This custom-framed modern Indian Scout project has finally been finished up and we shipped it to France for the Wheels & Waves event in Biarritz . Since we last posted, a lot has been done. All of the finite details that take a ton of time!
We built a complete Chromoly girder fork from scratch including an Ohlins TTX mountain bike shock for some controlled dampening, we made some new radiators and cleaned up the cooling system, constructed a faux oil bag to house all of the electronics, built a custom stainless exhaust using our new “Track” muffler components, and plenty of other details. The frame, fork and swingarm where powdercoated in a beautiful vintage Indian red and Airtrix knocked out an amazing matching paint job for the sheet metal with hand turned gold leaf accents. This was a fun build and we put our best foot forward in hopes to pay proper homage to the original scouts that tore up race tracks all over the USA from the 1920s through the 1950s.
In the vision of RSD, we wanted to build a bike that drew a heavier inspiration from the past while also increasing the level of performance. This is that machine, in the raw and unfinished. It’s fitting for the bike, exposed wiring and mangled mass of cooling and radiators complete with Zip Ties to make its debut at Burning Man this weekend. Thor, who also commissioned the Track Chief picked the bike up from RSD in California and rode the bike to Black Rock City. Madness, as this completely hand built, reengineered machine had a mere 20 miles on it before it left. It’s safe to say madness is an inherent part of many of our projects. After all, who wants to rip apart a completely perfect brand new motorcycle and reconstruct it from the ground up? We are one of a few that will do that with smiles on our faces.
Of course we couldn’t help ourselves to want to use that water cooled twin in something a little more traditional/completely nontraditional. If you can see the writing on the wall here, it’s the contradictions in what the RSD Scout is and what it is not. We’ve completely deconstructed the stock Scout and rebuilt a frame inspired by the original Scout in ChroMoly that is damn close to the Project 156. What that means is it’s a very lightweight frame with much more aggressive geometry than the stock Scout frame, shorter and with less rake. We’ve also utilized the same rear suspension package “Panigale” we used for Project 156. If your hip to the Polaris method, the Scout and the 156 share some mounting points which made this project much easier as we’d perfected the suspension geometry on the 156. What it’s not.. it’s definitely not a “cruiser” anymore. If you’re a traditional fan of the Indian Scout than you understand that the Scout was a racer. This bike carries that racing heritage.
The Scout is a pretty cool machine stock. It took a while for us to get used to the spaced aged aluminum frame that carries/hides/pronounces the radiator and the punk rock subframe castings. You can certainly see the Polaris/Victory roots in the frame, fenders and the gas tank shape as much as you can see Indian. So stylistically it’s certainly pointed towards the future with say a 15% nod to the Scout of the past. I think where all this is leading to is that Polaris did a damn good job of putting together a future driven Scout with a great powerplant. In stock form it’s got a lot to work with from a customization stand point.