The Softail design and style was born in the 1970's and will be the invention of Bill Davis. Bill is a Harley rider and an engineer who hails from St Louis, Missouri. Mr. Davis eventually sold his Softail prototype in 1982 to Harley Davidson and in 1984, they began to manufacture a revised version of Bill Davis' design for that Softail, along with the Harley Softail was an official member from the company's line of motorcycles. Since 1984, there have been various Harley designs that feature the Softail style.
Some of these Harley Softail models are the Heritage Softail, the Fat Boy, the Deuce, the Deluxe, plus the Dark Custom just to name a few. Virtually all of these bikes are equipped while using same motors, tranny's, and frame except to the deuce, which has a slightly various frame at the same time as choices for that wheels, forks, and other accessories. No matter which Softail model you choose to own you'll nearly certainly be satisfied with your Harley.
The Harley Softail gets its name from the frame pattern, which is intended to look like the hardtail bikes from the past. The idea is to give the bike this hardtail appear even though still offering the far more comfortable ride you would receive from a rear suspension. With the Softail style, the manufacturer put the shock absorbers under the transmission along the long axis from the bike frame. The result of this unique design and style gives the rider far more comfort at the same time being a far better feel on the road without a rough ride.
Harley Davidson offers much more than one choice of front ends for their Harley Softail. Versions including the Dyna and Sportster use the X-type forks that telescope and are thin. VRSC models are applying a fork which is developed specifically for that line of softails, while the Harley Davidson touring versions us the fatter FL-type forks, which telescope also. On the other hand, softails may well use both the FL and X-type forks at the same time as the springer style forks that are actually exclusively used on Harley Softails.
Harley Davidson doesn't use rubber-mounted motors on their softail versions. Being a result, there was a lot additional vibration on Harley Softail bikes that were equipped with the Evolution engines than on the Touring and Dyna designs, which do use rubber mounts with the Evo's. Harley Davidson ultimately compensated for this performance issue by making use of a version of the twin cam engine which is counter balanced rather than the regular twin cams which are used in both the Dyna and Touring kinds.
There also other manufacturers that utilize the softail pattern for their road bikes, and are already extremely successful since of this. On the other hand, the a single thing they aren't is the Harley Davidson Firm and their bikes aren't the Harley Softail. This doesn't mean that their bikes usually are not good bikes to ride it just means that they are certainly not American made and are usually not the finest. That title is still reserved for that godfather of road bikes Harley Davidson.
