Living With the Milwaukee-Eight 114 Street Glide: What Owners of the 2020 to 2023 Bikes Report

Nobody at MotoGearRater rode a Street Glide for this article. What follows is a synthesis of recurring owner reporting, gathered from dedicated Street Glide forums, ownership threads on general motorcycle boards and owner review sections at established outlets, with every hard number taken from published specifications. It covers one machine: the Milwaukee-Eight 114 Street Glide sold from 2020 through 2023, the generation Harley replaced in 2024, and the generation now filling the used market.

What the 2020 to 2023 Street Glide is

One detail matters before you read a single used listing. Through model year 2023, the Street Glide and the Street Glide Special were separate SKUs, and the Special was the better equipped of the two. For MY2024 Harley collapsed both into one Street Glide. A listing headed "2022 Street Glide" and one headed "2022 Street Glide Special" are therefore not the same motorcycle, and the price gap is real. Most of the owner reporting below is about the Special.

The Special ran the Milwaukee-Eight 114, 1,868cc, rated at 118 lb-ft at 3,250 rpm from 2021 onward. Harley's published figure for MY2020 was roughly 122 to 123 lb-ft at around 3,000 rpm on the same engine; the engine did not get weaker, the published measurement changed. Seat height was 26.1 inches laden and 27.2 unladen, weight in running order was 827 lb every year, and base MSRP in Vivid Black, excluding freight, ran from $27,099 in 2021 to $27,999 in 2023, with 2020 at $27,699.

What owners consistently praise

The engine comes first and by a wide margin. Owners who moved to the 114 from a Twin Cam or a 107 describe the torque increase as the change that justified the money, and the praise is specific: roll-on in top gear without downshifting, easy two-up passing, and less of the vibration older owners remember. Long-tenured forum members treat the 114 as the point at which the touring chassis finally had enough motor under it.

The second theme is around-town manageability. This is an 827 lb motorcycle, yet owners describe the batwing bike as the easier of the two big Harley touring shapes to place in traffic, because the fairing turns with the bars rather than sitting on the frame. Riders with both shapes in the same garage repeatedly pick the Street Glide for town work.

Third, these hold up: the pattern across the forums is high-mileage owners describing routine maintenance rather than catastrophic failure. Owners also treat the aftermarket as an advantage rather than a consolation, since almost every complaint below has several documented fixes others have already installed and reported on.

What owners consistently complain about

The rear suspension is the loudest and most consistent complaint attached to these bikes, and it is not close. Owner after owner describes the factory rear shocks as harsh over broken pavement, worse with a passenger, and not meaningfully improved by adjusting preload. Many report that replacing them was the first modification they made, ahead of the exhaust. A recurring sub-theme is that passengers feel it worst, with complaints about jolts going straight to the pillion's neck over potholes turning up again and again. Owners disagree about which replacement is best, splitting between emulsion and separated gas-and-oil designs and between 12 and 13 inch lengths, and a few report that an expensive aftermarket set was no better than stock. There is very little disagreement that the factory unit is the weak link.

Helmet buffeting is second, and it is well documented because the affected owners are specific. Riders report head shake and blurred vision at highway speed, headaches inside the first hour, and passengers taking a worse beating than on other bikes they own. It affects short and tall riders both, which is why the fixes vary so much: recut windshields at several heights, triple tree deflectors, fork deflectors and fairing lowers all appear. The catch is that the parts that cut buffeting most also route more engine heat onto the rider, so the fix is a trade. Owners in hot states describe removing the deflectors they fitted the previous winter.

Engine heat is third, and it is the most contested item on the list. Owners in hot climates report the rear cylinder cooking the right leg in stop-and-go traffic. Harley's answer, the parked-idle cylinder deactivation system, is widely disliked: owners describe surging, stumbling and stalling from a standstill with it enabled, and many report switching it off permanently and living with the heat. Others counter that it helps when genuinely stationary for several minutes and that the temperatures they log are normal for an air-cooled twin. The honest reading is that this is a hot motorcycle in traffic, that the factory mitigation annoys a lot of people, and that oil coolers move the number less than the people selling them suggest.

Fourth, the stock seat. The pattern is close to uniform: fine for a few hours, punishing beyond that. The forums are full of owners who replaced it, had it re-foamed or added a gel insert, and several wish they had done it at delivery rather than at 20,000 miles.

Fifth, the Boom Box GTS infotainment. Owners complain that navigation is clumsy, that map and traffic updates became a paid subscription, and that Apple CarPlay requires Harley's own interface module and headset rather than the gear an owner already has. Android Auto is absent. A number of owners have swapped in an aftermarket automotive head unit, which tells you how they rate the factory version, though it costs them the factory information screen.

How it compares to the bike that replaced it

For MY2024 Harley replaced this bike outright. The Milwaukee-Eight 117 arrived as standard at 1,923cc and 130 lb-ft at 3,250 rpm with 105 hp, weight fell from 827 lb to 811 lb, a 12.3-inch TFT running Skyline OS replaced the Boom Box, four ride modes arrived, rear travel went up to three inches, and Harley claimed a 60 percent average reduction in helmet buffeting. Base MSRP dropped to $25,999, around $2,000 under the outgoing Special. On paper, that answers the top three owner complaints above.

The used-market consequence was immediate, and owners said so loudly at the time: trade-in values on 2020 to 2023 bikes fell hard the moment a cheaper, more powerful, better-equipped replacement appeared. Used buyers describe that same event as the reason the 114 became affordable.

The counterargument from owners who kept theirs deserves weight. Nothing from the older bike transfers to the 2024, so an owner with a settled seat, bars, exhaust and shocks starts over. Several report that once they fixed the shocks and the seat and sorted the windshield, they preferred what they had to a stock 2024. The redesign is not a clean sweep, and it does not make the 114 a bike to avoid. It makes it a bike whose known faults have known prices.

What to check on a used one

Read the model designation rather than the photos and confirm whether the bike is a Street Glide or a Street Glide Special, because through 2023 those were different motorcycles at different prices. Ask what has been done to the rear suspension: a bike already wearing quality aftermarket shocks has the most common complaint solved on the seller's money. Ask about the seat too, since a re-foamed or aftermarket saddle is worth real money.

Ask about the primary drive compensator. Owners who lost one describe it going with no warning, and those failures cluster on hard-launched and heavily modified bikes, so ask about stage kits and how the bike was ridden. Run the VIN through Harley's recall lookup: a software recall covering 2020 to 2022 Touring models addressed brake lamps remaining illuminated, and there is no reason to assume a used bike had it done. Finally, sit on it. The 26.1 inch laden seat height flatters these at a standstill and tells you nothing about managing 827 lb in a parking lot.

A gear note on the hands

The two complaints most likely to shape a long day on one of these, heat in traffic and buffeting on the highway, both land on the hands before anywhere else. Owners who ride in real summer conditions generally stop hunting for one glove that covers every situation and settle on a ventilated pair for hot traffic alongside a heavier pair for cold mornings. Legendary USA still cuts gloves in the United States if that is the direction you go, and their US-made glove range is a shorter list than the industry once offered.

The short version

The 2020 to 2023 Street Glide is a well-liked motorcycle with a small number of very specific faults, all of them documented and priced by owners. The rear shocks are the real one. Buffeting and heat are negotiable. The infotainment is dated and will stay dated. The 2024 redesign is better on the exact points owners complained about, and its arrival is the reason these are now worth a look. For the sales context behind the nameplate, our post on Harley's best seller of 2022 covers it.

Cover photo: "Harley-Davidson Street Glide parked at Hogs for Hospice, Leamington, Ontario, 2025-08-02 04" by Chris Woodrich, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.