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.
00:01:51They 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 of the US
00:02:41market, because it was here in the good old USA that Henry Ford saw that making cars by hand by elderly
00:02:50gentleman with octagon spectacles with wireframes was not the key to a mass market. And the US had a big
00:03:04industrial revolution that started really with the Civil War and just kept roaring. And it created
00:03:10a lot of technical managerial people with disposable income. And by 1913, motorcycles were really popular in
00:03:25the US. And 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. So that was a tough one.
00:03:40Whereas in England, the registrations of cars and bikes were quite similar through the 1920s.
00:03:48And then of course, the US had the terrible 1929 Great Depression. And that basically killed
00:03:59everything but Harley and Indian. So, and Indian, although they had been technical leaders in 1911,
00:04:10they swept the Isle of Man TT with two speed bikes with dog ring shifting, supposed to be terribly
00:04:19modern. Now, what was it in 1911? But without wider sales than police departments and adventuresome young
00:04:32people. Motorcycles in the US were sort of cut off at the knees. And they couldn't spend a lot of R&D
00:04:47money because they didn't have it. And then what they did have was taken away by the depression.
00:04:54And 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 they, the original Indian company closed its doors forever. Whereas Harley-Davidson in 1929,
00:05:24they, they took a step into the future by adopting a side valve flathead construction,
00:05:33which was simplified and more durable than the old intake over exhaust or F head
00:05:43that Harley had made for so many years, the, the V series.
00:05:48That 1929 D model was a 45 and it had side valves and it helped them to survive. And by 1936,
00:06:00the US 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
00:06:26continuity all the way back to their origin. Whereas Indian was cut off in 1953. Now,
00:06:35when I was in Colorado in the summer of 63, I saw those 80 inch flatheads with their deeply valanced fenders
00:06:46and their distinctive engine appearance. Still on the road, old timers going up the Rocky Mountains on these
00:06:5580 inch Indians that were so distinctive. But since that time, if anyone expected the Indian name to just
00:07:05evaporate like water on a recently washed floor, forget it. Because as Mark said,
00:07:13the moment they added the name Indian, the brand to their portfolio motorcycle sales,
00:07:23that Polaris doubled.
00:07:25So that's power.
00:07:27To be fair, it is based on the product. Certainly the brand was a, an incredible boost for them, but
00:07:34at the heart you have to make a good motorcycle. And I think sometimes, I think sometimes people forget that
00:07:42or they, um, they want to infuse the motorcycle with qualities that
00:07:46aren't on the top of the motorcycle buyers list and Indian, you know, Indian reborn.
00:07:55Um, they, they, they started by what 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, uh, 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, with Polaris in the, uh,
00:08:33in the 12 to 14 era is that's the motorcycle that they came back with.
00:08:40There was the one we'd been waiting for. Looked like a flathead. I mean,
00:08:45a little disingenuous cause it's not, it's, it's very technologically based. It has an aluminum
00:08:50frame, had an aluminum frame. Um, and they really did what that company does, which is
00:08:57examine the market and build a motorcycle that suited, you know, suited the marketplace with
00:09:04all 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,
00:09:13I was looking at some of the designs and, and their, the stuff for the side by sides,
00:09:19no center bearing. I was like, what? But for the, for the application, I mean, they're, they were,
00:09:25you know, they're, they're not more technological than Harley really. They're just, they had no,
00:09:33they, they weren't locked into certain traditions the way that Harley had continually, as they had
00:09:39continued to evolve. And like, we've got to keep these roller bearings and we need, you know,
00:09:43it's just certain things that you would retain. And Indian had that and Polaris really had that,
00:09:49had the freedom, you know, the slogan for victory for a while was the new American motorcycle.
00:09:55Yeah. And it was, it was meant to be a contrast from the old American motorcycle.
00:10:00Um, but, um, and this is the thing, this is the thing that, um, most people who want to buy a big
00:10:10American made motorcycle have some motorcycle experience. So they know what a motorcycle can
00:10:16do. They know that it has brakes of a certain, uh, power, uh, handling, precise steering, et cetera.
00:10:25So that defines what a motorcycle is in the modern era and what people will expect,
00:10:32which is why you can't build a parallel twin, uh, with its tremendous vibration anymore.
00:10:41Because as people who've ridden borrowed, uh, triumphs say, were they all like that?
00:10:48Yeah. I've, I had traded motorcycles with a colleague and I handed him my 1974 Norton Commando
00:10:57with new ice elastics, very near ice elastics, very medieval process to change those in the garage
00:11:02without completely disassembling the motorcycle, hanging things from the rafters to hold the chassis
00:11:09up. And, but it was all tip top and fresh. It was as good as a, as a 74 Commando could be from a
00:11:15vibration perspective because the ice elastic is a rubber mounting, not that different from what
00:11:20Harley uses even to this day. And, uh, I let him ride it and he, he, uh, he jumped off the bike
00:11:28within a couple of miles and was gobsmacked. Like, how do you ride that? I thought, wow,
00:11:36this is like the best kind of, this is the least vibratory parallel twin that Britain had made
00:11:42at that point. And wow, it was unrideable. So yeah. In his modern view. Yeah.
00:11:50But I mean, well, this, this reminds me of going to ride, uh, with, um, early prototypes of Indians,
00:12:01new motorcycles at a test track in Texas. And the Indian folks, they had various Harleys as like
00:12:09baselines, you know, and we were riding the new bikes, which were solid mountain balanced and,
00:12:13uh, et cetera, sounded great. You know, they did an exceptional job making them sound the way you'd
00:12:20want it to sound. Um, and we had a rubber mount, uh, we had a Dyna there and, uh, they were just like,
00:12:29why, why 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.
00:12:39In a lot of ways, it's nonsense at this point, because we can do a good job with balancers.
00:12:44We can make them as smooth as we want, pretty practically any configuration, but I think they
00:12:49were, you know, the relationship had been established with the animal nature of rubber mounting.
00:12:58But again, the 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
00:13:12they 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 ever roll our bottom end or something, you know?
00:13:21Well, I think, uh, the problem for both of these manufacturers is, is how to identify
00:13:31the elements that the market demands, requires, responds to. This is a form of communication. It's a
00:13:41language I gather. Uh, and yet provide modern vehicular qualities that will pass exhaust emissions,
00:13:54sound emissions, um, and which will be durable because people are accustomed to cars that you'd
00:14:02never have to do anything to. Yeah.
00:14:05And 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. There are the super
00:14:24purists like one who told me, uh, motor company hasn't built a good motorcycle since 1936.
00:14:31And I should ride that one across the country. Uh, it's a good hobby. It's a nice hobby, but as a way to live,
00:14:41maybe not, but you can interfere. You can, without, uh, thought, put your foot in it.
00:14:50When you design something as they discovered at Indian with the aluminum frames, which are technically
00:14:58excellent, but they discovered that what customizers want and every American motorcycle buyer is a
00:15:08potential customizer is to be able to modify everything. And you're not going to start welding
00:15:15onto an aluminum frame with a lot of confidence in the result. It's not easy to rake your neck. You're
00:15:22right. Yeah. So, uh, the first step is to make sure that tubing is where you see it, where you can see the
00:15:32frame, it's tubing, but the current, uh, stylist, Ola Stendegaard has a further requirement that he
00:15:45places on all of these parts, such as the frame, he says, he wants every element to have artistic merit
00:15:54on its own. And he said, I collect all these old things. And I see that the frame lugs in the olden
00:16:04days, motorcycles were built like bicycles. They had frame lugs and they put the tubing into board
00:16:10holes in the frame lug and brazed it all into one piece. Well, those frame lugs in Stendegaard's view
00:16:19showed the artistic sensibilities of the people at the, at the, um, foundry that made these parts.
00:16:31Now, there are people who imagine that engineers are without aesthetic sensibility,
00:16:39but look at the Colt 1911 handgun, and then look at a modern stapler because that's what modern
00:16:49automatic pistols look like. The 1911 has a rightness about it. And this is what Stendegaard is talking
00:16:58about. He wants it to be rewarding for you to look at any part and say, that's really nice.
00:17:06It reminds me of Gary's dipstick. So Gary Gray was, uh, uh, working on product at the time when,
00:17:15you know, he'd been, been with victory since pretty much the beginning and figured out how to
00:17:19do all the things that, uh, players hadn't done, which is like, how do you, how do you, uh,
00:17:25drop test the fuel tank? Like you have to hit the fuel tank and minus 30 degree weather or whatever,
00:17:30and it can't crack and leak. And they've got just, there's like zillions of tests that you have to
00:17:34figure out how to do. And Gary was there for all of that. And so, um, he has a really great sense about
00:17:43history and the brand, the meaning of the brand and the relationship of people with
00:17:47the materials and Gary's dipstick. This is, I have to tell this every time we talk about this because
00:17:53it's just awesome. So at that test track in, in, uh, Texas, I'm looking at the bike. I was hearing
00:18:01things. I said, I hear something in the back and the engineer, you know, they brought him over and
00:18:05I said, there's, there's like a bearing noise in the back and like, oh, we're going to change the
00:18:09press on the bearing. And I was really getting into, you know, like, this is a neat time to see a
00:18:13motorcycle because it's farther from ideal. You know, you're never hitting the ideal. Like the
00:18:20production bike has its flaws, but this was earlier than that. So you got to kind of see
00:18:25under the, under the skirts a little bit. And it was a lot of fun and I'm contemplating the bike
00:18:30and I'm thinking big engine. Is it too big? Maybe it's 10% too big. I don't know. It's probably fine.
00:18:36And I looked down and I go, man, that dipstick. And I go, and I, it's this big, beautiful,
00:18:42shiny steel piece and I unscrew it. And it's like, it weighs a pound. It's just, it's dense and wonderful.
00:18:50And I said, man, this dipstick's amazing. So I screw it back in and I see Gary and I'm like,
00:18:54I walk over to Gary and I'm like, Gary, that dipstick is insane, man. That is beautiful. And
00:18:59he's like, who told you to say that? And he had fought, he had fought really hard because he wanted,
00:19:06he didn't want, you know, they said the first dipstick was like a piece of plastic that you'd
00:19:10stick in a lawnmower. And he's like, we can't, we can't do that. And so that he fought for this dipstick
00:19:17because every, I don't know, when you're making a motorcycle, every cent counts. It's like people
00:19:21fight over half a penny sometimes. Yeah. So he, uh, he fought for the dipstick and so they named it
00:19:29Gary'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. And, um, it's interesting what I remember that talking to
00:19:39Ola because we had had an interview with Ola a number of years ago. And I remember him saying
00:19:43that about his parts and about design. And it actually goes back to when he was at BMW,
00:19:52they came out with the R18 and he had actually done quite a bit of work on the R18 from a design
00:19:56perspective. And I was talking to the head of design and I think it's just a, it's a repackaged
00:20:04Ola Stenegard quote because he said, every part needs to show love. And that's what, uh,
00:20:08yeah, the fella at BMW, the head of design had said about every part has to show love. And I'm sure
00:20:13that that was a resonant frequency coming out of Ola and his time there. Um, we, we, with Ola Stenegard,
00:20:21uh, I want to say 2001, we did a, um, he built a custom based around the, um,
00:20:29Super Hawk engine, a Honda Super Hawk engine. And we had photographs of that. Uh, so it would
00:20:34have been baby Stenegard way back, you know, 20, 25 years ago, but he was a huge customizer still is,
00:20:41you know, he's got a shop and it's got big beams and he's got anvils and, uh, you know,
00:20:47he's building customs, big, just those very, uh, Northern European extreme chopper type things.
00:20:54It was cool. Anyway, it was a really neat bike. It's in our magazine.cycleworld.com archive. You
00:20:59can 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. Um, so the brand Indian brand, just like Harley
00:21:14is an endowment. It's always how I've looked at it. You get all of this cultural weight
00:21:21and it's got the machinery there, you know, is the avatar of the soul, you know, on earth. And, uh,
00:21:30Indian was an endowment and that's really how Gary Gray and company treated it. The whole company,
00:21:36you 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,
00:21:47the steering, the brakes, the way the engines ran was really exceptionally nice. I mean, it was,
00:21:55they're great motorcycles, but they have evolved to suit the market. And the beginning of that
00:22:01endowment was swoopy fenders. And here's our big air cold flat head ish, not a flat head, but it looks
00:22:08like it. And, uh, they did all of that. And if you look at the mod, if you look at the product line
00:22:13now, it's very distinctly modern Indian and try to find swoopy fenders. They're there,
00:22:20they're still there, but it's moved on, you know, it's moved on to big American style,
00:22:26modern motorcycles. And 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
00:22:39flat track race bike, highly focused, never intended for the street. Just we're going to,
00:22:45we need to do this because it was a four speed and there's no room for six. Yeah. And
00:22:52Hedstrom and the other guy met at a racetrack, right? Yep.
00:22:57So it's like, you, you kind of got to do it. I was always surprised that, that Harley didn't just
00:23:04redo the XR to come back and try and kick in kick Indian's ass, you know, but it's happening in
00:23:09baggers. So there you go. It's happening in baggers. The unexpected diversion of the American motorcycle.
00:23:18Well, uh, one of the things that, uh, Greg Bruce said, uh, fairly long ago was that they did
00:23:29quite a lot of research and interviewed a lot of people, motorcyclists, about the features of
00:23:36traditional Indians that appealed to them. And among them, uh, most of the, most of the appeal,
00:23:44it seemed focused on the engine. Although those swoopy fenders, uh, are a standout.
00:23:53They said the parallel pushrod tubes, well, flatheads, it's, it's, uh, it's a short tappets,
00:24:02but, um, parallel like they are on a sportster, like, pardon me, like they were on a sportster,
00:24:08that the cylinder head should overhang the cylinder. That's because the valves were at the
00:24:15side rather than in, in the cylinder head. So that was an important element in the look
00:24:21and that the fins should be angled so that they would gather air from what was passing down the
00:24:28sides of the machine and guide it across the hot parts. Now 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. They took all that quite seriously. So the Thunderstroke engine has, uh,
00:24:54features that vaguely resemble those of a side valve or flathead, but it is an overhead valve
00:25:01engine with two valves per cylinder. So in a way it is, um, disingenuous, but they were trying to find
00:25:11out how they could enter this market, which, um, the Japanese tried very hard for many years to enter
00:25:20and failed. So, um, um, this was serious matter.
00:25:27Yeah, they did well for a while. There were, there were plenty of Japanese cruisers that,
00:25:32you know, Virago's made an impact, but in terms of the, that longevity, particularly on the high end,
00:25:39the big, the big, big V twins, like, yeah, they got put out of business. They're just like,
00:25:44that's fine. Yeah. We're going to deemphasize these models. Yeah. So, uh, I was delighted when I went to
00:25:56see, uh, the engineer now calling power plus, which was at the time called Raptor, uh, to see that it is
00:26:06a, it is an American V twin by definition because it's made here and it is a V twin, but it is an
00:26:17international engine in terms of the sources of its concepts, its engineering, and it does not carry
00:26:27any load from the past. For example, if you want to make something that evokes the triumph heritage,
00:26:34it has to have a multiplicity of screws holding the timing case in place. And, um,
00:26:42I think that was brave. They did their part with Thunderstroke and the new engine was going to be
00:26:53all that an American big inch V twin could be namely, uh, make plenty of power.
00:27:04With a wide torque curve, which is possible. It's easier with four valves than it is with two.
00:27:10Although many people are not aware of this, four valves gives you versatility that two valves
00:27:18cannot. And if you want that versatility to serve you a broad, tall torque curve, it will.
00:27:28Whereas with two valves, the problem in the past has been torque curve shape. And, uh, the Indian
00:27:38engineers who were showing me the, uh, power plus that day said, what we want is a rainbow shaped
00:27:47torque curve that is strongest in the range where you travel so that you can accelerate up an on-ramp
00:27:54so that you can pass on the freeway with confidence. And without downshifting.
00:28:01Yeah. Without downshifting. Yes. The torque is just, how much torque do you want? Rotate throttle to suit.
00:28:08Well, you can be conservative. You can get the airflow that you need to make power up here
00:28:14while also filling beautifully with conservative timings still.
00:28:20And not giving anything away by, uh, back pumping at lower speed and having a weak, weak, poor little
00:28:29bottom end. These, these engines do not have weak bottom end. So, uh, and if you're designing
00:28:38the balancers into your engine from the beginning, as Harley has done with, uh, with the Milwaukee eight,
00:28:47uh, you have advantages that you don't have when you're adding them to an existing design as with TC88B,
00:28:54uh, because the, the twin cam, uh, started life, uh, without balancers and then they were added.
00:29:05So, um, what I'm confidently expecting is that Harley will in time, uh, reply with thoroughly modern engines
00:29:20of its own that interpret the American motorcycle language just as strongly as ever before.
00:29:30Another, uh, of course, wonderful thing is Scout. Now the original Indian Scout, uh, of 1920 was conceived
00:29:44because 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
00:30:01big motorcycle. So let's make a relative lightweight that is a bit sportier and not so tightly focused on
00:30:14going over the Rocky Mountains carrying a big load of baggage. So that is also the motivation behind
00:30:24the new Scout, which, uh, was originally an 1130 CC V twin, 60 degree angle between the cylinders,
00:30:36double overhead camshafts, and, uh, currently a 12.5 to one compression ratio. So this is an engine that
00:30:51could go places if there were any places other than the, where it's at required. Uh, but why double overhead
00:31:02cams? Because if you want narrow valve timing and high lift, which is the recipe for torque
00:31:11everywhere, it means that when you open the valve, it suddenly has to accelerate very rapidly to a high
00:31:18lift 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,
00:31:34have as few parts as possible. Wonderful things have been accomplished, uh, with push rods and
00:31:42rockers. When 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, uh, Harley's drag race bike, which, um, is no longer supported, but it was a fabulous
00:32:03device in its time. And its rocker arms looked like the rocker arms that engineering students wake up at
00:32:12four o'clock in the morning saying, I see it. I see it. Because in the old days, I have a book on,
00:32:21on souping the 650 triumph for all sorts of, you know, drag racing, what have you. And they show
00:32:30people lightening the rocker arms by taking away metal from the very place where you need to have more
00:32:37of it. Well, it will be lighter. Yes. And of course it took a while for the idea of stiffness
00:32:46to take precedence over lightness. When I asked, uh, the, the, uh, Indian engineers about the crankshaft
00:32:57in, uh, power plus, which is a one piece plane bearing crankshaft, uh, with a side by side rods.
00:33:07What about the vibratory modes and the NVH noise, vibration, harshness? NVH engineer said,
00:33:17all, uh, large modes are outside the engine's range, which is wonderful to hear because how many
00:33:28of the beautiful singles that people restore for vintage racing, wallow out their main bearings,
00:33:35take it to the machinist. He bores it out again. He makes new hats to press in with flanges that can be
00:33:42screwed to the crankcase half. Dare I say, Velocet. So, uh, correcting past errors is certainly
00:33:57laudable, but we'd like to have parts that don't need correction and a crankshaft whose vibratory modes
00:34:07are out of range of the engine's RPM. That's a wonderful thing. All engineers would strive for this
00:34:15naturally. So scout is, is remarkable in one sense because it has nearly constant torque from,
00:34:26from 2000 RPM on out to, what is it? Nearly 8,000. I think it's a beautiful torque curve. Yeah,
00:34:34it really is. Yeah. And it's not a curve. It's a mesa. It's a table. And, uh, people think people
00:34:42still associate long strokes with high torque. There's a reason for that, but not the one that
00:34:51people think. When people look at it, they say, well, it stands to reason that the torque would be
00:34:56high because there's a larger, a longer arm that the piston is pressing down on. But if you're,
00:35:05if you're deciding we're building a 74 or we're building an 80 or whatever it is,
00:35:10if you make the stroke longer, you're making the bore smaller. So the force pushing down is getting
00:35:16to be itsy bitsy as a stroke is becoming muscularly long. So, uh, wake up people.
00:35:25Yeah. What's going on with scout is the intake area as well. We can, it has a bore to stroke ratio
00:35:34that is similar to that of seven 50 super bikes of 30 years ago. It's like a racing engine and yet it
00:35:43has this wonderful tall wide torque curve. And it's not a rainbow and it's not a shed roof,
00:35:55which is what you get with two valves. Lots of torque in the, in the low to bottom mid range.
00:36:04And then it slopes down.
00:36:05Oh, the lean to shed, you mean? Yes. Because those two valves are
00:36:11gradually running out of breath. And so the cylinder filling decreases. And if you're burning less fuel
00:36:20and air, the force exerted on the crankshaft decreases. That is the torque slowly declines.
00:36:27So it's, it's unusual in this area for an engine like scout to bring these excellent qualities, uh,
00:36:39to market, but it's not, uh, a fairy tale because it's been done by so many manufacturers
00:36:50on two wheels and four. And it's just good engineering.
00:36:55Yeah. Scout gave them a little freedom. You know, they had done, they had, they had, uh,
00:36:59clicked 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. And, uh, you know,
00:37:10why would you choose a 60 instead of a 45 or a 50? Well, because there's more room for
00:37:16intake flow, you know, you don't have to turn the corner as hard. So make it a 60, make it liquid
00:37:21cool, give it double overhead cam. Scout was a performance bike. It was meant to be lighter.
00:37:26And, uh, there, away you go.
00:37:27Also, we have the pistons are doing this motion. And when they get to bottom center,
00:37:34their skirts are going to hit if it's a big bore and a 45 degree or a 42 degree, uh, V angle.
00:37:44So the V angle, uh, has to be larger for a number of reasons. One of them is
00:37:50piston skirt collision. And another one is more room upstairs for the intake system.
00:37:56Good. We like it.
00:38:03Now they, they built the, the, uh,
00:38:08FTR 750 dirt track engine, uh, using their Swiss, um, operation, um, Swiss auto.
00:38:19And I went there to see this engine in pieces and also operating on the dyno.
00:38:27And it's, it's just good racing engine practice. It's four valves per cylinder,
00:38:35double overhead cam, all the things that, uh,
00:38:41dear old Dick O'Brien at Harley Davidson, their racing manager of many years,
00:38:46didn't consider necessary or appropriate, uh, in 1972 when the aluminum XR was designed.
00:38:54But as it came up against things like wildly modified, uh, 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.
00:39:12And so, uh, what are you going to do?
00:39:19So that engine dominated the US 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. But as we saw in moto two, oh, we're going to have,
00:39:38we're going to open up frame design to human creativity, which is boundless.
00:39:46One chassis predominated for a long time, the Kalex, because everyone tested,
00:39:53they liked the Kalex best. That's what they bought.
00:39:56The other chassis accumulated in a pile in a back room somewhere.
00:40:00So, uh, variety is not necessarily going to come at, at the bidding of, uh,
00:40:11race sanctioning bodies.
00:40:13Yeah. It's the age old question. Also, what is production?
00:40:16Well, and those Kawasaki's weren't production because they had to have longer stroke, bigger bore, uh,
00:40:26all kinds of modifications to the head, which may include welding and
00:40:35real machine shop project. You, uh, are you a tool and tool and die man?
00:40:39Yeah. You, uh, have a lot of automotive experience, machine shop stuff,
00:40:44maybe a little light design work on the side might be a future for you in dirt track.
00:40:51Yeah. I mean, FTR, you know,
00:40:52they famously just pulled one out of the dealership and took it racing. And I mean,
00:40:57it was a race bike ready to go pretty much. I mean, there are maybe a few changes that you might make,
00:41:01but supported by a parts, parts book, parts book. Is this a, is that production? Sounds like production.
00:41:08You don't have to go to the, to the lathe and the mill and the grinder to make another.
00:41:13Yeah. Just order under the part number. Oh, here's the, um, UPS.
00:41:19Makes you want to epoxy a stator on the outside of it and give it about 200 watts of power, throw some lights,
00:41:26lean it out, choke it down, get it through sound, emissions, make it production.
00:41:31Yep. Well, the RC 45 anyway. Yeah. It's interesting. Uh, it was a beautiful project. It was just,
00:41:40it was cool again to see, I mean, what a dream for a, a company of enthusiasts to say
00:41:52we have us. It's not to say we don't have constraints. There are always constraints, but
00:41:59you're walking in and you're saying, how do we build a race bike? Let's build an ideal flat track
00:42:05race bike. Let's do the best job that we can with no, we're not fettered by using this, this engine
00:42:11that we've made for an entry level seven 50. Cause the, the hardly seven fifties are fast, you know,
00:42:18the street based ones, but they're, you know, I mean, Vance and Heinz was doing what Vance and Heinz does.
00:42:23And it's like a whole lot of billet in there making that and they're gorgeous. And they were,
00:42:30they're fast. And, uh, a Harley in the production classes won this year and it's, it's cool. Like,
00:42:34that's fine. Well, there's a problem here because a lot of people, uh, would see the FTR as an unfair
00:42:43advantage. Oh, it's got double overhead cams, got four valves per cylinder. It's, it's, it's not fair.
00:42:49It's probably just blows past everything. Well, before that bike appeared, people had tried to run,
00:42:59uh, KTM engines that stock claim is 122 horsepower. And what did they do? They stayed in the corners
00:43:09rather than accelerating off of them because they couldn't hook them up. Yeah. When Swiss auto
00:43:17shipped engines, race ready engines to, uh, Polaris, they had way too much power,
00:43:30way too much power. They weren't race ready. They had to tone them down until they hooked up.
00:43:38And that's what the Harley did so well for so many years is that they had made so many
00:43:48little variations. Oh, that didn't help. Oh, that helped a little less, a little bit more. No.
00:43:53And gradually they had found the sweet spot for everything. And that was Indian's problem was to
00:44:04find the sweet spot for everything. Ultimately they did very much to their credit, but it was not
00:44:11horsepower. Yeah. It was the ability to hook up and accelerate. So even to this, even to this day,
00:44:19when I get on a middleweight KTM, you know, something in the 18 or in the 800 range, uh,
00:44:25they really take that ready to race thing, uh, pretty seriously. And the internals are light,
00:44:34like the amount of inertia, you just feel it. I mean, it's just rapid revving. I mean, it's like,
00:44:40wow. And, uh, you imagine that spinning up mightily and uncontrollably in the dirt without
00:44:46taking, you know, mitigations. Now, here's another thing that is, um, kind of on the surface of it,
00:44:57hard to swallow. Any of us who've had older motorcycles, engines apart, know that the pistons
00:45:04look like upside down buckets, or for some parts of this great nation, pails.
00:45:10Coffee cans. Yes. And they were full skirted. They had to be because they needed to be in
00:45:17touch with the cylinder walls in order to run at an acceptable temperature. As time passed,
00:45:25uh, pistons grew shorter. They squared off at the side, so they weren't touching there.
00:45:32Uh, the, the wrist, wrist pin grew shorter. Eventually they became just a disc with the
00:45:40piston rings in it. Little skirt here, little skirt back here, bosses up to the crown with the
00:45:47wrist pin through it. That's it. And to see that, uh, big inch Harley laid out on a table at that test
00:46:00was just, uh, a wonderful surprise because this great big Harley engine has
00:46:08those abbreviated pistons, like you would find in a racing engine. What are they doing in a production
00:46:16bike? The lighter the piston, the lighter the rod can be. The lighter the piston and the rod can be,
00:46:25the less massive counterweight there has to be
00:46:30whirling around on the crankshaft. And the bearings? Oh, we can make them smaller because
00:46:35they're not carrying all that pounding.
00:46:40Why don't those pistons overheat? They have thin crowns. Won't they just
00:46:46get hot and weak and just cave in on the top? Which we've all seen. Because they have a feature
00:46:56that was applied to motorcycles by Tom Sifton, who tuned for Joe Leonard in the 1950s, piston cooling oil
00:47:07jets. He, Tom Sifton, a Harley tuner, applied piston cooling oil jets and you will now find them on
00:47:20every kind of motorcycle because it allows the pistons to be lighter. They had to be heavy in the past because
00:47:29that extra weight of aluminum was the heat pathway, the heat highway. Now the heat highway goes to the oil
00:47:37cooler. And the connecting rods in these, uh, Indian big inchers, they have
00:47:48shanks that look narrow and of constant section. These engines don't turn tremendous rod, tremendous
00:47:57RPM so that the rods are trying to bend sideways. If you want to see that kind of rod, take apart,
00:48:06uh, a Honda Fireblade. That's, uh, was basically a homologation special for World Superbike
00:48:16where the engine needs to turn 15 or 16,000 RPM. Different 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.
00:48:37Yeah. I was shocked to find out how much heat goes out through the rings themselves. That was, uh,
00:48:45always a surprise that I always envisioned like, well, you know, my 1958 Thames with a 1703 Ford
00:48:55console. Thames is an English Ford. It had the original pistons were split skirt and had five rings,
00:49:02I think. And, uh, it might've been just to get rid of heat or maybe the cylinders weren't as round as
00:49:09they should be. I don't know, but, um, anymore. Yeah. A couple of gas rings and an oil scraper and
00:49:15we're done. And 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. Yeah. You turn it upside down and there,
00:49:23there are two pairs of webs across it, uh, at 90 degrees, leaving nine cavities. And when these
00:49:34pistons are forged, uh, it's a thing of beauty, a nine cavity forging and the wrist pin bosses are
00:49:42connected straight to the crown. You can't do that without oil jet cooling because heat from the crown
00:49:51will come down and cause wrist pin, wrist pins to pick up aluminum from the hot bore in the piston.
00:50:01And eventually the wrist pin will seize and you won't like it. No. So, um, things that weren't
00:50:10possible in the past become possible, uh, because of technical changes and, um, it's almost relaxing to
00:50:21get back to the, to pull back a little bit from the depths of the engine and, and look at the
00:50:30continuing love affair between American riders and large V twin engines. I know that there are a lot
00:50:38of people who are diehard sport bike riders or off-road people, et cetera. I hope there's room for all
00:50:47of us. Yeah. There sure are a lot of ways to enjoy a motorcycle. There are.
00:50:59So they, uh, the Scout was, was, uh, at one point turned into another model called FTR, uh, 1200
00:51:08and 1200, 1250. Yeah. 1200. And it, it looked like a sort of an American Diavel because it had a
00:51:20trellis frame. It had a really rakish, uh, high exhaust and it just looked very sporty. It was
00:51:31invited to look at it. Yeah. They threw the 19s at it and give it, gave it a very, uh,
00:51:36you know, flat track kind of essence trellis frame and really fun bike. And with the 19s,
00:51:42it actually had a really, it had an interesting and fun personality, which we enjoyed, but, um, 17s
00:51:50seemed to have won the day, but, uh, it's a, it's a great sporting motorcycle. And I think,
00:51:57you know, they're finding that with these kinds of, you know, like a standard pretty much is not
00:52:05the, um, is not the volume leader. You know, it's a, it's a thing that you would add to get
00:52:09some market share and to appeal to a different customer. But as we have observed with Harley
00:52:16Davidson, you know, the, um, Pan America, technically a great adventure bike, one of 10 best and
00:52:23uh, great running engine, um, sold over 10,000 in the first year, but it's sort of settled into
00:52:34maybe four to 5,000 a year. Um, and maybe that's it, you know? Well, the thing about, uh, that I've
00:52:47been learning about Harley Davidson, of course, is the importance of, of, uh, cruisers, which,
00:52:53um, originally there were the long distance tour bikes, the, the retired mom and dad, uh, scene,
00:53:02and there was Sportster. And for a time when it was imagined that Harley would have to compete with
00:53:12the Japanese, there was Air Machi, the Italian import. And even before that, there was the dreaded
00:53:19Hummer. With transfer ports so small, you wondered if they were casting flaws. But the moment they
00:53:31dove into the custom business, let's build a factory custom motorcycle, just as Detroit
00:53:39decided to build factory hot rods. There aren't very many people who build hot rod cars,
00:53:49but there are a great many people who were interested in them. And they sold the daylights out of those
00:53:56GTOs and other fancy cars, which were basically just an ordinary production car with a truck motor in it
00:54:07that was tuned for power rather than tractor torque. And it excited people. And I think the whole thing with
00:54:17cruisers, uh, tapped into something that wasn't even considered proper. Namely, the desire to cut your
00:54:28motorcycle up, paint it, change the gas tank, run a brakeless front wheel, extend the fork tubes,
00:54:36whatever you wanted to do. And factory customs enabled this to get its footing without having to be
00:54:47machinist, find painting skills, uh, all those things that go into building an actual custom.
00:54:56So that's a different market altogether. Well, and from a business perspective, it's awesome. Yeah.
00:55:04From the business perspective, the variations on a theme is, is how you make a buck anyway. You know,
00:55:09you're, you're keeping the essential big expensive parts of the motorcycle, the same, and you're bringing
00:55:15back the tombstone tail light, or you're putting the tall bars, you're making a skinny bike, you're making
00:55:20a long bike, you're making a fat bike, large section tires, or skinny little tires. You're doing
00:55:26things that change the look, change the vibe. The essential, uh, say the core of the motorcycle is
00:55:34the artistic package and it has the proportion and visual vibe that you're looking for. And then you're
00:55:40dressing it up with all that other stuff. And it costs you less to do that than to come out with a new
00:55:45engine. So sure does just like, uh, electronic router aids in 2002, um, MotoGP collided with too much horsepower
00:55:58and they needed help. And they were able ultimately to get it from the digital flight controls movement
00:56:07that had swept aviation coming from Apollo and had then been adopted militarily, commercially, and then
00:56:15by Formula One. And 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 router aids,
00:56:31which for the cost of a few transistors made it unnecessary to have a bunch of new models.
00:56:36So, yes, this is, well, we don't have no rider aids and bagger racing in America.
00:56:44That's it. Well, again, this is just cowboys out there smoking big time.
00:56:50These motorcycles are supposed to be an island in the river of time. Yeah.
00:56:56Where you are safe. When those executives swept into the camp that Indian had set up at Bonneville,
00:57:05one of them had one of those bikes, they were Thunderstroke, great big things. One of those bikes
00:57:13had the same pale green, creamy paint job that my uncle's 1948 Buick had. He used to take us to the
00:57:25swimming hole in that car. It was a convertible. And that paint color really got to me.
00:57:33So all these, all these little, uh, phonemes of visual communication add up to something serious.
00:57:48Yes. So it's an education.
00:57:54It is.
00:57:58Well, I got to say modern Indian has done a great job. They've, they've just become Indian. That's
00:58:03just what they are. And they're evolving the brand and, you know, get back in the day, Gary Gray said,
00:58:09uh, it can be whatever it wants to be. You know, we can, we can, you know, we got to,
00:58:14we have to do certain things along the way, along the journey, fill the
00:58:19spiritual core and then take it from there. And, um, certainly I, I would bet, uh,
00:58:27I would bet real money that they've concepted adventure models and
00:58:32stuffed FTR 1200 motors in and scout motors and
00:58:36all kinds of different things and played around with layouts and all that.
00:58:39I mean, imagine that fun and freedom that would give you.
00:58:44It's just got to be a business. That's the main thing. It's got to be a business.
00:58:47Everybody prototypes everything right along and the committee reviews it and they decide,
00:58:56uh, nope. Just 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.
00:59:13So I left for the coast.
00:59:16I wish that I could get into the drawers and drawers or files and files of
00:59:23things that have never seen the light of day 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.
00:59:35Yeah.
00:59:40And what did we get?
00:59:43Not that.
00:59:44Yeah, that was during the era of that exploratory
00:59:50CTX 1300s. Those were kind of very like bullet low
00:59:55V things that were interesting, but it was not resonating with the market, not resonating with
01:00:01enthusiasts. In any case, uh, excellent job up to this point, Indian. We can't just can't wait to see
01:00:07what's coming next. And it is that time of year where bagger racing is getting into full swing.
01:00:14And so we're going to see
01:00:16Harleys and Indians, big old honking, big bore, our Indians doing it with the RPM and, uh, Harley gets a
01:00:25little more displacement and it's great.
01:00:30Lots of quite visible sliding, which you usually don't see much of. Sliding is subtle in ordinary
01:00:38road racing, not in baggers, not in baggers. They slide all over the place and they are controllable
01:00:45slides. This 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. Let's go on. We got wheelbase and we have controllable torque.
01:00:56Yes. All, all the torque you want. So, and to watch, yeah, to watch, uh, you know, Wyman,
01:01:01Herfos and those guys do the things they do on those big bikes. It's magnificent. It's quite a show.
01:01:07I hope they get more bikes on the grid. Well, thanks for listening folks. Uh, podcast is brought to you
01:01:13by Octane. So you've got the shirt, um, click on the link prequal flex down below for real, click on that
01:01:19link and check it out. Um, you can get prequalified and go to dealership, same as cash and buy your
01:01:25dream bike. Um, check out the process for us. They keep us on the air. We appreciate it. We appreciate
01:01:32that very much. And, uh, but not as much as we appreciate you joining us every week for the show
01:01:37and, uh, we will catch you next time.