2026 HARLEY-DAVIDSON 131-CUBE BREAKOUT REVIEW – MY SILVER-BLACK PHANTOM BIKE

“I’m gonna hit the highway like a battering ram
On a silver-black phantom bike
When the metal is hot, and the engine is hungry
And we’re all about to see the light”

Jim Steinman

 

In 1977, Meatloaf rage-seeded my teenage brain with one of the most evocative songs ever created.

 

When The Meat thundered out Steinman’s cheese-packed lyrics, I had just turned 16 – the perfect age for life-long rock’n’roll programming. I was hardly alone.

 

The album, Bat Out Of Hell, became a global phenomenon. And its cultural impact cannot be overstated. Bat Out Of Hell sold more than 46-million copies world-wide. It went platinum 14 times in the USA, and a staggering record-setting 26 times in Australia, which made it the biggest-selling album of all time Downunder.

 

The combination of Steinmans’ teen-opera lyrics, Meatloaf’s nuclear vocals, and Todd Rundgren’s epic production, seared the whole album, and especially the title track, into western society’s forever playlist.

And if you were 16 at the time, like I was, it spoke to your hormone-ruled teenage brain like the veritable Word of God. Who, in this case, was a long-haired fat bastard who needed to suck oxygen between songs to avoid cardiac arrest.

 

I was already well down the track of motorcycle perdition at that age. There were posters of Harleys on my bedroom walls. I was jigging school to steal rides on my older mate’s horribly ratshit Honda XL250 through the back alleys of inner-Sydney.

Hitting the highway like a battering ram on a silver-black phantom bike became my lodestar. It was the hill I was gonna die on. And yes, I am aware the song does indicate there was some dying at the bottom of a cliff in the burning sun, but 16-year-olds do not consider such things as tragedies. We viewed such an outcome as utterly impossible, but if it somehow happened, then what an epic way to go!

 

Such magical things, teenage hormones.

Anyway, the whole silver-black phantom bike imagery stuck with me. Which partially explains why nearly every bike I have ever owned or customised has been black. The other obvious reason is every bike looks better in black. It is what it is. Black and chrome is my Kryptonite.

 

Which brings me, somewhat inelegantly, to Harley-Davidson’s totally deranged 131-cubic-inch (2146cc) Breakout – my… Hell, THE silver-black phantom bike incarnate.

 

Let me explain what is going here. Let me explain why this is goddamn rock’n’roll. Let me explain why this is the motorcycle equivalent of snorting cocaine, partying with strippers, and heaving a TV out of a hotel window.

Firstly, the Breakout is the archetypal Harley-Davidson. It is what people see in their mind when they think Harley. In the Breakout, Harley has created one of the most aesthetically “right” bikes ever made. It is right up there with Tamburini’s Italian masterpieces (the MV Agusta F4 and the Ducati 916), the iconic original Kawasaki Z900 and Z1000, the Manx Norton, and Hans Muth’s eternal Suzuki Katana.

Look at its profile. It is spot-on. It pleases your brain on a level you’re not even conscious of. Harley has come close to this a few times in the past, but the advent of that insanely fat 300-tyre on the back flowing perfectly to that sassy 21-inch wheel on the raked front…man, you don’t even have to like Harleys to see how it just works.

 

Sales reflect this. The Breakout has been the largest-selling Harley in Australia for the past five years. It was created in 2012 and publicly launched at Daytona Bike Week in 2013. Sales in the USA were discontinued in 2020. But not in Australia. We loved the bastard so much we kept buying it by the shipload and Milwaukee kept on making it. And in 2023, Harley jammed its 117-cube Milwaukee-Eight engine into the Breakout, and sales kept on climbing.

 

It’s the one Harley Milwaukee keeps alive because of Australia. And it is my favourite one for the reasons stated and the ones to come.

So, it looks boss. It looks bad-arse. It looks outlaw. These are all powerful selling points. Accountants wanna look like Hells Angels. That motorcycle outlaw glamour has always been a major driver of Harley sales.

 

But the Breakout, unlike some of Harley’s other offerings, like the Low Rider S and the now amazingly capable Street Glide and Road Glide, requires some…erm, well, compromise from the rider.

 

There is only one disc brake on the front. The suspension travel is limited – though Harley’s 2026 revamp of its Softail range suspension (replacing the progressive springs with constant rate jobbies), has greatly improved ride quality. That gorgeously fat rear tyre does little to assist any lap-times you may have in mind, and the Breakout’s overall handling – considered objectively – means you won’t be challenging for any podiums.

It’s long, it’s raked, it’s rear-end is fat, and it hasn’t got the brakes it needs (or you want) if you plan on showing off to girls.

 

Yes, the 117-cube Milwaukee Eight is a great engine. It makes 98 bhp at 4600rpm, and 120 ft-lb (162 Nm) of luscious torque right at the 2500 rpm sweet-spot.

 

So what you’re getting on a stock Breakout is sinful good looks, a great and very willing motor, and just enough brakes and suspension to keep you grinning. The package makes perfect sense if that’s what you’re after. And you’re an accountant.

But Harley knows there are people like me out there. People who have been inculcated with a divine madness (Thanks Meatloaf). People who are as devoid of sense as a rabid baboon and think the laws of physics are negotiable if you threaten them enough. People who always wanna rock’n’roll.

 

It is with this knowledge Harley offers rabid-baboon people like me the Screamin’ Eagle Stage IV 131-cubic inch “crate motor”.

 

What’s a “crate motor”?

 

Well, a crate motor is what you buy when you’re tired of pissin’ around.

 

It is called that because such engines did originally arrive in wooden crates – much like you’d ship bazookas and grenades. It’s an old hot-rod term from the days when manhood was tested on lonely country roads as part of the American Dream.

 

Ford’s dream factory happily sold mid-western US maniacs flathead V8s in dream-boxes, which inspired General Motors to ship its good ol’ boys ready-to-bang 350 small-block V8s in similar dream-boxes.

 

Today, Harley’s 131-cube ferocity-plant is a kit which will probably arrive in a few boxes, and which the dealer will then offer to install into your Breakout (or Fat Boy, or Low Rider, or whatever). You can say: “Nah, hold ma beer! I’ma doin’ this myself!” and off you go into all sorts of nightmares. Or you can let it happen at the dealer.

I understand, and I have asked, such an exercise will set you back about $10,000. Give or take. If you’re squinting at this, you’re not rock’n’roll. Because there is no price you can put on rock’n’roll, baby.

 

When the crate engine has been installed into your Breakout, and all the correct sacrifices have been made, and the Road Gods are somewhat appeased, this is what you will have:

 

Your new, measured-at-the-back-wheel horsepower will be 121. The amount of torque you now have will be 131 ft‑lb (177.6 Nm), also at the rear wheel. Your barrels will now measure 4.31-inches by 4.5 -inches (109.5 mm by 114.3 mm), up from the pop-music-making 4.08-inches by 4.5-inches (103.5 mm by 114.3 mm) in the 117. Your new throttle bodies are a gaping 65 mm, not the choked-up 55 mm trash the 117 has.

But I’m not done licking my lips yet. The four-valve Stage IV heads have come under extreme CNC porting and are fitted with larger valves. And because rock’n’roll, there’s a SE8‑517 high‑lift camshaft, to make the thing feel and sound proper angry.

 

What this means on the road is some very unholy crazy-arse bullshit. You suddenly have a genuine 200km/h-plus Harley-Davidson. The mid-range has gone from “Good and Christian” to “Hail Satan!” The 117 starts to flatten out a bit after 4500rpm. The 131 kicks in its afterburners. It is an engine designed to run wide-open. It even says that in the brochure. And I thought that was all marketing-speak until I discovered it wasn’t.

My mate, Paul, discovered it too. I met him for lunch at the Bulga Hotel, which is at the start of the legendary Putty Road. Paul rides a KTM 1290 Super Duke. I tossed him the fob of the 131 just as he was about to pull of his helmet.

 

“Leave that on. Take this thing out to Milbrodale and make sure your estate has the necessary cash if you go to Jesus instead of coming back here.”

He came back in good order. He was panting a touch.

 

“Wow,” he said. “That thing goes harder than my KTM.”

 

And then we both laughed. If the pub had a juke box with Bat Out Of Hell on it, I would have played it for us, and we could have sung along like in the old days.

Day-to-day riding is fine. The crate-engined Breakout sounds and feels angrier, but it’s nicely fuelled and does not have any bad manners at low speed. It doesn’t hunt. It doesn’t surge. It just makes angry internal noises. Mine had stock pipes, so it attracted no attention from the Highway Patrol. But I’d be fitting an aftermarket two-into-one exhaust. There is, now and then, just the hint of lag on the throttle, but that’s not a deal-breaker for any righteous baboon. And it may disappear with aftermarket pipes.

 

Only people who have no idea or don’t care about performance fit individual pipes to Harleys.

I dug around a bit and found three options for us baboons.

 

A Bassani Road Rage III system is for those who still want to be part of the civilised world. It will increase performance without you doing serious jail-time.

 

The Sawacki Speed 2-into1 is straight off the King of the Baggers race series. You’ll get huge, psychotic top-end, and the sound will get you decent non-parole period.

 

Or throw it all to Hell and buy a D&D Billet Cat 2-into-1. Your massive mid-range becomes even more massive. You will get insanely brutal acceleration, and parole will rightly be denied.

 

Or leave the stock pipes and have yourself a true Sleeper.

Because unless you know what you’re looking at, you won’t see any difference. You need to look closely to see the Screamin’ Eagle badges on the barrels.

 

The Screamin’ Eagle Stage IV 131-cube Breakout is a stupid motorcycle. There’s no need for such a thing. It still has one front-disc, a fat back-tyre, and when pushed silly-hard in corners behaves like a washing machine with handlebars. No-one needs this. But more than a few of us want this.

 

Which is exactly why it is magnificent. The world needs more stupid motorcycles. There are more than enough rabid baboons demanding just such a thing. Nothing makes us howl louder than a Harley-bastard-Davidson hate-thundering at the horizon like…yeah, you guessed it, a bat out of Hell.

On those hot summer nights, girls can offer their throats to the wolf with the red roses all they want.

 

Boys, on the other hand, will always and forever wanna hit the highways like battering rams on silver-black phantom bikes.

 

Heat that metal, feed that engine. See the light.

 

PSST! THERE IS ANOTHER LEVEL OF CRAZY…

 

I discovered, to my profound delight, there is a Screamin’ Eagle 135-cube Stage IV. You know, in case the 131-cube rock’n’roll isn’t, somehow, doing it for you. Or you’re the baboon with rabies.

This is the engine with components directly eviscerated from the King of the Bagger race bikes. I’m just gonna give you the numbers. You can compare them to the numbers from the 131 above. Then you can go and have a good long look at yourself and your stupid life-choices, and why you’d even consider a factory race-engine on a road bike, you vile criminal fiend.

Capacity: 135 cubic inches (2212 cc)

Horsepower – near on 144 at 5500rpm.

Torque – 149 ft-lb

Compression ratio – 11.6:1

Bore and stroke: 4.31-inches by 4.625-inches (109.5 mm by 117.5 mm)

Throttle body: 68 mm (race‑derived)

Fuel injectors: 6.8 g/s high‑capacity

Heads: Extreme CNC‑ported SE heads (race‑team derived)

Camshaft: SE8‑550 high‑lift cam