Not going to lie, getting that thing around the yard was on the scary side. Need three hands or a prehensile ***** to shift gears.
"Road a 1916 Indian today"??!!You are talking about an 1916 Indian MOTORCYCLE right??? Mart3406 =========================
No, no pictures of me riding it. I will try and get some up soon. It is a customers, he wants to get it road worthy and put a side car on it.
I finally broke down and purchased my own digital camera. We pulled carb off and went through it, and then started on sorting out various linkage issues and set the valves.
It can take video. If we get it back together tomorrow I'll at least get one of it running, if not a riding video.
What the? Indians made motorbikes? What the hell were they doing riding around on horses for? History could have been very different............ Yeah, I'm bored. Doc.
Moe, your avatar is killing me. That aside, here are more pictures of the Indian. The needle and seat in the carb are shot. The kicker being that the seat is cast into the bowl. The float is also done. But I guess 94 years might be a bit long to expect some shellaced cork to hold up. I have fitted a br*** float in it's place and am going to convert the needle and seat to a new Ford style neoprene needle and br*** seat. Fitted the new tank today, some guy in Canada builds them(apparently).
We need to pull the oil tank off and redo the brazing around the fittings and seams, it pisses oil everywhere. The customer is dead set on electric start. Which is going to difficult. But it does give us license when it comes to originality. I am trying to talk him into having the tank chromed. I think it would look very cool in chrome with the original black and gold stripping and the gold 'Indian' decals.
Cannot figure out how to upload a video here. I will try and get them up somewhere else and link it over, I think. Started working on the side car. Had to machine a new spindle for the axle and have to make mounting brackets. The man who owns the Indian also has a 1929 International 1ton 6speed Special that we did. It was back in the shop yesterday for kingpins. I will get some pictures up of that as well.
Electric start... someone needs to rescue that bike before the damage is done, Ill trade him a 71 Harley for it. Spike
I don't know if it would be correct on this particular bike but Indian made motorcycles with electric starters and full electrical systems as early as 1913
No, no 'tech' on the starter part of it. I also hate the idea(especially as the bike isn't that hard to start), but the customer has had several back surgeries due to years of laying bricks and roofing and wants it. We did look into the parts off of the 'electric' Indians, but those parts are super hard to come by. There was brief discussion of using a HD trans and starter but for unexplained reasons that was tabled in favour of some kind of retarded set up with a ****ing Kohler twin flywheel. Sometimes bosses and customers can be very annoying
The Jalopy Journal
