Where there is racing, there is rivalry, and healthy competition brings out the best in techs, mechanics, and racers as they work toward a common goal: victory. One of those classic feuds started brewing over a century ago between Harley-Davidson and Indian Motorcycle—albeit with a roughly five-decade respite on Indian’s part, officially. This goes far deeper than a few side-eyed stares and gestures, as the two iconic American V-twin manufacturers have been trading blows dating back to the board track era, all for our viewing pleasure.
The 2022 racing season was good for Indian Motorcycle, which nabbed three championships. Jared Mees slid his Indian FTR750 to yet another American Flat Track title, racing around some of the same dirt ovals where the earliest jabs between brands were exchanged. Meanwhile, Tyler O’Hara seized the 2022 MotoAmerica Mission King Of The Baggers and Super Hooligan National Championship titles while piloting Indian hardware. Clocks, as they say, were cleaned.
There’s always a bit of back and forth on the track, and MotoAmerica’s King Of The Baggers series is tailor-made to let this age-old spat continue. Indian Motorcycle drew first blood in the inaugural King Of The Baggers race at Laguna Seca in 2020, originally slated as a one-off invitational event.
When the series grew to three rounds in 2021, the gloves came off for both sides of the American V-twin coin, with Kyle Wyman and Harley-Davidson standing victorious. The fan response was unanimous—they wanted more. King Of The Baggers expanded to seven rounds the following 2022 season, which saw Tyler O’Hara once again take the title aboard his Indian Challenger.
That roughshod history brings us to a chilly Chuckwalla Valley Raceway, where the full-factory S&S Cycle Indian Challengers of teammates Tyler O’Hara and Jeremy McWilliams sat on tire warmers. At around 620 pounds, raised to the heavens, and boasting enough billet bling to make a MotoAmerica Superbike green with envy, these machines are a far cry from what rolled out of the factory in Spirit Lake, Iowa. And for my part, I would soon be saddling up on McWilliams’ ride for some seat time.
McWilliams joined the effort as a development rider and racer for the 2022 season. It’s a wise choice, as the Northern Irishman has an impressively long racing rap sheet spanning the two- and four-stroke GP eras, has done time in British Superbike, and continues as a development rider today at the ripe age of 59. By the way, he’s also been known to win races on these things.
Building A Brute
Transforming a roughly 830-pound Indian Challenger into a fit-for-purpose 620-pound race bike takes serious engineering. It’s a tall order to spot what isn’t modified, but there are a few hard limits. The Challenger’s bolt-up backbone frame, fairing/bodywork shape, and transmission must remain mostly stock—though rules allow lopping off a few frame tabs for clearance. Everything else is fair game, giving Indian Motorcycle’s technical partners S&S Cycle leeway to do whatever was needed.
Where do you begin when discussing a V-twin? The engine and Indian’s liquid-cooled 60-degree PowerPlus engine is built to the hilt, living up to the oh-so-American adage of “there’s no replacement for displacement” by bumping the bore size up 2mm, increasing the combustion chamber size to 112ci (1835cc). A lighter, machined crankshaft helps the engine spool up with vigor, while CNC-ported heads and billet-aluminum manual lash adjuster rocker arms hold up to the rigors of racing. On the reliability front, the main bearings are locked in place.
A honking oval air-cleaner peeks out from underneath the modified fuel tank. According to S&S Cycle Chief Engineer Jeff Baily, that’s where significant power gains were made as the stock dual 58mm throttle body and internal downdraft intake system restricted the PowerPlus’s potential. A traditional side-mounted intake was slapped on to solve that quandary, gulping heaps of air via a 78mm throttle body designed for a 3.6L V6-powered Dodge Charger. Of course, everything is piped out of the burly S&S 2-into-1 stainless steel exhaust system.
That leaves us with a V-twin making “more than 150 horsepower and 150 ft-lbs of torque,” according to staffers, and all that power is fed through a chain final drive, as opposed to a belt. Race teams are tight-lipped about their trade secrets concerning nearly everything about their bikes, and these are the only ballpark performance figures they were willing to share.
Pumping out numbers like that begs the question of durability. “Part of what won us the 2022 championship was our reliability,” said Bailey. “We needed to make sure we finished every race. Even though it meant pizza in the pits on Saturday nights, we decided to be ultra-conservative and put a fresh motor in for race day.”
Each Challenger uses two engines per weekend. Both are torn down and inspected after every race weekend, where usually they receive piston rings and are put back in play. It’s a strategy that played into their favor last season and during the opening 2023 King Of The Baggers round at Daytona International Speedway that saw the factory Harley-Davidsons suffering mechanicals.
Any slammed, low-slung bagger like the Challenger is vertically challenged—for cornering, you need ground clearance. McWilliams summed up the situation, saying, “This is a Challenger on steroids. It’s pumped up; it’s higher and difficult even to reach the floor on. We’ve gotta make ground clearance, we’ve gotta make it steer, we’ve gotta make it stop, and we’ve gotta make it change direction. All those aspects keep us very busy trying to work out how to make the best of it.”
To that end, Tyler and Jeremy’s steeds opted for custom billet triple clamps with eccentric inserts to fiddle with offset. Helping increase ride height and ground clearance is a customized 48mm Öhlins fork from a lanky Ducati Multistrada 1260 Pikes Peak, as the beefier front-end assembly adds loads of much-needed rigidity. The 2023 bike has a more-appropriate Öhlins FGR series fork commonly found in WSBK and MotoAmerica paddocks. Of course, an Öhlins TTX shock is out back.
The “stock” swingarm is anything but, with massive bracing for stiffness and machined axle slots to shorten the wheelbase. The clutch case relocates the cable-pull arm to the top, along with a low-profile belly pan—all in the name of ground clearance.
Then there is the stately cockpit, bestowed with clip-on style handlebars and rearsets that conveniently bolt up to the OEM mounting points for the passenger footpegs on the frame. That’s a far sight better than the engine-mounted rearsets we experienced while riding Kyle Wyman’s championship-winning bagger. Intense vibrations felt through Wyman’s pegs felt like someone was taking an impact wrench to the bottom of my boot.
In truth, it’s all a menagerie of drool-worthy Superbike-spec parts, rounded out by a Galespeed master cylinder, dual four-piston Brembo calipers in the front, Alpha Racing rotors, and a four-piston Hayes caliper in the rear with a captive under-mount hanger. Naturally, an AiM DL2 datalogger replaces the Indian’s usual infotainment system. Lastly, we opted for Dunlop Sportmax Q4 tires on the Oz Racing forged aluminum wheels since the chilly conditions weren’t conducive to the proper Dunlop slicks that they’re typically running.
It all sounds like unobtanium on paper, but it isn’t, technically. For a cool $92,229, you can add the 2023 Indian Challenger RR to your stable and ride what is essentially the same bike seen here.
Befriending The Behemoth
There is trepidation with riding anything new, especially when dealing with a prototype race bike the size of a Clydesdale and what promises to be an equally vicious kick. With an S&S Cycle/Indian Motorcycle crew member wrangling the fairing to keep the bike upright in pitlane, I hopped (literally) into the saddle and got my bearings. The levers and foot controls are all in the right place—twist the right grip, and off we go!
Putting its enormity aside for now, there are a few striking attributes about the S&S Cycle Indian Challenger that immediately stand out. Immense torque propels this bounding behemoth forward like a rampaging war elephant. Rolling on the power for the first time is intense. It’s as if you are standing bare-chested in a Category 5 hurricane, with all the noise and fury to match. Moreover, the lightened crank slashes to the 7700-rev limit with absolute ferocity. There’s nothing lopey or lumbering about this V-twin; it wants to gallop into every corner at full tilt.
Taking a beat to wrap my head around it, and things began to come into focus. Yes, it’s raw and undeniably rowdy, but the power delivery is the definition of tractable. That aspect comes in handy, considering there’s no traction control to save your backside. The only way to make all that grunt usable is with an excellently tuned ride-by-wire throttle, which McWilliams sees as one of the bike’s crowning achievements.
“Throttle mapping is a huge part of what makes this bike this successful,” McWilliams explains. “When you’re producing these kinds of torque figures, you’ve got to be very sensitive with how you get the power to the rear wheel, and the calibration guys are very, very good with that.”
Other slivers of civility come through in the tidy gearbox, which staffers quickly reminded us is mostly stock. A prototype slipper clutch is the only notable change. It’s also complete with an up/down quickshifter.
Grabbing an upshift is smooth sailing, though the autoblipper was a bit hair-raising. With that much engine braking on tap, a hearty tail-wag is in store if you get a downshift even a touch wrong. So, I resorted to rev matching the old-fashioned way. And, my word, it shifts far better than the championship-winning Harley-Davidson Road Glide Special.
Sitting up in that lofty seat will make you feel like a kid dangling your feet from a highchair, and Kyle’s H-D is taller still. At least the chunky fuel tank pummel helps you hang on for dear life during braking phases or when leaned over. Yet, I yearned to be further over the front to glean precious front-end feedback. That’s no matter because the Indian lads have put together a bagger that can boogie—almost freakishly so.
Nothing this long, this tall, and this big should be able to flip through Chuckwalla’s turns 8 and 9 with that kind of agility. Some of the credit has to go to the high center of gravity, which helps the rider influence this mighty beast. It might be built like a cornfed linebacker, but it’ll change direction like a hot-footed sprinter when asked. In that sense, the desert circuit’s corner-speed-heavy layout isn’t lost on the big Indian.
Leaning a machine this tall on its side is an experience that requires quite a bit of reprogramming on the rider’s behalf. It feels like a living, breathing organism, writhing and wriggling from mid to corner exit. The team chalks it up to chassis flex, and their hands are tied by the rules; no bracing, additional welds, or supports can be added to the aluminum spars bolted to the main backbone frame.
You’ve got to learn to love the wiggle that makes itself known when first picking up the throttle, which then trails off as the bike stands upright. Interestingly, this is where the Harley camp has a leg up against its direct competition; the Screamin’ Eagle bike is far more stable at every stage of a turn. Even with all that going on, you can aim it in a direction without much drama.
One overlooked clever bit relates to the carbon fiber bags. In most cases, bags would be mounted directly to the subframe. McWilliams noted that a fair bit of energy could be transferred to the chassis through bumpy corners when they start bouncing. The solution? Isolate the bags from the chassis. The saddlebags are mounted to rails that slide through the width of the Challenger, allowing them to move slightly, creating a quasi-damper.
The ritzy Öhlins suspension is as good as it looks, offering more than enough support when grabbing a fistful of the powerful brakes and slowing this hulking beast. As this racing motorcycle is about the same size as your average European economy car, you can hammer on the brakes with gusto. In that sense, it’s as refined as any top-tier superbike on the market, with performance that can mimic it in many cases.
Back To The Paddock
It takes a while to absorb it all. The sheer power, the size, and the agility are things that all seem diametrically opposed to one another. And yet, it works, even when I’m wobbling around simply trying to bring it home in one piece. What becomes abundantly clear is the potential that’s ready and waiting for anyone willing to huck a beast on its side at nearly 60 degrees of lean. O’Hara and McWilliams are just the men for the job.
MotoAmerica’s King Of The Baggers has quickly morphed from novelty to full-fledged factory efforts. The grids aren’t getting smaller, and neither is the fan attention. The proof is in the performance, seeing as the leading packs can run lap times at racetracks that aren’t just respectable; they’re downright fast.
When it’s all said and done, it’s hard to see the S&S Cycle Indian Challenger as anything but a thoroughbred superbike. It has the pedigree, engineering, and performance to back those claims up. Yet, another intangible makes it so appealing. King Of The Baggers is a uniquely American series through and through, including the rivalries between the machines and factory teams. And in that, it’s hard to take your eyes off it.
Static photography by Brian J. Nelson; Action photography by Garth Milan.
King Of The Baggers S&S Cycle Indian Challenger Test Photo Gallery
