RIDE REVIEW I KING OF THE BAGGERS INDIAN CHALLENGER
P82
"At Daytona we came out
and kind of gave them a little
bit of a sucker-punch," Bailey
says. "We definitely found some
horsepower over the previous
year, but after Daytona, Harley
came back in Atlanta and they
had a higher horsepower pack
-
age, but they weren't confident
in the reliability. So, they pulled
that out and from there on we
were evenly matched, maybe a
little bit down in horsepower to
them."
This is not really something
that can be readily exploited at
Chuckwalla, with low revs in fifth
gear the best you can hope for
against the completely tapped-
out nature of Daytona. But
Chuckwalla, with its many long,
low- to medium-speed turns,
does have its advantage in that
it allows the superb mapping
of the ride-by-wire throttle to
shine through. The connection
between the right wrist and the
rear tire is exceptionally smooth,
especially given the inertia of
such a massive motor wedged
underneath me.
"We've been working with
guys from Max ECU in the UK
on the throttle response," Bailey
continues. But as opposed to
a Marelli system or something
where those guys are very on
top of motorcycle throttle con
-
trol, we've had to really develop
our own throttle maps and ev-
erything ourselves with the Max
system."
McWilliams, who was original-
ly brought in as a development
rider but ended up doing the
whole season with the factory
S&S Indian team, remembers
the first test at Jennings before
Daytona.
"Jumping on the bike, it was
a real wake-up call because it
was the very first kind of roll-out
they've had on it with all this
extra horsepower and torque
compared to the 2021 bike.
"We didn't even have a throttle
map. We were just running one-
It takes time to
understand how much
you can push the front
end on the bagger.
Weather conditions
prevented us from
running slicks.
