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American Bruiser
Eight years down the road the rare and obscure Indian Chief Vintage still makes us happy, despite a few twists and turns
(by Guy 'Guido' Allen, June 2023)
You might have missed this, unless you cared and/or were
paying attention. Before Polaris relaunched the Indian
Motorcycle brand around a decade ago, there were all sorts
of weird and wonderful things going on. And this
motorcycle is one of the results: a 2009 Chief Vintage,
number 183 of maybe 400 of that model. Can't be sure.
In an era marked by detailed digital record-keeping, and
vehicle manufacturers often with the resources run the
equivalent of a small country with no real problem, it's a
little weird to deal with the product of a maker with
sketchy records. I'll hasten to add we're talking of
Indian Motorcycles circa 2009, not today.
This bike was screwed together by the
Indian Motorcycle Company (then owned by international
investment firm Stellican), aka the Kings Mountain
factory. It was at the tail end of a colourful history
which saw the Indian name fought over in USA law courts,
go broke, then find a long-term investor in Polaris.
Confused? Here's an abbreviated timeline:
Original
Indian company at Springfield, 1901-1953;
Indian
Company of America at Gilroy, 1999-2003 – which went
broke;
Indian
Motorcycle Company at Kings Mountain, 2006-2011 – sold
to Polaris;
Polaris
at Spirit Lake, 2013 (for the 2014 model year) to
present.
According to Kings Mountain boss Stephen Heese, once Stellican invested in cleaning up the worthy but not-quite-done Gilroy design based around the modern-day Powerplus engine, it was doing fine: “We created a lot of happy customers, didn’t have a lot of warranty claims. We attracted a lot of attention. The company wasn’t for sale, and Polaris made us an offer we couldn’t refuse.”
As
Heese said, when this machine was built, things were
traveling along pretty well. Volumes were small, the
bikes hand-built, and prices high at US$35,500 (in
2009!) for this model. It was part of a greater
long-term plan which envisaged Indian becoming
primarily a merchandise/clothing label in addition to
a motorcycle brand.
By the time Polaris bought out the marque, and eventually closed production of the Powerplus-engined bikes (replacing them with a clean-sheet design), they were rare birds. Here's the breakdown that includes all variants:
2009
– 460
2010 – 340
2011 – 109
2012-2013 (assembled by Polaris) – 225
Total = 1134
A
handful of them made it to Australia over the years as
grey imports – the numbers are unclear, though I
suspect 50 would pull it up.
Of course having a rare bike is nice, until you need certain parts. For example when the body control module goes to lunch and you of course discover this bike missed the USA recall because it was living on the other side of the Pacific. Fortunately, we tracked down the updated replacement part via Megazip online.
Speaking of electrics, the sometimes painful-to-hear struggle between starter motor and big V-twin (hardly unique to this bike) was getting on my nerves. With a claimed 450CCA (cold cranking amps) the lithium battery under the seat shouldn't have been a problem as it was in theory above original spec. However given the bike can sit unused for weeks at a time, it was sometimes reluctant to play.
Slow-to-start
engines, regardless of vehicle, tend to have this
cascading set of issues. For example, fouled plugs,
starter working harder than ideal as a result, battery
then flogging out and maybe even the sprag clutch on
the starter copping a hiding.
My
solution involved brute force, which was a second
lithium battery hooked up in series and sitting in a
pannier. Not subtle, but it works a treat. Because
it's lithium, it's light and there is no issue with
spillage, and I like their ability to throw everything
they have at the problem despite sitting for several
weeks. It now starts instantly.
Mechanically,
the engine is similar to the equivalent
Harley-Davidson both in architecture and its
relatively low-stress maintenance. It's air-cooled
with hydraulic valve lash, so really you're looking at
oil and filter changes as the main priority. Filters
are readily available and probably common to several
other machines out there. Oh, and the drive belt is
common to H-D.
Displacing
1732cc, the fuel-injected engine claims 72 horses and
is matched to a six-speed transmission by Baker.
Performance is hardly eyeball-flattening but it's fine
for the task as a cruiser.
Suspension
is halfway decent, with a front end by Paoli and rear
shock by Fox, all of which is set up at the firmer end
of the scale for a cruiser.
This
thing is longer overall than any equivalent Harley of
the period – it's almost as if someone got the scale
of the drawings out by five or more per cent. For
example, it's 1737mm in the wheelbase compared to 1612
for a 2009 Road King. The upshot is that it's roomy,
but needs just that little extra forward planning for
corners.
Braking is by Brembo, with twin
four-spotters up front. ABS? Err, nope.
There are a lot of upgrades in the
design update from Gilroy to Kings Mountain, including
more robust mechanicals, fuel-injection in place of a
carburetor, different wheels and brakes, better-designed
luggage that's quick to dismount...you get the idea.
Instrumentation was okay for the time,
but nothing to write home about.
I picked it up with just a few hundred
kays on the odo and have since added a few thousand.
Hardly record-breaking use. It's really a Sunday
feel-good toy when muggins is in the mood for –
coincidentally – a cruise.
With a 20-something vehicle fleet at
Chateau Guido, one of the issues we're facing is
replacing tyres based on age rather than wear. And this
was a prime example. The Indian was riding on the
original rubber, now heading for its 14th birthday, or
probably about double its useful life.
Feedback from the tyres was
non-existent and when cold you could hear this
hair-raising squeaking noise as the tread attempted to
engage with the tarmac – a bit like dragging a running
shoe down a sheet of glass. Not good.
The issue of finding the time for a
change-over to fresh boots was brought to a head by a
puncture on the rear. Right, now's the time to finally
do something.
Speaking on the blower to my usual
rubber emporium, I was asked to bring in the wheels
rather than the complete bike. That's because they were
operating as a one- instead of two-person band and
workshop time was in short supply. I agreed...but never
again.
On a motorcycle this size, weighing
350-plus kilos, lobbing it onto a lift and wrestling the
wheels in and out has some risks attached. Doing one
wheel at a time is relatively straight-forward, two at
once is a very different game.
Oh, and do you have any idea what one
of those wheels weighs with tyre et al still attached?
Let's go for a guess at 30-plus kilos, which doesn't
sound like much until you're squatting, juggling it, the
assorted spacers and axle, with the whole lot waving
around gently on an hydraulic lift. It's
character-building.
That was the day I decided that any
more dual wheel/tyre changes (I nearly always do them as
a set) are happening in a real workshop.
The choice of rubber for 16-inch
motorcycle cruiser wheels isn't huge once you add in the
condition they have to be whitewalls. Despite the fact
I've owned two bikes like this, I swear I'm not usually
a tassels-and-whitewall-tyres kind of person. Check my
wardrobe – it's tassel-free. Honestly! However I'm
tragic enough to want to stick with original visuals on
this bike, of which the ye olde whitewalls are an
influential part.
We ended up with Shinko rubber,
brought to you by those wonderful folk in Osaka, Japan.
I forget what I paid, but around $600 for the pair with
new tubes seems about right.
Of course the end result felt bloody
wonderful compared to the old hoops. Suddenly we had
decent road feel, with none of the strange
runners-on-glass sound effects.
As for the Chief Vintage, eight years down the ownership track I'm pretty happy with it. There are the usual ageing motorcycle issues, such as trim losing its shine or the simple fact it's been comprehensively overtaken in the dynamics department by more modern designs. Both Indian and Harley now produce far more powerful and capable gizmos.
Not that I'm concerned. In cruiser
world, or at least my cruiser world, these things are
interesting to watch and experience but are not going to
change my life. The Kings Mountain Chief Vintage will do
just fine for that Sunday morning coffee run.
See our
previous story on this bike, which has
more background info on Indian, the series as a whole
and the Indians that have been through our shed.
SPECS
Indian Chief Vintage 2009
ENGINE:
TYPE: air-cooled, two-valves-per-cylinder, 45-degree
V-twin
CAPACITY: 1732cc
BORE & STROKE: 101 x 108mm
COMPRESSION RATIO: 9:1
FUEL SYSTEM: sequential fuel injection
TRANSMISSION:
TYPE: Six-speed, constant-mesh,
by Baker
FINAL DRIVE: Toothed belt
CHASSIS & RUNNING GEAR:
FRAME TYPE: Steel cradle
FRONT SUSPENSION: 41mm conventional telescopic fork by
Paoli
REAR SUSPENSION: single preload-adjustable shock by Fox
FRONT BRAKE: twin floating discs with 4-piston Brembo
calipers
REAR BRAKE: single floating disc with 2-piston Brembo
caliper
DIMENSIONS & CAPACITIES:
WET WEIGHT: 356kg
SEAT HEIGHT: 708mm
WHEELBASE: 1737mm
FUEL CAPACITY: 21.2lt
WHEELS & TYRES:
FRONT: 130-90-16
REAR: 150/80-16
PERFORMANCE:
POWER: 54kW (72hp) @ 5000rpm
TORQUE: 136Nm (100lb-ft) at 3000rpm
OTHER STUFF:
PRICE WHEN NEW: US$35,500
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