t need it unless there’s gravel all over the road. In the wet, it’s a conservative system that prioritises safety. It does what it needs to do.

The choice between Road/Street Glide is very personal: other members of the media were split between a preference for the low handlebars of the Street, and the ape-hangers of the Road Glide. In dynamic terms, the Street suits British/European riders better: greater ground clearance, better handling in the fiddly stuff as well as having your hands tucked away when it’s cold or wet, though the weight of the cowl and clocks hanging from the yokes is noticeable compared to the Road Glide’s frame-mounted nose cowl.

The narrow-angle V-twin feels like a modern engine, rather than the clattering, anachronistic feel of the air-cooled era, but it still retains a pleasingly chunky feel and sound that defies the character-sapping efforts of tighter emissions laws.

It’s smoother and less vibey than the old air-cooled Twin-Cam motors, and the extra power/torque (from improved gasflow through the heads, wider squish-bands in cylinders and a larger, slightly-downdraught throttle body) means it’s no longer an apology for a large capacity engine: it lays down grunt, sticking a smile on your face as the TFT dash whips up bigger numbers on the speedo.

The claimed power/torque is 11%/7% up the 114ci engine in the outgoing Street Glide, and with 3% more power and 4% stronger torque than the older 117ci motor in the 2022-23 Street Glide ST. Cooling is improved too: liquid from the radiator mounted in front of the crankcase visits the area around the exhaust valves in the rear cylinder first, as that’s where the greatest heat is produced as well as the least airflow to passively cool it. It then makes its way over the inlet side, before passing to the front cylinder head and back to the radiator.

That reduces heat passed direct from engine to rider in the first instance: there’s also new ducting from the radiator to channel hot air away from the rider so it doesn’t get a second chance to make you sweat. Our ride was in cool conditions, and we were consistently deprived of the benefits a warm motor can bring on chillier days, so it seems the efforts are successful: we’ll be interested to see if that pays off with improved thermal comfort in summer.

Vibration is endearing rather than annoying, however a heavy clutch and chunky gearbox action remain. A modern slip/assist clutch would be welcome to balance rider comfort as well as clutch grip. Or, thinking left-field…. an automated transmission. DCT works well on the Honda Goldwing, and it could enhance the relaxed vibes here in the same way.

Earlier versions of the Milwaukee Eight engine had some issues with lubrication that seem to have been solved and forgotten. Improved cooling usually does reliability no harm, and owners of other recent big-inch Harleys are racking up tens of thousands of miles largely trouble free, so we’d have confidence in the new one doing so too.

The rest of the bike is pretty simple: only the new infotainment and switchgear stand to prove themselves in the long term. Adding protective film may be wise, as it’s such a dominating feature in your eye line it’ll irritate you forever more if it gets scratched…

We did notice our sub-1000 mile test bikes were showing a few signs of rust in the exhaust tips and other steel fittings: the bikes were admittedly ran-in and turned over to the motorcycling press in winter, but it’s still not acceptable for oxidisation to creep in so early. You’ll want to keep it clean and dry to avoid the same.

Production savings have actually cut the Street Glide’s 2024 RRP by £1000 in the UK, to £26,759. It helps, but it’s still a big chunk, and ongoing servicing, parts and accessories tends to follow suit.

Despite the relatively simplistic nature of servicing: oil and filters need changed every 5000 miles, and the valve lifters have the slack taken up with a hydraulic system, so adjustment is never required. Everything else is simple checks and routine maintenance – it’s belt-driven, and they’re long-lived as well as self-adjusting, so there’s not much more to do than fuel it up and keep an eye on the oil level.

Directly comparable options are limited: Indian’s Chieftain Dark Horse or Chieftain Limited are the only other big-twin baggers. Honda offer the only other close-ish options: the basic Honda GL1800 is also a short-screen bagger that costs around £1000 less than the H-D, though the flat-six is a refined tech-fest and trades its superior dynamics for less charm, although the six-pot motor has an appeal of its own.

Then there’s the CMX1100T: it costs less than half the H-D’s RRP, weighs 120kg less, even in its heaviest DCT-equipped guise, but it’s much more spartan in terms of equipment, isn’t ideally suited to carrying passengers, and lacks the same ‘big-block’ grunt of the Harley or Indian, so it’s really more of an entry-level option paying homage to the likes of the Street Glide (it even has its own approximation of a ‘batwing’ fairing), rather than competing with it.

Cruise control, Bluetooth connectivity (with Apple Carplay for iPhone users: as of 2024, Android no longer offer their products to motorcycle manufacturers), a USB-C charger in a pop-out drawer, a DAB/AM/FM stereo, built-in sat-nav that picks up traffic info via Bluetooth and riding modes make for a fairly well kitted out machine.

For UK riders and our colder climes, you may grumble that that heated grips are an option (upwards of £250 in various styles, plus fitting). The Harley accessory options are extensive: from branded casual clothing through to fully-tuned ‘crate’ motors banging out 150bhp, with most things catered for in between.