5 Items To Make Your Harley-Davidson Fast

It’s not clickbait, nor is this a listicle. There are five things you can purchase right now to have the fastest Harley in your area, assuming you already own a great set of tires. In the interest of keeping you reading, here’s the short list so you can decide if you want to bounce out now.

1. Education
2. Fuel
3. Anything that touches hands, feet, or rear
4. Brakes
5. Suspension

You’ll notice there’s not one thing on there related to the drivetrain. Going fast doesn’t start with hotrod engine parts for most people; that comes later.

TC Bros. can sell you engine bits, of course. We dig on them and use a ton of power-producing parts on our own bikes. However, we’re motorcycle guys, and while we love making power, we are also keenly aware that there are many ingredients in the go-fast recipe. We’ve done a lot of riding over the years, and we’re always trying to see those checkers waving a little sooner than we did last time, and a lot of the time, more power isn't the answer. Here’s some of what we’ve learned so far.

Education

You’ve already accomplished the first steps to going faster—realizing it’s possible and having the desire to do so. The best way to learn how to ride fast is to hang out with faster riders.

This might be joining a buddy in the woods for some trail riding to get comfortable breaking rear wheel traction, attending a trackday and following an instructor who can show you how to read the track and pick the fast line, or even taking a spirited street ride with a riding group that runs a little faster than you normally do. (Use your noodle here, don’t break the law and don’t bin your motorcycle.) Observing and asking for advice pays off here. And the holy grail is paying dollars for personal training and classes with racers. Yes, that costs money. It’s expensive for a reason—it’s worth it!

Fuel

Nothing primo is needed; regular old low-octane from your neighborhood gas station is fine. The important point is to burn gas. There’s no substitute for riding your motorcycle, learning what it can do (and what it can’t, hopefully somewhat safely). If you buy and burn a lot of gas, you're gonna do that.

Fast guys at the track or on the dirt are almost always riding bikes that appear whupped—it’s because they are riding them mile after mile after mile. Take a lesson and apply it to that rad Fat Bob or Low Rider S sitting in your garage. 

This step comes after education for a rider because practice does not, contrary to popular belief, make perfect. Practice makes permanent, so you want to learn the things to do and then go start trying to ingrain those techniques.

Stuff that touches you

Motorcycling is a physical activity. If you cannot manipulate your body and your motorcycle is hindering your range of motion, all the horsepower in the world can’t make up for that. Anything that helps you feed input to the motorcycle more quickly has a place in making you get from A to B more quickly. So whether that’s a seat that moves you up onto the tank so your feet are in a better spot to attack the controls or a handlebar that puts you into a more aggressive position, it all helps you hustle your Harley along faster. 

Brakes

Assuming you have great tires already, brakes are your next logical move.(If you don’t have great tires, get that problem rectified first. You can’t stop well on crummy buns.)

Stopping fast is a huge part of going fast—if your brakes work well, it’s that much longer you can stay on the throttle because the brakes can get more work done in a shorter period of time. You can shoot the moon on modifications if you want, or keep it more modest. 

The best bang for the buck, bar none, is simply fresh fluid every season. One notch above that is getting rid of swollen, cracked rubber hoses for some braided lines that don’t expand and make your lever and pedal feel like mush. For those of you on older machines, try these two things first; it’s usually transformative. 

If you’re riding a late-model Harley, there’s less room for improvement since the bikes are a bit better from the factory, but a set of floating rotors and a set of aggressive street-focused pads is a great way to get tons of feedback from the tires. (You did get those sticky tires I just mentioned, right?)

And straddling the line between this category and the last is something like an adjustable lever set. Factory H-D levers aren’t an easy reach for many people. So what do we do? I know I get a little lazy, and then the two-finger brake cover isn’t happening. You might not consciously think about it, but that increases stopping distance, so you naturally have to ride slower and get off the throttle more quickly. The error is compounded when braking is complete—you need to move your hand back to the throttle before you can use it.

Make sure your body is where it needs to be on the motorcycle.

Suspension

Tires, a part of your brake system, are also a part of your suspension, so if those are sacked, get that sorted out. (Again with the tires!)

After that, however? Like the brakes, you can make huge improvements with just some fork oil if yours is old, missing, or the incorrect weight. If you’ve got a damping rod fork like many Harley Sporties and Dynas wear, thicker weight fork oil is one of the cheapest ways around to alter your bike’s suspension damping characteristics. After that, some PVC cut down into spring spacers will help you dial in preload for literally a few dollars, and beyond that, a set of springs makes a huge difference in performance for a pretty modest outlay of cash. 

If your tires are not touching the ground, throttle and brake input is wasted. If the motorcycle is hovering, it’s not speeding up or slowing down very effectively. Keeping the tires on the ground helps the engine and the brakes do their work.

We’ve written before about how competent a modern Harley-Davidson really is. I’ve been riding for a long time, and I still cannot take a factory Harley-Davidson to the extremes of what it can do; KotB is evidence I’m probably not in the minority—the bikes are a lot more capable than the extremes to which we mortals ride them.

The point of that is while we’d love to sell you a big-bore kit or gnarly cams, if you wanna go fast—actually fast, not “loudmouth at the bar” fast, you might want to think about some of these not-as-sexy items that will make a bigger difference for less money. And once those are in place, you’ve got a better base to support those power-adders.