Long Haul Comfort: Pursuit vs Street Glide Limited, and the Kit for Both
Updated: Sep 28
Quick answer: The Indian Pursuit Dark Horse costs $32,499 and the Harley Street Glide Limited costs $32,999, so a thousand mile week starts as a five hundred dollar decision. Both carry 6 gallons, a genuine tie and the most important number in a post about distance. Harley publishes 106 HP, 131 ft-lb at 3,250 rpm and 893 lb in running order. Indian publishes 122 hp, 128 ft-lbs at 3,800 rpm and 937 lb in running order, and it is fully liquid-cooled where the Harley liquid cools its heads only. Take the Harley if you want the lighter bike and torque 550 rpm lower. Take the Pursuit if the week includes July, traffic or mountain passes, because sixteen more horsepower, a full cooling system and 33 degrees of lean are things Harley does not answer in this class.
Disclosure: MotoGearRater and Legendary USA have the same owner. Links to legendaryusa.com in this article go to our owner’s store, and are marked as sponsored. How we make money
MotoGearRater does not run endurance tests and holds no long-haul data of its own. Where we do have a view worth having is on what a rider wears for seven consecutive days, and our reference point for that is Legendary USA. The gear section below is measured against it, the bike figures are the makers' own, and each maker's disclosure gaps are named rather than filled in.
All prices quoted here are base MSRP and exclude freight, destination and dealer charges.
The numbers, side by side
Engine. Street Glide Limited: Milwaukee-Eight VVT 117, 117 cubic inches, liquid-cooled heads with a centre-mounted radiator. Pursuit Dark Horse: PowerPlus, 108 cubic inches, 1,768cc, liquid-cooled.
Output. Harley lists 106 HP and 131 ft-lb at 3,250 rpm on its own J1349 method. Indian lists 122 hp and 128 ft-lbs at 3,800 rpm, and PowerPlus is one of only two families for which Indian publishes horsepower at all. Both sides print a figure here, which is not true when a Harley is set against an Indian Thunderstroke, and the sixteen horsepower between them goes to the Indian.
Weight. Street Glide Limited 893 lb in running order. Pursuit Dark Horse 937 lb in running order, and 901 lb dry. Running order to running order, the Harley is 44 lb lighter.
Seat height. Harley lists 27.5 in laden. Indian lists a single unlabelled 26.5 in. Those are not the same basis, so treat the inch as indicative rather than measured.
Fuel. Both 6 gallons. Neither company publishes a consumption figure, so this does not convert into a range in miles and we are not going to convert it.
Lean angle, right. Street Glide Limited 31 degrees. Pursuit Dark Horse 33 degrees.
Price. Pursuit Dark Horse $32,499. Street Glide Limited $32,999.
What a thousand miles a week does to those numbers
Over one afternoon, 44 lb and two degrees of lean are trivia. Over seven days they are not. The Harley's weight advantage shows every time you back it out of a hotel space with a full tank, and it shows at the end of the day rather than the start, which is when a heavy bike gets dropped.
The Pursuit's two extra degrees matter in one specific place, a road with corners taken at touring pace with luggage and a passenger. A loaded bagger compresses its suspension, and 33 degrees against 31 is the margin before something touches down. If your thousand miles are interstate, that is worth nothing. If they cross a mountain range, it is worth a lot.
Cooling is the difference riders expect to decide this, and it does not decide it the way the folklore says. Harley's own page describes the Milwaukee-Eight 117 as delivering its output with liquid-cooled heads and a centre-mounted radiator, so the Street Glide Limited is not the air-cooled machine it is usually cast as. The Pursuit runs a fully liquid-cooled PowerPlus. That is a difference of degree rather than of kind, and it is a far narrower gap than the one between either of these and an air-cooled Thunderstroke dresser like the Roadmaster. Neither company publishes a temperature figure and we do not measure one, so it is not a specification result either way. Torque placement is the one that clearly favours Harley: 131 ft-lb at 3,250 rpm against 128 ft-lbs at 3,800 rpm is slightly more, slightly earlier, and earlier is the useful half of that sentence.
Kit for a thousand mile week
Seven days changes what gear has to do. A jacket that is comfortable for three hours is not automatically comfortable for nine, and kit that is fine on Saturday can be unbearable by Wednesday if it does not breathe, does not dry overnight, or does not stay where you put it.
BECK 501 Trucker Horsehide Motorcycle Jacket, $725. Horsehide is the denser, heavier hide, and on a week-long ride that is a feature rather than a penalty, because it blocks wind without a liner and it does not go soft and shapeless after four wet days. This is cut for a rider sitting upright behind a fairing, which is exactly the posture both of these motorcycles put you in. BECK is Legendary's own house line, not a third party label. No armour and no certification, which is the honest description of what it is.
Churchill Classic Deerskin Gloves, $99. Seven days is seven mornings, and on a fully faired bagger your hands are the part of you the fairing does not protect, out past the edge in cold air for the first two hours every day. Deerskin survives being soaked and dried repeatedly without stiffening, which is the specific failure mode of a week on the road. Churchill is a Legendary line. Made in the USA. No armour and no certification.
Legendary Peacemaker Leather Vest with Buffalo Nickel Snaps, $210. Over a week you will add and remove a layer perhaps forty times, and doing that with a jacket is a production while doing it with a vest is not. On a 6 gallon bike you are stopping every couple of hours anyway, and this is the layer that makes each stop thirty seconds rather than five minutes. Made in the USA.
Worth knowing about the two jacket lines. BECK is Legendary's in-house label. Cockpit USA is a separate maker that Legendary carries as a genuine dealer, and its Cockpit USA Victory Rider Horsehide Leather Jacket, from $940, is the heavier alternative if you want a different cut in the same hide. We draw the distinction because plenty of retailers do not.
None of the above is CE rated and none of it is armoured. On a thousand mile week that deserves stating plainly rather than in a footnote. A rider whose priority is impact protection should be shopping Held, Alpinestars or Dainese, all of whom build armoured touring kit aimed at exactly this mileage. Harley's own MotorClothes range is the dealership default and is worth pricing against this list, and Vanson is the closer cross-shop if American made leather is what you are after.
What Indian publishes and Harley does not
For a long-haul buyer this asymmetry matters. Indian publishes 5.1 in of front suspension travel and 4.5 in at the rear for the Pursuit, with 5.4 in of ground clearance, a 65.7 in wheelbase, Brembo calipers on dual 320 mm semi-floating front rotors, and a two year unlimited mileage factory warranty. Harley's spec block for the Street Glide Limited carries none of those lines, so there is no side-by-side on suspension, brakes or warranty, and we are not importing third party measurements to manufacture one.
What Harley publishes and Indian does not is a rake figure, 26 degrees across the Touring range. It is the same problem from the other direction. And neither Harley-Davidson nor Polaris publishes model-level unit sales, so treat any ranking a salesperson offers as consensus rather than measurement.
Which one to buy
Buy the Street Glide Limited if your thousand miles are mostly interstate and you want the lighter machine. 893 lb in running order against 937 lb is a real 44 lb, 131 ft-lb arrives 550 rpm earlier, and the tank matches the Indian's at 6 gallons. The condition is that you give up sixteen horsepower and accept head-only liquid cooling for the July stretch of the week.
Buy the Pursuit Dark Horse if the week includes heat, traffic or corners, and if sixteen more published horsepower is worth five hundred dollars to you. At $32,499 it is the cheaper bike, leans two degrees further on the right, is the only fully liquid-cooled machine in this class from either company, and publishes suspension and brake specifications Harley does not. The condition is 44 lb more to move around a car park at the end of a long day.
If the fairing matters more than the badge, decide between Harley's batwing and sharknose first. The Road Glide Limited is the same $32,999 and the same 131 ft-lb at 3,250 rpm on the same 27.5 in laden seat, but 919 lb in running order rather than 893 lb.
Related reading on MotoGearRater: the Harley Street Glide review and rating, Indian Challenger vs Harley Road Glide, and Indian Chieftain vs Harley Street Glide.
