New water-cooled tourer from Indian revealed in patents
The Indian Motorcycle heavyweight touring category could be about to gain a new face in the form of this liquid-cooled cruiser
PATENT images have been unearthed that show a possible new heavyweight touring motorcycle from Indian.
The new bike looks to be based heavily on the newly released Challenger, although with a more conservative and classic style to the machine. Gone is the nose-heavy front fairing of that machine, instead of a more lightweight and traditional ‘batwing’ style front end has been introduced. On top of that, we have a full-height screen that looks to be non-adjustable, although looking at the size of it, that shouldn’t really be required.
Indian FTR1200 first impressions
The leg-shields mounted either side of the bike are new also, giving the machine the appearance of a traditional cruiser-cum-tourer – especially handy for distance work in the UK! While the images don’t clearly show it, these shields could include speakers for the obligatory sound system.
While the thought of a proper old-school mile-muncher from Indian is a mouth-watering prospect, you have to go beyond the exterior of the bike to see the really innovative stuff. The frame of the machine is a trick-looking monocoque design, that sees the intake air for the engine guided through and filtered within the frame of the machine.
Air enters the frame through the three holes mounted on the underside of the frame (#62 on the image above), from there they pass through a panel filter before being scooped up and passed into the fuel injection system.
While the system looks neat, such designs can be a pain to perform maintenance on, although it seems Indian has already through about that, as the air filter at least looks fairly easy to replace. Once the tank assembly is removed from the bike, a simple inspection panel can be removed to allow easy access to the filter.
With emissions regulations on pretty much all motorcycle manufacturers to-do lists, it’s likely that we’ll see less and less of Indian’s large capacity air-cooled range, with the liquid cooling beating them on both emissions and noise fronts. It’d make sense for a full range of bikes based on the same design to begin breaking cover.
Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
