This is a clever move by Indian; by the time need
to stop and stretch, you need to fill up with gas.
The seat itself is lovely and comfortable, as is the
reach to the bars and the footpegs. However, I’m
not sold on the all-day riding comfort of forward
mounted pegs… I don’t like the fact I can’t really
ever stand to ease the pain that eventually
sets in to my arse, something you can do on an
adventure bike or even a sports bike to some
extent. Even if I do look like a bit of a dork riding
and standing on the road on an adventure bike,
I’m still grateful to be able to do it.
The handling is decent. It has a 31-degree lean
angle and while that is about half that of your
favourite MotoGP bike, it’s on the good side for a
cruiser. In fact, for normal riding it doesn’t touch the
peg ends down too often at all, although I would
bear in mind that when the pegs touch down, your
feet are likely to touch the ground too. And because
they’re out in front of you, they are perhaps a little
less likely to slide on the road smoothly…
The steering is on the slow side of agile, the
bike feeling long and low and stable. However,
manoeuvring though turns and around town is still
comparatively effortless. The tyres are quality Pirelli
Night Dragons and both are 16-inch in size. The
fat 130/90 front probably contributes to the slight
slowness in initial turn-in, while the rear 150/80 is
fairly traditional in size.
Braking performance is adequate and well in
keeping with the Scout’s cruising design and
intended use. But, it’s still a 100hp, 265kg machine
wet and a dual front disc set-up certainly wouldn’t
go amiss. It does have ABS as a nice safety net.
However, when ridden briskly the single front
298mm disc with twin piston caliper feels near its
useful limits. The rear disc is the same sized 298mm
as the front, but with just a single piston-type
caliper and it works well.
Suspension action from the 41mm conventional
forks and twin shocks is good. I found it rode more
comfortably than most other machines of this
style. Fork travel is 120mm, while rear travel is a
rather short 76mm. Despite the limited rear wheel
travel the shocks performed well with reasonable
bottoming control. Both ends contributewell to
maintaining good overall bike stability.
56 KIWI RIDER