Indian's 2014 rebirth picked up the brand's story from where it left off, with the Thunderstroke 111 evoking the flat-head engine of yore and complemented by great big swoopy fenders, an image that clicked right into America's V-twin cultural brain. So much has happened since then, up to and including total dominance of American Flat Track racing with the FTR750, and multiple MotoAmerica King of the Baggers championships with the Challenger and its liquid-cooled PowerPlus 112 engine. Technical Editor Kevin Cameron and Editor-in-Chief Mark Hoyer discuss Indian history and their firsthand looks inside Indian engines and development since the brand returned to the motorcycle market in earnest.
Looking to buy? Get prequalified with Octane
https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6CLI74xvMBFLDOC1tQaCOQ
Read more from Cycle World: https://www.cycleworld.com/
Buy Cycle World Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/cycleworld
Looking to buy? Get prequalified with Octane
https://octane.co/flex/1?a=171
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6CLI74xvMBFLDOC1tQaCOQ
Read more from Cycle World: https://www.cycleworld.com/
Buy Cycle World Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/cycleworld
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00:00You are back with the Cygworld Podcast. I'm with Kevin Cameron, our technical editor,
00:00:03and I'm Mark Hoyer, the editor-in-chief. This week's topic is Indian motorcycle,
00:00:11principally the modern era of Indian motorcycle since Polaris made the acquisition and brought
00:00:16the brand back to life. But there were many iterations of Indians. We will talk about that.
00:00:22And then something like 11 different people have had some stake in ownership of the name.
00:00:28Not everyone made a motorcycle. Some people made motorcycles that were rebranded that were
00:00:33Velocets and other brands. But it's been a remarkable evolution of product in the modern era.
00:00:44And Polaris cut its teeth with those victory motorcycles, but discovered the power of brand
00:00:53when they made the acquisition of Indian and brought product to market.
00:00:57And in the first year, doubled their motorcycle sales when they had Victory and Indian together.
00:01:04And they'd worked on Victory, great motorcycles, a lot of interesting products and tight piston
00:01:11clearances and all the tech stuff that they have from making so many different engines over at Polaris.
00:01:17And yet, one year of Indian motorcycles doubled motorcycle sales, and it kind of took off from
00:01:24there. They came out with the Scout, which was their volume leader, and decided not to reinvest
00:01:30in Indian. Because if you put a dollar, or sorry, not to reinvest into Victory, you put a $10 million
00:01:35into Victory, you're going to expect a certain return. But if you put $10 million in the Indian,
00:01:41you're going to expect a higher return.
00:01:42And sometimes when you're building motorcycles, you've got to do it for money. There's been
00:01:48plenty of examples of people not thinking that way.
00:01:51There certainly have, yes.
00:01:53But I don't know. Kevin, where do you want to begin? I guess the American motorcycle experience?
00:02:01I mean, our mass market versus maybe the rest of the world's experience? What do you think?
00:02:06Well, the American motorcycle, many people have noted that with its large section tires,
00:02:20considerable weight, the long persistence of three-speed transmissions, and so forth, American
00:02:26motorcycles are clearly related to what they were in 1910 and 1920. And that is an accident
00:02:40of the U.S. market, because it was here in the good old USA that Henry Ford saw that making
00:02:47cars by hand by elderly gentlemen with octagon spectacles, with wireframes, was
00:02:56not the key to a mass market. And the U.S. had a big industrial revolution that started really
00:03:06with the Civil War and just kept roaring. And it created a lot of technical managerial people
00:03:14with disposable income. And by 1913, motorcycles were really popular in the U.S.
00:03:25And it was the peak year for Indian, because after that, it was on a downward slope because people
00:03:32could buy a Ford for not a lot more than they had to pay for a premium motorcycle.
00:03:38So that was a tough one. Whereas in England, the registrations of cars and bikes were quite
00:03:45similar through the 1920s. And then, of course, the U.S. had the terrible 1929 Great Depression.
00:03:54And that basically killed everything but Harley and Indian. And Indian, although they had been
00:04:07technical leaders in 1911, they swept the Isle of Man TT with two-speed bikes with dog rings shifting.
00:04:18It's supposed to be terribly modern. Now, what was it in 1911? But without wider sales than police
00:04:29departments and adventuresome young people, motorcycles in the U.S. were sort of cut off at the knees.
00:04:41And they couldn't spend a lot of R&D money because they didn't have it. And then what they did have
00:04:52was taken away by the Depression. And I think that it's remarkable that Indian with, in 1933, 1,600 sales
00:05:04all year, managed to get through that, through World War II. And in the market, they lasted until 1953,
00:05:15when the original Indian company closed its doors forever. Whereas Harley Davidson, in 1929,
00:05:24they took a step into the future by adopting a side valve flathead construction, which was simplified
00:05:35and more durable than the old intake over exhaust or F-head that Harley had made for so many years,
00:05:45the V-series, the V-series. That 1929 D model was a 45, and it had side valves, and it helped them to survive.
00:05:58And by 1936, the U.S. was climbing, but with difficulty, out of the Depression, and Harley made a huge gamble,
00:06:09namely the 61E, which was the forefather of all of Harley's big twins ever since down to this day.
00:06:18But here's the big difference between Indian today and Harley today. Harley has an unbroken continuity
00:06:27all the way back to their origin, whereas Indian was cut off in 1953. Now, when I was in Colorado
00:06:37in the summer of 1963, I saw those 80-inch flatheads with their deeply valanced fenders and their distinctive
00:06:49engine appearance. Still on the road, old-timers going up the Rocky Mountains on these 80-inch Indians that were
00:06:57so distinctive. But since that time, if anyone expected the Indian name to just evaporate,
00:07:06like water on a recently washed floor, forget it. Because as Mark said, the moment they added the name
00:07:16Indian, the brand, to their portfolio, motorcycle sales, that Polaris doubled.
00:07:25So that's power.
00:07:27To be fair, it is based on the product. Certainly the brand was an incredible boost for them,
00:07:34but at the heart, you have to make a good motorcycle. And I think sometimes people forget that,
00:07:42where they want to infuse the motorcycle with qualities that aren't on the top of the motorcycle
00:07:48buyers list. And Indian reborn, they started by trying to validate their ownership. And I think they did a
00:08:04damn good job of it. Because you just described the motorcycle with the deeply valanced fenders,
00:08:11the distinctive engine. And riding up the Rockies, it's 80-inch flathead. And that is the image of
00:08:20Indians in the minds of most general, our general population, our motorcycle culture. They see the
00:08:26swoopy fenders. And that's what Indian did out of the gate, you know, with Polaris in the 12,
00:08:34the 14 era, is that's the motorcycle that they came back with. There it was, the one we'd been
00:08:42waiting for. Looked like a flathead. I mean, a little disingenuous because it's not, it's very
00:08:48technologically based. It has an aluminum frame, had an aluminum frame. And they really did what that
00:08:55company does, which is examine the market and build the motorcycle that suited, you know, suited the
00:09:03marketplace with all the technology that they had. Like how many combustion chambers has Polaris made
00:09:10with all the engines that they've made? You know, their, their first parallel twin, I was looking at
00:09:14some of the designs and, and their, the stuff for the side-by-sides, no center bearing. I was like,
00:09:21what? But for the, for the application, I mean, they're, they were, you know, they're, they're not
00:09:27more technological than Harley, really. They're just, they had no, they, they weren't locked into
00:09:34certain traditions the way that Harley had continually, as they had continued to evolve.
00:09:40And like, we've got to keep these roller bearings and we need, you know, it's just certain things that
00:09:44you would retain. And Indian had that, and Polaris really had that, had the freedom, you know,
00:09:50the slogan for victory for a while was the new American motorcycle. Yeah. And it was, it was meant
00:09:57to be a contrast from the old American motorcycle. Um, but, um, and this is the thing, this is the
00:10:05thing that, um, most people who want to buy a big American made motorcycle have some motorcycle
00:10:12experience. So they know what a motorcycle can do. They know that it has brakes of a certain,
00:10:19uh, power, uh, handling, precise steering, et cetera. So that defines what a motorcycle is in the modern
00:10:30era and what people will expect, which is why you can't build a parallel twin, uh, with its tremendous
00:10:38vibration anymore. Because as people who've written borrowed, uh, triumphs say, were they all like that?
00:10:48I've, I've traded motorcycles with a colleague and I handed him my 1974 Norton Commando with new
00:10:58ice elastics, very near ice elastics, very medieval process to change those in the garage without
00:11:03completely disassembling the motorcycle, hanging things from the rafters to hold the chassis up. And,
00:11:10but it was all tip top and fresh. It was as good as a, as a 74 Commando could be from a vibration
00:11:16perspective because the ice elastic is a rubber mounting, not that different from what Harley uses
00:11:22even to this day. And, uh, I, I let him ride it and he, he, uh, he jumped off the bike within a couple
00:11:29of miles and was gobsmacked. Like, how do you ride that? I thought, wow, this is like the best kind of,
00:11:38this is the least vibratory parallel twin that Britain had made at that point. And wow, it was
00:11:45unrideable. So, yeah, in his modern view. Yeah. But I mean, well, this, this reminds me of going to ride,
00:11:54uh, with, um, early prototypes of Indians, new motorcycles at a test track in Texas.
00:12:04And the Indian folks, they had various Harleys as like baselines, you know, and we were riding
00:12:11the new bikes, which were solid mountain balanced and, uh, et cetera, sounded great. You know,
00:12:17they did an exceptional job making them sound the way you'd want it to sound. Um,
00:12:21um, and we had a rubber mount, uh, we had a dyna there and, uh, they were just like, why,
00:12:30why would you ever, why would you do this? Like you just put balancers in it and then,
00:12:34and they're not wrong in that sense. Like it does dynas and rubber mounting engines in a lot of ways,
00:12:40it's nonsense at this point, because we can do a good job with balancers. We can make them as smooth
00:12:45as we want, pretty practically any configuration. But I think they were
00:12:52you know, the relationship had been established with the animal nature of rubber mounting. But again,
00:13:01the Indian was not shackled by anything. It was, how do we make an exceptionally nice
00:13:06American motorcycle with a lot of torque and the right sound and the look. And they just did what
00:13:11they did. They didn't have to, you know, there wasn't some dude named Earl in the drafting department
00:13:16who was, who was pissed that we didn't have a roller bottom end or something, you know?
00:13:24Well, I think, uh, the problem for both of these manufacturers is,
00:13:29is how to identify the elements that the market demands, requires, responds to.
00:13:38This is a form of communication. It's a language, I gather.
00:13:42Uh, and yet provide modern vehicular qualities that will pass exhaust emissions, sound emissions,
00:13:55um, and which will be durable because people are accustomed to cars that you'd never have to do
00:14:03anything to. Yeah.
00:14:06And I'm sure there are lots of people that just the warranty and all that is just a lot of paperwork.
00:14:11I'll get to that someday. And they just keep driving their car and adding oil to it. And it just keeps
00:14:16on going. And this is the nature of the motorcycle that has to be built today.
00:14:23There are the super purists like one who told me a motor company hasn't built a good motorcycle since 1936.
00:14:34Ride that one across the country.
00:14:38It's a good hobby. It's a nice hobby, but as a way to live, maybe not, but you can interfere.
00:14:44You can, without, uh, thought, put your foot in it. When you design something, as they discovered
00:14:54at Indian with the aluminum frames, which are technically excellent, but they discovered that
00:15:01what customizers want, and every American motorcycle buyer is a potential customizer,
00:15:10is to be able to modify everything. And you're not going to start welding onto an aluminum frame
00:15:17with a lot of confidence in the result. It's not easy to rake your neck. You're right. Yeah.
00:15:23So, uh, the first step is to make sure that tubing is where you see it, where you can see the frame,
00:15:33it's tubing. But the current, uh, stylist, Ola Stendegaard, has a further requirement that he places on all of these parts,
00:15:47such as the frame. He says he wants every element to have artistic merit on its own.
00:15:55And he said, I collect all these old things, and I see that the frame lugs in the olden days, motorcycles were built like bicycles.
00:16:07They had frame lugs, and they put the tubing into bored holes in the frame lug and brazed it all into one piece.
00:16:13Well, those frame lugs, in Stendegaard's view, showed the artistic sensibilities of the people at the foundry that made these parts.
00:16:30Now, there are people who imagine that engineers are without aesthetic sensibility.
00:16:40But look at the Colt 1911 handgun, and then look at a modern stapler, because that's what modern automatic pistols look like.
00:16:53The 1911 has a rightness about it, and this is what Stendegaard is talking about.
00:16:59He wants it to be rewarding for you to look at any part and say, that's really nice.
00:17:07Reminds me of Gary's dipstick.
00:17:11So Gary Gray was working on product at the time when, you know, he'd been with Victory since pretty much the beginning
00:17:18and figured out how to do all the things that Polaris hadn't done, which is like, how do you drop test the fuel tank?
00:17:26Like, you have to hit the fuel tank in minus 30 degree weather or whatever, and it can't crack and leak.
00:17:32And they've got just, there's like zillions of tests that you have to figure out how to do.
00:17:35And Gary was there for all of that.
00:17:37And so he has a really great sense about history and the brand, the meaning of the brand, and the relationship of people with the materials.
00:17:49And Gary's dipstick, this is, I have to tell this every time we talk about this, because it's just awesome.
00:17:54So at that test track in, in, uh, Texas, I'm looking at the bike.
00:18:00I, I was hearing things.
00:18:01I said, I hear something in the back and the engineer, you know, they brought him over and I said, there's, there's like a bearing noise in the back.
00:18:08I'm like, Oh, we're going to change the press on the bearing.
00:18:10And I was really getting into, you know, like, this is a neat time to see a motorcycle because it's farther from ideal, you know, you're never hitting the ideal.
00:18:20Like the production bike has its flaws, but this was earlier than that.
00:18:24So you got to kind of see under the, under the skirts a little bit.
00:18:27And it was a lot of fun.
00:18:29And I'm contemplating the bike and I'm thinking big engine.
00:18:32Is it too big?
00:18:33Maybe it's 10% too big.
00:18:34I don't know.
00:18:34It's probably fine.
00:18:35And, and I looked down and I go, man, that dipstick and I go, and I, it's this big, beautiful, shiny steel piece.
00:18:43And I unscrew it.
00:18:44And it's like, it weighs a pound.
00:18:47It's just, it's dense and wonderful.
00:18:50And I said, man, this dipstick's amazing.
00:18:51So I screw it back in and I see Gary and I'm like, I walk over to Gary and I'm like, Gary, that dipstick is insane, man.
00:18:58That is beautiful.
00:18:59And he's like, who told you to say that?
00:19:01And, and he had fought, he had fought really hard because he wanted, he didn't want, you know, they said the first dipstick was like a piece of plastic that you'd stick in a lawnmower.
00:19:11And he's like, we can't, we can't do that.
00:19:14And so that he, he fought for this dipstick because every, I don't know, when you're making a motorcycle, every cent counts.
00:19:20It's like people fight over half a penny sometimes.
00:19:23This thing.
00:19:24Yeah, so he, he fought for the dipstick and so they named it Gary's dipstick and he was sure it was a setup that somebody said, oh, go talk about the dipstick.
00:19:34But it was just really nice.
00:19:36And it's interesting what I remember that talking to Ola because we had had an interview with Ola a number of years ago.
00:19:42And I remember him saying that about his parts and about design.
00:19:45And, and it actually goes back to when he was at BMW, they came out with the R18 and he had actually done quite a bit of work on the R18 from a design perspective.
00:19:57And I was talking to the head of design and I think it's just a, it's a repackaged Ola Stenegard quote because he said, every part needs to show love.
00:20:07And that's what, uh, the fellow at BMW, the head of design had said about every part has to show love.
00:20:13And I'm sure that that was a resonant frequency coming out of Ola and his time there.
00:20:17Yeah.
00:20:18Um, we, we, with Ola Stenegard, uh, I want to say 2001, we did a, um, he built a custom based around the, um, Super Hawk engine, a Honda Super Hawk engine.
00:20:31And we had photographs of that, uh, so it would have been baby Stenegard way back, you know, 20, 25 years ago, but he was a huge customizer still is, you know, he's got a shop and it's got big beams and he's got anvils and, uh, you know, he's building customs, big, just those very, uh, Northern European extreme chopper type things.
00:20:54It was cool.
00:20:55Anyway, it was a really neat bike.
00:20:56It's in our magazine.cycleworld.com archive.
00:20:59You can go, uh, check out the archive and, and, uh, search for Ola Stenegard and you will see that bike.
00:21:06Um, but yeah, every part must show love.
00:21:10Um, so the brand Indian brand, just like Harley is an endowment.
00:21:16It's always how I've looked at it.
00:21:18You get all of this cultural weight and it's got the machinery there, you know, is the avatar of the soul, you know, on earth.
00:21:27And, uh, Indian was an endowment and that's really how Gary Gray and company treated it.
00:21:34The whole company, you know, showed a lot of respect to what Indian was in the minds of people.
00:21:40And then they did their technical work to make it a really fine motorcycle because the chassis, the steering, the brakes, the way the engines ran was really exceptionally nice.
00:21:54I mean, it was a, they're great motorcycles, but they have evolved to suit the market.
00:21:59And the beginning of that endowment was swoopy fenders.
00:22:02And here's our big air cold flat head ish, not a flat head, but it looks like it.
00:22:09And, uh, they did all of that.
00:22:10And if you look at the, if you look at the product line now, it's very distinctly modern Indian and try to find swoopy fenders.
00:22:18They're there, they're still there, but it's moved on, you know, it's moved on to big American style, modern motorcycles.
00:22:28And they've got, you know, I mean, we can talk about the evolution of the engines.
00:22:32We can talk about FTR 750 and again, validating the ownership going in and building a purpose-built flat track race bike.
00:22:40Highly focused, never intended for the street, just we're going to, we need to do this because it was a four speed and there's no room for six.
00:22:49Yeah.
00:22:50And Hedstrom and the other guy met at a racetrack, right?
00:22:56Yep.
00:22:57So it's like, you, you kind of got to do it.
00:23:00I was always surprised that, that Harley didn't just redo the XR to come back and try and kick in, kick Indian's ass, you know, but it's happening in baggers.
00:23:10So there you go.
00:23:12It's happening in baggers.
00:23:14The unexpected diversion of the American motorcycle.
00:23:18Well, one of the things that Greg Brew said fairly long ago was that they did quite a lot of research and interviewed a lot of people, motorcyclists, about the features of traditional Indians that appealed to them.
00:23:38And among them, most of the, most of the appeal, it seemed focused on the engine, although those swoopy fenders are a standout.
00:23:52They said the parallel pushrod tubes, well, flatheads, it's, it's, it's, it's short tappets, but parallel like they are on a sportster, like, pardon me, like they were on a sportster, that the cylinder head should overhang the cylinder.
00:24:12That's because the valves were at the side rather than in, in the cylinder head.
00:24:18So that was an important element in the look and that the fins should be angled so that they would gather air from what was passing down the sides of the machine and guide it across the hot parts.
00:24:32Now, that was not what people said about it.
00:24:36They just said those fins, you know, they're like angled and what is a fellow to do?
00:24:45Indian was starting out.
00:24:47They took all that quite seriously.
00:24:49So the Thunderstroke engine has features that vaguely resemble those of a side valve or flathead, but it is an overhead valve engine with two valves.
00:25:02So in a way it is disingenuous, but they were trying to find out how they could enter this market, which the Japanese tried very hard for many years to enter and failed.
00:25:22So this was serious matter.
00:25:27Yeah, they did well for a while.
00:25:28There were, there were, there were plenty of Japanese cruisers that, you know, Virago's made an impact, but in terms of that longevity, particularly on the high end, the big, the big, big B twins, like, yeah, they got put out of business.
00:25:43They're just like, man, that's fine.
00:25:46Yeah.
00:25:46We're going to deemphasize these models.
00:25:49Yeah.
00:25:49So I was delighted when I went to see the engine they're now calling Power Plus, which was at the time called Raptor, to see that it is a, it is an American V-twin by definition because it's made here.
00:26:13And it is a V-twin, but it is an international engine in terms of the sources of its concepts, its engineering.
00:26:24And it does not carry any load from the past.
00:26:30For example, if you want to make something that evokes the Triumph Heritage, it has to have a multiplicity of screws holding the timing case in place.
00:26:41And I think that was brave.
00:26:46They did their part with Thunderstroke, and the new engine was going to be all that an American big-inch V-twin could be, namely, make plenty of power with a wide torque curve, which is possible.
00:27:07It's easier with four valves than it is with two, although many people are not aware of this.
00:27:13Four valves gives you versatility that two valves cannot.
00:27:20And if you want that versatility to serve you a broad, tall torque curve, it will.
00:27:29Whereas with two valves, the problem in the past has been torque curve shape.
00:27:35And the Indian engineers who were showing me the Power Plus that day said, what we want is a rainbow-shaped torque curve that is strongest in the range where you travel, so that you can accelerate up an on-ramp, so that you can pass on the freeway with confidence.
00:27:58And without downshifting.
00:28:00And without downshifting.
00:28:01Yeah, without downshifting, yes.
00:28:03The torque is just, how much torque do you want?
00:28:06Rotate throttle to suit.
00:28:08Well, you can be conservative.
00:28:10You can get the airflow that you need to make power up here while also filling beautifully with conservative timing still.
00:28:20And not giving anything away by back-pumping at lower speed and having a weak, weak, poor little bottom end.
00:28:31These engines do not have weak bottom end.
00:28:34So, and if you're designing the balancers into your engine from the beginning, as Harley has done with the Milwaukee 8, you have advantages that you don't have when you're adding them to an existing design as with TC88B.
00:28:54Because the twin cam started life without balancers, and then they were added.
00:29:06So, what I'm confidently expecting is that Harley will, in time, reply with thoroughly modern engines of its own
00:29:21that interpret the American motorcycle language just as strongly as ever before.
00:29:32Another, of course, wonderful thing is Scout.
00:29:36Now, the original Indian Scout of 1920 was conceived because they were facing the Model T Ford, and they wanted a product that would broaden their sales space.
00:29:52And they said to themselves, there must be a fair number of people who are not athletic enough for our great big motorcycle.
00:30:03So, let's make a relative lightweight that is a bit sportier and not so tightly focused on going over the Rocky Mountains carrying a big load of baggage.
00:30:18So, that is also the motivation behind the new Scout, which was originally an 1130cc V-twin, 60-degree angle between the cylinders, double overhead camshafts, and currently a 12.5 to 1 compression ratio.
00:30:46So, this is an engine that could go places, if there were any places other than where it's at, required.
00:30:59But, why double overhead cams?
00:31:02It's because if you want narrow valve timing and high lift, which is the recipe for torque everywhere, it means that when you open the valve, it suddenly has to accelerate very rapidly to a high lift and then just as quickly fall back down onto the base circle and to a soft landing.
00:31:25And that means, if you're going to accelerate the valves that hard, the whole valve train has to be, have as few parts as possible.
00:31:37Wonderful things have been accomplished with push rods and rockers.
00:31:42When people say, push this as far as it will go, we're all amazed at how far it has gone.
00:31:49For example, in Harley's Drag Race bike, which is no longer supported, but it was a fabulous device in its time.
00:32:05And its rocker arms looked like the rocker arms that engineering students wake up at four o'clock in the morning saying, I see it, I see it.
00:32:16Because in the old days, I have a book on, on souping the 650 triumph for all sorts of, you know, drag racing, what have you.
00:32:29And they show people lightening the rocker arms by taking away metal from the very place where you need to have more of it.
00:32:38Well, it will be lighter.
00:32:39Yes, and of course, it took a while for the idea of stiffness to take precedence over lightness.
00:32:49When I asked the Indian engineers about the crankshaft in Power Plus, which is a one-piece plane-bearing crankshaft with side-by-side rods,
00:33:06what about the vibratory modes and the NVH noise, vibration, harshness?
00:33:15NVH engineer said, all large modes are outside the engine's range, which is wonderful to hear,
00:33:26because how many of the beautiful singles that people restore for vintage racing wallow out their main bearings?
00:33:34Take it to the machinist.
00:33:36He bores it out again.
00:33:38He makes new hats to press in with flanges that can be screwed to the crankcasehaft.
00:33:47Dare I say, Velocet.
00:33:49So, correcting past errors is certainly laudable.
00:33:58But we'd like to have parts that don't need correction.
00:34:04And a crankshaft whose vibratory modes are out of range of the engine's RPM, that's a wonderful thing.
00:34:13All engineers would strive for this naturally.
00:34:16So, Scout is remarkable in one sense, because it has nearly constant torque from 2,000 RPM on out to, what is it, nearly 8,000, I think.
00:34:32It's a beautiful torque curve.
00:34:33Yeah, it really is.
00:34:34And it's not a curve.
00:34:36It's a mesa.
00:34:36It's a table.
00:34:37And people think people still associate long strokes with high torque.
00:34:48There's a reason for that, but not the one that people think.
00:34:52When people look at it, they say, well, it stands to reason that the torque would be high,
00:34:57because there's a larger, a longer arm that the piston is pressing down on.
00:35:02But if you're deciding, we're building a 74, we're building an 80, or whatever it is,
00:35:10if you make the stroke longer, you're making the bore smaller.
00:35:14So, the force pushing down is getting to be itsy-bitsy, as the stroke is becoming muscularly long.
00:35:21So, wake up, people.
00:35:26What's going on with Scout?
00:35:28And the intake area as well.
00:35:30It has a bore-to-stroke ratio that is similar to that of 750 superbikes of 30 years ago.
00:35:40It's like a racing engine.
00:35:43And yet, it has this wonderful, tall, wide torque curve.
00:35:50And it's not a rainbow, and it's not a shed roof, which is what you get with two valves.
00:35:57Lots of torque in the low to bottom mid-range, and then it slopes down.
00:36:05Oh, the lean-to shed, you mean.
00:36:07Yes, because those two valves are gradually running out of breath.
00:36:14And so, the cylinder filling decreases.
00:36:17And if you're burning less fuel and air, the force exerted on the crankshaft decreases.
00:36:24That is, the torque slowly declines.
00:36:27So, it's unusual in this area for an engine like Scout to bring these excellent qualities to market.
00:36:41But it's not a fairy tale, because it's been done by so many manufacturers on two wheels and four.
00:36:51And it's just good engineering.
00:36:55Yeah, Scout gave them a little freedom.
00:36:57You know, they had clicked into the psyche of the traditional American motorcyclists with their big swoopy fenders.
00:37:05And then here comes Scout, and Scout can be anything they want it to be.
00:37:09And, you know, why would you choose a 60 instead of a 45 or a 50?
00:37:13Well, because there's more room for intake flow.
00:37:17You know, you don't have to turn the corner as hard.
00:37:19So, make it a 60, make it liquid cool, give it double overhead cam.
00:37:23Scout was a performance bike.
00:37:24It was meant to be lighter.
00:37:26And away you go.
00:37:28Also, we have the pistons are doing this motion.
00:37:32And when they get to bottom center, their skirts are going to hit.
00:37:36If it's a big bore and a 45 degree or a 42 degree V angle.
00:37:44So, the V angle has to be larger for a number of reasons.
00:37:49One of them is piston skirt collision.
00:37:52And another one is more room upstairs for the intake system.
00:37:58Good.
00:37:59We like it.
00:38:00Now, they built the FTR 750 dirt track engine using their Swiss operation, Swiss Auto.
00:38:19And I went there to see this engine in pieces and also operating on the dyno.
00:38:25And it's just good racing engine practice.
00:38:33It's four valves per cylinder, double overhead cam, all the things that dear old Dick O'Brien at Harley Davidson,
00:38:43their racing manager of many years, didn't consider necessary or appropriate in 1972 when the aluminum XR was designed.
00:38:53But as it came up against things like wildly modified Kawasaki twins,
00:39:03which did have all those overhead camshafts and four valves per cylinder,
00:39:09those Kawasaki-based things became really fast.
00:39:14And so, what are you going to do?
00:39:18So, that engine dominated the U.S. dirt track for a period of time.
00:39:24And now, they're going to try to do without it and have only modified production engines in the class,
00:39:31which is a lovely ideal.
00:39:34But as we saw in Moto2, oh, we're going to open up frame design to human creativity,
00:39:43which is boundless.
00:39:46One chassis predominated for a long time, the Kalex.
00:39:51Because everyone tested, they liked the Kalex best.
00:39:55That's what they bought.
00:39:56The other chassis accumulated in a pile in a back room somewhere.
00:40:00So, variety is not necessarily going to come at the bidding of race sanctioning bodies.
00:40:13Yeah, it's the age-old question also, what is production?
00:40:17Well, those Kawasaki's weren't production because they had to have longer stroke,
00:40:24bigger bore, all kinds of modifications to the head, which may include welding,
00:40:32and real machine shop project.
00:40:37You, are you a tool and die man?
00:40:39You have a lot of automotive experience, machine shop stuff,
00:40:44maybe a little light design work on the side?
00:40:48Might be a future for you in dirt track.
00:40:50Yeah, I mean, FTR, you know, they famously just pulled one out of the dealership
00:40:55and took it racing.
00:40:56And, I mean, it was a race bike ready to go, pretty much.
00:40:59I mean, there were maybe a few changes that you might make, but...
00:41:03Supported by a parts book.
00:41:06Parts book.
00:41:06Is that production?
00:41:08Sounds like production.
00:41:09You don't have to go to the lathe and the mill and the grinder to make another.
00:41:13Yeah.
00:41:14Just order under the part number.
00:41:16Oh, here's the UPS.
00:41:18Makes you want to epoxy a stator on the outside of it and give it about 200 watts of power,
00:41:24throw some lights, lean it out, choke it down, get it through sound, emissions,
00:41:30make it production.
00:41:31Yep.
00:41:33The RC45.
00:41:34Anyway, yeah, it's interesting.
00:41:38It was a beautiful project.
00:41:39It was just, it was cool again to see.
00:41:42I mean, what a dream for a company of enthusiasts to say we have, it's not to say we don't have
00:41:56constraints.
00:41:56There are always constraints, but you're walking in and you're saying, how do we build a race
00:42:03bike?
00:42:04Let's build an ideal flat track race bike.
00:42:06Let's do the best job that we can with no, we're not fettered by using this, this engine
00:42:12that we've made for an entry level 750 because the Harley 750s are fast, you know, the street
00:42:18based ones, but they're, you know, I mean, Vance and Heinz was doing what Vance and Heinz
00:42:23does and it's like a whole lot of billet in there making that and they're gorgeous and
00:42:29they were, they're fast and a Harley in the production class has won this year and it's
00:42:34cool.
00:42:34Like that's fine.
00:42:36Well, there's a problem here because a lot of people would see the FTR as an unfair advantage.
00:42:43Oh, it's got double overhead cams, got four valves per cylinder.
00:42:47It's, it's, it's not fair.
00:42:50It's probably just blows past everything.
00:42:53Well, before that bike appeared, people had tried to run, uh, KTM engines that stock claim
00:43:04is 122 horsepower.
00:43:06And what did they do?
00:43:08They stayed in the corners rather than accelerating off of them because they couldn't hook them
00:43:13up.
00:43:14Yeah.
00:43:15And when, when Swiss auto shipped engines, race ready engines to, uh, Polaris, they had
00:43:27way too much power, way too much power.
00:43:32They weren't race ready.
00:43:34They had to tone them down until they hooked up.
00:43:39And that's what the Harley did so well for so many years is that they had made so many
00:43:47little variations.
00:43:49Oh, that didn't help.
00:43:50Oh, that helped a little less, a little bit more.
00:43:52No.
00:43:53And gradually they had found the sweet spot for everything.
00:44:01And that was Indian's problem was to find the sweet spot for everything.
00:44:07Ultimately they did.
00:44:09Very much to their credit, but it was not horsepower.
00:44:13Yeah.
00:44:13It was the ability to hook up and accelerate.
00:44:18So even to this, even to this day, when I get on a middleweight KTM, you know, something
00:44:22in the 18 or in the 800 range, uh, they really take that ready to race thing, uh, pretty
00:44:31seriously.
00:44:32And the internals are light, like the amount of inertia, you just feel it.
00:44:37I mean, it's just rapid revving.
00:44:39I mean, it's like, wow.
00:44:41And, uh, you imagine that spinning up mightily and uncontrollably in the dirt without taking,
00:44:48you know, mitigations.
00:44:50Now here's another thing that is, um, kind of on the surface of it, hard to swallow.
00:44:58Any of us who've had older motorcycles, engines apart, know that the pistons look like upside
00:45:06down buckets or for some parts of this great nation, pails, coffee cans.
00:45:12Yes.
00:45:13And they were full skirted.
00:45:14They had to be because they needed to be in touch with the cylinder walls in order to
00:45:19run at an acceptable temperature.
00:45:22As time passed, uh, pistons grew shorter.
00:45:27They squared off at the side.
00:45:30So they weren't touching there.
00:45:32Uh, the, the wrist, wrist pin grew shorter.
00:45:36Eventually they became just a disc with the piston rings in it, little skirt here, little skirt
00:45:43back here, bosses up to the crown with the wrist pin through it.
00:45:48That's it.
00:45:49And to see that, uh, big inch Harley laid out on a table at that test was just, uh, a wonderful
00:46:04surprise because this great big Harley engine has those abbreviated pistons like you would
00:46:13find in a racing engine.
00:46:14What are they doing in a production bike?
00:46:17The lighter, the lighter, the lighter, the rod can be the lighter, the piston and the
00:46:24rod can be the less massive counterweight there has to be whirling around on the crankshaft
00:46:32and the bearings.
00:46:33Oh, we can make them smaller because they're not carrying all that pounding.
00:46:40Why don't those pistons overheat?
00:46:43They have thin crowns.
00:46:45Won't they just get hot and weak and just cave in on the top?
00:46:50Which we've all seen because they have a feature that was applied to motorcycles by Tom Sifton
00:47:00who tuned for Joe Leonard in the 1950s, piston cooling oil jets.
00:47:11He, Tom Sifton, a Harley tuner, applied piston cooling oil jets and you will now find them
00:47:19on every kind of motorcycle because it allows the pistons to be lighter.
00:47:27They had to be heavy in the past because that extra weight of aluminum was the heat pathway,
00:47:32the heat highway.
00:47:34Now the heat highway goes to the oil cooler.
00:47:38And the connecting rods in these Indian big inchers, they have shanks that look narrow and of constant
00:47:52section.
00:47:53These engines don't turn tremendous rod, tremendous RPM so that the rods are trying to bend sideways.
00:48:02If you want to see that kind of rod, take apart a Honda Fireblade.
00:48:10That was basically a homologation special for a world superbike where the engine needs to turn
00:48:1915,000 or 16,000 RPM.
00:48:21Different job, different shape connecting rod.
00:48:25So I was delighted to see those abbreviated rods and those ashtray pistons in production engines
00:48:34where they belong for the reasons stated.
00:48:40Yeah, I was shocked to find out how much heat goes out through the rings themselves.
00:48:44That was always a surprise that I always envisioned like, well,
00:48:49you know, my 1958 Thames with a 1703 Ford console.
00:48:55Thames is an English Ford.
00:48:57It had the original pistons were split skirt and had five rings, I think.
00:49:04And, uh, it might've been just to get rid of heat or maybe the cylinders weren't as round
00:49:08as they should be.
00:49:09I don't know.
00:49:10But, um, any more, yeah, a couple of gas rings and an oil scraper and we're done.
00:49:15And it's just, as you say, a little cookie, a cookie with little tiny skirts fore and aft.
00:49:20And that's, that's the end of it.
00:49:22Yeah.
00:49:22You turn it upside down and there, there are two pairs of webs across it, uh, at 90 degrees,
00:49:30leaving nine cavities.
00:49:32And when these pistons are forged, uh, it's a thing of beauty, a nine cavity forging.
00:49:39And the wrist pin bosses are connected straight to the crown.
00:49:45You can't do that without oil jet cooling because heat from the crown will come down and cause
00:49:53wrist pin, wrist pins to pick up aluminum from the hot bore in the piston.
00:50:00And eventually the wrist pin will seize and you won't like it.
00:50:07So, um, things that weren't possible in the past become possible, uh, because of technical
00:50:16changes.
00:50:16And, um, it's almost relaxing to get back to the, to pull back a little bit from the depth
00:50:25of the engine and, and look at the continuing love affair between American riders and large
00:50:35V twin engines.
00:50:37I know that there are a lot of people who are diehard sport bike riders or off-road people,
00:50:44et cetera.
00:50:45I hope there's room for all of us.
00:50:48Yeah.
00:50:50There sure are a lot of ways to enjoy a motorcycle.
00:50:53There are.
00:50:54Yeah.
00:50:55Um, so they, uh, the scout was, was, uh, at one point turned into another model called
00:51:06FTR, uh, 1200 and 1200, 1250.
00:51:13Yeah.
00:51:131200.
00:51:14And it, it looked like a sort of an American Diavel because it had a trellis frame.
00:51:21It had a really rakish, uh, high exhaust and it just looked very sporty.
00:51:31It was inviting to look at.
00:51:33Yeah.
00:51:33They threw the 19s at it and gave it, gave it a very, uh, you know, flat track kind of
00:51:38essence trellis frame and really fun bike.
00:51:41And with the 19s, it actually had a really, it had an interesting and fun personality, which
00:51:47we enjoyed, but, um, 17s seem to have won the day, but, uh, it's a, it's a great sporting
00:51:56motorcycle and I think, you know, they're finding that with these kinds of, you know, like a
00:52:03standard pretty much is not the, um, is not the volume leader.
00:52:07You know, it's a, it's a thing that you would add to get some market share and to appeal to
00:52:11a different customer.
00:52:12But as we have observed with Harley Davidson, you know, the, um, Pan America, technically
00:52:21a great adventure bike, one of 10 best and, uh, great running engine, um, sold over 10,000
00:52:30in the first year, but it's sort of settled into maybe four to 5,000 a year.
00:52:35Um, and maybe that's it, you know, well, the thing about, uh, that I've been learning
00:52:48about Harley Davidson, of course, is the importance of, of, uh, cruisers, which, um, originally there
00:52:55were the long distance tour bikes, the, the retired mom and dad, uh, scene, and there
00:53:04was Sportster and for a time when it was imagined that Harley would have to compete with the
00:53:12Japanese, there was Air Maki, the Italian import.
00:53:17And even before that, there was the dreaded Hummer with transfer ports so small, you wondered
00:53:22if they were casting flaws.
00:53:25But the moment they dove into the custom business, let's build a factory custom motorcycle, just
00:53:38as Detroit decided to build factory hot rods.
00:53:44There aren't very many people who build hot rod cars, but there are a great many people
00:53:50who were interested in them and they sold the daylights out of those GTOs and other fancy
00:53:58cars, which were basically just an ordinary production car with a truck motor in it that was tuned
00:54:08for power rather than tractor torque.
00:54:12And it excited people.
00:54:16And I think the whole thing with cruisers, uh, tapped into something that wasn't even considered
00:54:24proper, namely the desire to cut your motorcycle up, paint it, change the gas tank, run a brakeless
00:54:34front wheel, extend the fork tubes, whatever you wanted to do and factory customs and
00:54:42enabled this to get its footing without having to be machinist, fine painting skills, uh, all
00:54:53those things that go into building an actual custom.
00:54:57So that's a different market altogether.
00:55:01Well, and from a business perspective, it's awesome.
00:55:03Yeah.
00:55:04From the business perspective, the variations on a theme is, is how you make a buck anyway.
00:55:09You know, you're, you're keeping the essential big, expensive parts of the motorcycle, the
00:55:13same, and you're bringing back the tombstone taillight, or you're putting the tall bars,
00:55:19you're making a skinny bike, you're making a long bike, you're making a fat bike, large
00:55:23section tires or skinny little tires.
00:55:25You're doing things that change the look, change the vibe, the essential, uh, say the core
00:55:33of the motorcycle is the artistic package and it has the proportion and visual vibe that
00:55:39you're looking for.
00:55:40And then you're dressing it up with all that other stuff.
00:55:42And it costs you less to do that than to come out with a new engine.
00:55:47So sure does.
00:55:48Just like, uh, electronic router aids in 2002, um, MotoGP collided with too much horsepower and
00:55:58they needed help and they were able ultimately to get it from the digital flight controls
00:56:07movement that had swept aviation coming from Apollo and had then been adopted militarily,
00:56:14commercially, and then by Formula One.
00:56:17And the Formula One people and the MotoG people have each other's phone numbers.
00:56:23So suddenly at a time of need, here were these wonderful new features, electronic rider aids,
00:56:30which for the cost of a few transistors made it unnecessary to have a bunch of new models.
00:56:38So yes, this is...
00:56:40Well, we don't have no rider aids and bagger racing in America.
00:56:44That's it.
00:56:45Well, again, this is...
00:56:48Just cowboys out there smoking big time.
00:56:50Motorcycles are supposed to be an island in the river of time.
00:56:55Yeah.
00:56:56Where you are safe.
00:56:58When those executives swept into the camp that Indian had set up at Bonneville, one of them
00:57:07had one of those bikes, they were Thunderstroke, great big things.
00:57:11One of those bikes had the same pale green, creamy paint job that my uncle's 1948 Buick had.
00:57:23He used to take us to the swimming hole in that car.
00:57:27It was a convertible.
00:57:30And that paint color really got to me.
00:57:33So I think all these little phonemes of visual communication add up to something serious.
00:57:48So it's an education.
00:57:55It is.
00:57:58Well, I got to say, Modern Indian has done a great job.
00:58:01They've just become Indian.
00:58:03That's just what they are.
00:58:04And they're evolving the brand.
00:58:06And, you know, get back in the day, Gary Gray said, it can be whatever it wants to be.
00:58:12You know, we can, we can, you know, we got to, we have to do certain things along the way,
00:58:16along the journey, fill the spiritual core and then take it from there.
00:58:22And, um, certainly I, I would bet, uh, I would bet real money that they've concepted adventure models
00:58:31and stuffed FTR 1200 motors in and Scout motors and all kinds of different things
00:58:37and played around with layouts and all that.
00:58:39I mean, imagine the fun and freedom that would give you.
00:58:44It's just got to be a business.
00:58:45That's the main thing.
00:58:46It's got to be a business.
00:58:48Everybody prototypes everything right along.
00:58:51And the committee reviews it and they decide, uh, nope.
00:58:59Just like John R. Bond commenting on his, uh, two years at Harley Davidson, starting in 1946.
00:59:07He said, we designed a lot of wonderful motorcycles and nothing came of it.
00:59:14So I left for the coast.
00:59:16I wish that I could get into the drawers and drawers or files and files of things that have never seen the light of day
00:59:25in, in, in Indian, in Harley, in Yamaha, Honda.
00:59:30I have it on good authority that they had a five cylinder V five street bike.
00:59:36Yeah.
00:59:38Damn it.
00:59:39And what did we get?
00:59:43Not that.
00:59:44Yeah.
00:59:45That was during the era of V that was during the era of that exploratory CTX 1300s.
00:59:53Those were kind of very like bullet low V things that were interesting, but it was not resonating
00:59:59with the market, not resonating with enthusiasts.
01:00:02In any case, uh, excellent job up to this point, Indian.
01:00:05We can't just can't wait to see what's coming next.
01:00:09And it is that time of year where bagger racing is getting into full swing.
01:00:14And so we're going to see Harley's and Indians, big old honking, big bore are Indians doing
01:00:23it with the RPM and, uh, Harley gets a little more displacement and it's great.
01:00:29We'll see lots of, lots of quite visible sliding.
01:00:33Yeah.
01:00:34Which you usually don't see much of sliding is subtle in ordinary road racing, not in
01:00:39baggers, not in baggers.
01:00:41They, they slide all over the place and they are controllable slides.
01:00:46This is not one of those things where it goes and the rider kind of looks like, oh, uh,
01:00:51oh yes, I was doing something.
01:00:53Let's go on.
01:00:54We got wheelbase and we have controllable torque.
01:00:56Yes.
01:00:57All, all the torque you want.
01:00:58So, yep.
01:00:59And to watch, yeah, to watch, uh, you know, Wyman, Herfos and those guys do the things they
01:01:04do on those big bikes is magnificent.
01:01:07It's quite a show.
01:01:08I hope they get more bikes on the grid.
01:01:09Well, thanks for listening folks.
01:01:12Uh, podcast is brought to you by Octane.
01:01:14So you've got the shirt, um, click on the link prequal flex down below for real, click
01:01:19on that link and check it out.
01:01:20Um, you can get prequalified and go to dealership, same as cash and buy your dream bike.
01:01:26Um, check out the process for us.
01:01:28They keep us on the air.
01:01:30We appreciate very, we appreciate that very much.
01:01:33And, uh, but not as much as we appreciate you joining us every week for the show and,
01:01:39uh, we will catch you next time.