Border Patrol
Boder Patrol
Three Made-in-USA baggers tackle the Great American Southwest
PAUL DEAN
CW COMPARISON
THE ROAD TO JACUMBA IS NOT VERY WELL TRAVELED these days. Once, though, it was a main route, first as a footpath for the Dieguenos Indians, then part of the stagecoach route between San Diego and Yuma, then a treacherous stretch of Highway 80 that delivered the likes of Clark Gable and Marlene Dietrich to town to "take the waters" at the spa hotel. But long ago, Jacumba was bypassed by Interstate 8, and a once-bustling town of 5000 just a mile from the U.S.-Mexico border now is home to just 625 hearty souls.
That lonely old road was perfect for our purposes-a preEisenhower highway for 1950s-style American cruisers.
Actually, you have to go back to before the Great Depression to find a time when America had three viable motorcycle-makers. The original Excelsior-Henderson didn’t make it past the ’30s, and Indian was dead by the late ’50s. With Victory’s birth and Indian’s rebirth, though, HarleyDavidson is no longer the only homegrown. How would the newcomers stack up against the time-proven veteran?
To find out, we ordered up three touring-cruisers and hit the two-lane backroads of California and Arizona, skirting the Mexican border, bound for the grand old Copper Queen Hotel in the mining town of Bisbee. The players:
Harley-Davidson Heritage Softail Classic
It’s hard to imagine legitimately making such a statement, but the Harley is the “little” bike of this trio. It’s compact, tidy and low, and it seems to place the rider closer to the front wheel than the others. The reach to the grips
is the shortest, the floorboards are the closest to the seat, the bars are the narrowest, the seat is the lowest.
Of these three, the Heritage is also the most refined. Everything feels right, like it has been intelligently and thoughtfully placed. I guess nothing less is expected from a company that’s had 100 years to get it right. It’s quiet, smooth and comfortable, with excellent wind protection aided by the placement of the windshield, which is closer to the rider than those on the other bikes.
Too bad the H-D is “only” an 88-incher. Though the fuelinjected engine “carburetes” well, it is noticeably down on overall power compared to the other two; in fact, our testbike was about 5 bhp short of other Twin Cammers we’ve sampled. One of Harley’s own 95-inch kits would work wonders here.
H-D
HERITAGE SOFTAIL
$17,870
Still, this is a touring-oriented cruiser, not a racer, so its power deficiency was not such a big issue. It runs cleanly, crisply and with decent authority, and has no blips or dips anywhere in the powerband. Its transmission also is the quietest and smoothest-shifting.
In handling, the H-D is excellent-up to its cornering limits, that is, which kick in surprisingly early. Just about the time you start to get a little worked up about your cornering program, you’re rudely interrupted by serious graunching noises from the floorboards and/or exhaust system. Until it reaches its cornering limits, though, the Harley is the best handler of this trio. It has excellent straight-line stability, yet turns into comers with ease. It feels light, agile and almost flickable compared to the other two, again, limited only by its maximum attainable lean angle.
It also has the best suspension. People bitch about the Softail rear-suspension design and its short wheel travel, but Harley has continued to improve the quality of that travel over the years to the point where it is not detrimental to the bike’s behavior. I didn’t think that the fork was significantly better than that of the Indian or Victory, but the shocks (there are two) performed their duties far more effectively than their counterparts on the other bikes. That’s faint praise, I know, but the Classic’s rear suspension gave it the edge in overall ride and chassis control. When cruising the two-lanes in southern Arizona-where we were continually given the finger by thousands of inhospitable saguaro cacti-I never gave the suspension a second thought.
The counterbalanced Beta engine is smooth but, surprisingly, not as much so as the Victory’s. The Classic would start to buzz ever so slightly at 70-75 mph; the vibes never caused any numbness in my hands or significant fuzziness of objects in the mirrors, but they were just evident enough to be mildly annoying.
The Harley’s brakes split the difference between the Victory’s (the best) and the Indian’s (the worst by far). The H-D’s stoppers never faded and were always linear and predictable, but took a bit more lever/pedal pressure than did the Victory.
Said CWs new Online Editor Calvin Kim about his first long ride on a Harley, “Everything about this bike just works. The power delivery, transmission and suspension all were great.”
Indian Vintage
Although the Indian is a much better motorcycle than I imagined it would be, it still comes home a solid last in this comparison. Suspension, brakes, handling, instrumentation, shifting, carburetion, hand and foot controls, and wind protection all are wanting.
Matter of fact, aside from its styling (which, although subjective, could be interpreted as the best), the Vintage does not rank first in any category. These are the kinds of attributes a motorcycle ends up with when it’s built largely through aftermarket parts sourcing rather than by ground-up engineering. Pieces are used that were never designed to work with one another-and in fact were already in existence but likely had never met until bolted onto the first bike.
Given all that, I was pleasantly surprised that nothing fell off the Indian or stopped working
INDIAN
VINTAGE
$24,995
VICTORY
V92TC
$17,974
altogether (well, there was the shock damping...) during our 1200-plus-mile ride, and we gave everything plenty of opportunity to do so, especially on Mr. Editor
Edwards’ahem /-dirt-road “shortcut” to Bisbee (goodbye Copper Queen, hello Holiday Inn Express). Anyway, kudos to Indian for doing its homework here.
The 100-inch engine makes good power but needs a freerbreathing air cleaner and rejetting to achieve its full potential. Main jet is a size or two too big, and the accelerator pump is adjusted with too rich (too long) of a stroke. Otherwise, the Injun ka-chunks along pretty well, with good
grunt from low rpm and a half-decent top end that will only improve with leaner jetting-there’s an easy 8-10 extra bhp on tap, even running the stock pipes.
It also doesn’t vibrate as much as I expected, particularly for a non-counterbalanced Evo-style big Twin; I could actually distinguish many images in the mirrors.
In handling, the Vintage was decent, but hampered somewhat by its long wheelbase, below-par shock and slow steering geometry, all of which help dull the bike’s response. The ultra-wide handlebar made many handling maneuvers more awkward than they should be, and also sometimes caused the chassis to overreact to input from the rider. It’s possible to have too much steering leverage, and the Indian would appear to prove as much.
Nevertheless, the Indian didn’t comer all that badly, especially once we became accustomed to its idiosyncrasies. It offers a bit
crasies. It offers a bit more cornering clearance than the Harley, though not as much as the Victory. If the back end had quit with its bobble-head impression (Indian later said the blown shock would have been replaced under warranty), it might even have been faster around the turns than the H-D.
And in a straight line, it’s
rock-solid. Only in low-speed, parking-lot maneuvers do the wheelbase and handlebar bend conspire to turn the bike a bit clumsy.
Pretty good in the comfort department, too. The seat is firm but well-shaped, and seat-to-floorboard relationship is distant enough to suit my 6-foot-2 frame just fine, though shorterlegged riders might find it too spread-out. On the debit side, the windshield is farther ahead of the rider than those on the other two bikes, which gives the air more distance to curl around and hit the rider. Moreover, the wide handlebar positions your hands way outside the windshield’s range of protection, so your forearms funnel air right into your neck and torso. Plus, the bar ends are angled inward too much, forcing you to tweak your wrists accordingly to wrap them around the goofy chromed grips.
And then there are the brakes-or what passes for brakes, at least. Not since the drum-braked Harleys of the 1970s have 1 experienced such miserable stoppers. The front brake is absolutely wooden, so much so that the brake line might as well be plumbed into one of the frame tubes. A normal squeeze of the lever has virtually no effect on the bike’s velocity, so you have to Schwarzenegger the thing just to slow somewhat, never mind actually stopping. And while the rear brake does provide half-decent stopping power, it won’t do so for long or for repeated applications. For whatever reason-probably having to do with the shrouding of the rear wheel/caliper by the heavily valanced fender-the rear brake overheats and goes away sooner than any brake on any other motorcycle I’ve ridden in the past 20 years or so. That’s unforgivable.
Fit-and-finish of the Indian is questionable in some areas, but the black paint is exceptionally well-done. It’s mirrorsmooth and shiny, and-based on the overflow spills we experienced while gassing up-seems to be very resistant to gasoline.
“I had my doubts about these guys at first,” said Indianwatcher Edwards, owner of a 1948 Chief, “but lately they’re making some good moves. More improvement is needed, but they’re trying hard to be a real motorcycle company.”
Victory V92 Touring Cruiser
This is what happens when you let the Editor-in-Chief (a.k.a. “Dave the Flame King”) special-order a bike. Actually, Victory’s online Custom Order Program is a hoot: Pick your add-ons and the computer shows you what it will look like. with
spokes and wide whitewalls (what, no fuzzy dice?!), all for $2975 over the standard TC’s MSRP, factory installed and with no extra parts to clutter up the garage.
After jumping off the Harley, the Victory feels tall and top-heavy, essentially the result of its engine design and ground clearance. The eight valves and overhead cams not only make the engine taller, but place the weight of the cams, cam bearings, followers, etc. at the top of the engine. It’s also a wet-sump design, which forces the engine to be taller top-to-bottom so a sufficiently large sump can be located beneath the crankshaft. The designers also apparently wanted the bike to have more cornering clearance than found on most other VTwin cruisers, so the entire chassis, engine and all, sits higher.
That top-heaviness is most apparent at parking-lot speeds and in stop-and-go traffic. I imagine that a lot of smaller or short-legged riders might feel intimidated by the V92’s “tip-
piness,” especially with a passenger aboard. At speed, most of that top-heaviness goes away. But not all of it.
The engine is the most potent of these three, with good power available just about everywhere. It lugs well, pulls steadily and forcefully throughout the middle rpm ranges, and has a much stronger top-end than the other two. After all, this is a more-modem engine design than the Twin Cam Harley or Evo-architecture Indian motors. It can sometimes run a little unevenly at small throttle settings and low-load conditions (such as long downhills), but that is, I suspect, a slight lean condition stemming from the need to meet emissions standards.
The engine produces the best sounds as heard by the rider. While the Harley and Indian both have very muted exhaust notes, the Victory booms almost like a V-Twin with an aftermarket exhaust. It also feels powerful, hammering out its cadence with enough of a bang to be felt through the grips and seat.
Despite the engine’s visceral character, its counterbalancers make it very smooth-running. Images in the mirrors always remain crisp and clear, and there’s never enough vibration felt anywhere to provide the rider with any discomfort.
Too bad it also makes a lot of mechanical racket. Especially at idle, the engine is a symphony of clattering and clanking and rattling and clicking. And when you’re at speed (70-80 mph) with a slight tailwind, normal wind noise is reduced enough that the rider hears a high-pitched gear whine that can quickly turn annoying.
The Victory is a good all-around handler, with excellent straight-line stability and turning ability. Overcoming the aforementioned top-heaviness does require more of a pushpull on the handgrips than does the Harley, particularly for quick turn-ins and through closely spaced esses. Nevertheless, the TC boogies around comers pretty well for a bike of this type, thanks in no small part to its generous ground clearance.
Handling is hampered only by a tendency to wallow if the chassis is upset in any way-such as a bump anywhere in the comer, snapping the throttle closed when leaned over, changing lines mid-comer, a lot of throttle on exit, etc. Blame the bulk of this on a shortage of rebound damping in the shock (which has a preload-adjustment ring but offers no provisions for adjusting damping).
The Victory has the best brakes of this trio. They’re powerful, progressive, give a lot of feedback and don’t fade.
I liked the ergonomics of the V92, which seemed a good compromise for riders of all sizes-not too spread-out, not too compact. I was pleased with the seat-bar-floorboard rela-
tionship, and the seat was arguably the most comfortable. Much better wind protection than the last V92TC we tested, too. Overall, a very comfortable bike.
CONCLUSION
This wasn’t as much of a no-brainer for me as I thought it would be.
Before riding all the bikes together, I believed that the Harley would run away with top honors, making a shambles of the competition along the way. It didn’t work out that way. The Harley did emerge the winner, but by a narrower margin than I anticipated. Here’s the final take:
The Indian is in the hunt, but barely. It’s off the mark in too many areas, ranking one giant step below the Victory and perhaps a step-and-a-half below the Harley. The company has made a lot of progress, but they’ve still got a long way to go-and they’ll find that the last few steps are the hardest. Not that they aren’t trying, though. Sales are closing in on 5000-5500 units per year, and as we went to press, the word from Gilroy was that 2004 Chiefs will get a slew of improvements-including, thank you very much, Brembo master cylinders.
The Victory, on the other hand, gave the Harley a better run for its money than I ever would have guessed. It has a lot of admirable qualities-power, braking and cornering clearance among the more important-but just lacks that last degree of refinement and unity that the Classic possesses. Plus, it’s...well, less than lovely to look at. The flame paint job does its best to disguise the blocky, uncomplementary styling, but there’s only so much paint can do.
Which brings us to the Harley. In this trio, the Classic is the icon of balance and refinement, of harmony and unity. It just feels right. When you then consider all the other important factors, tangible and otherwise-dealer network, parts availability, the abundance of experienced mechanics nationwide, resale value, the caché of ownership and more available accessories than an army of laborers could count in a lifetime-well, maybe this is a no-brainer after all. □
