1931 Indian 101 Scout Motorcycle - Jay Leno's Garage

welcome to the episode of Jay Leno's Garage if you frequent this website you know the last few weeks we've been doing the cars of SEMA these thousand horsepower resto mods and all kinds of cool stuff the new Shelby 350 our Mustang the new Audi the new NSX Acura I thought would slow it down a little bit with an old friend this is my 1931 Indian 101 Scout this is one of the great American motorcycles the one on one Scout was a revolutionary bike only because it was light it handled it had a low center of gravity not only weight about 370 pounds it's 45 cubic inches which is about 750 CCS now there was one above this that was the chief that was the big model but this is the one that people just kind of fell in love with because it was easy to ride it's the best bike I've ever ridden for cow trailing you know it's getting on a dirt road and put it in second gear or just kind of crawling along and you know joining the view this is the car they use the car this is the bike they used rather when you see those wall of death guys when they you know when they take a motorcycle around a circular board track and get the thing going this way it was the one on one Scout just because they were reliable and they were the best handling motorcycle you get you could get back in the day of course Harley's and Excelsior and a lot of these other motorcycles had overhead valves but there's a man named Charles Franklin he was an Irishman and he came to America I think about 1916 he got quite famous in Ireland for racing motorcycles and he became sort of Ireland's motorcycle man he indiaunheard about him and they got him riding Indians over there and when he won quite a few races they brought him to America and eventually became the chief engineer of Indian and designed the one on one scout his real genius was that he was able to get power out of these old flat head style engines and beat the overhead valve engines you know back in the day overhead valve engines were always superior especially in racing the flat hem engines but because of metallurgy and things of that nature valves would break they weren't as reliable and Franklin through porting and polishing and tuning he got these not only to be the equal of the Harley 8-valve race or Excelsior any of those but to actually beat them and win races it was it was pretty amazing this was really one of the most legendary motorcycles of all time this is the one bike that Harley was a little scared of back in the day because it was just right the first time right out of the box had all kinds of interesting features on it for example let me show you this here as I said it's 750 CCS - can chef one for each cylinder and each camshaft had only one lobe the cam doing double-duty both the intake in the exhaust valve on each cylinder they had a bell crank valve that operated it and the front cylinder cam gear spunda there were three gears in here and the third gear turning a magneto and the really cool thing about these motors were well other motorcycles had a chain drive driving the primary which you had to adjust and would get out of alignment and all that kind of stuff these were all gear driven there were more expensive engines to produce certainly because of the gear driven it might have been a little noisier but they lasted the life of the motorcycle that was a great thing about the Indians Calvin used to say you'll never wear out an Indian scout that was because you almost couldn't break these bikes they were so reliable it's not that they were the fastest bike of the days they certainly weren't but they won the most races because they were most reliable especially anything over a hundred or two hundred miles these could really go the distance it's a three speed you have a foot clutch or suicide clutch of these to calm it the bike originally had a left-hand throttle I converted it to right hand because every you know you get used to so many bikes and you go what depth and next thing you know you know so I just converted it to two right hand - right hand throttle just so I didn't kill myself it's a total loss oiling system you fill this tank up here with oil when you're on the highway you want to give it a lecture there's the hand pumping and shoot an extra dollop of oil into the cylinder the thirty ones I believe had a had the oil pumped connected to the throttle so the more you open the throttle more oil at pump but those got missing they pump too much while most people disconnected them as we did on this bike here if you're real Indian purists you'll notice it doesn't have the original carburetor we put a different carburetor on it just because it works better I mean it's period-correct but it's a modification people made back in the day but other than that it's pretty much exactly as it was I haven't painted this I really haven't done anything to it in 30 years I've just ridden it and about a couple years ago I called my friend Mike Thomas at Kiwi Indian down in Riverside California and I said hey I sent a little tired can you go through it for me which he did he put some pistons in it and cleaned it up and it runs like a brand new bike I never wanted to touch the patina of it I like it it just looks like a nice original old girl you know sometimes you make these things so shiny nobody wants to ride him anymore so he got the head it's all you know I didn't want to repaint everything because then once you go down that road then you then you do every nut and bolt and then pretty soon you don't want to take it out because it's too nice so I liked using it just the way it is even has this original spotlight that came with it when it was new here just phenomena here you see we wrote in there do not exceed 40 miles an hour until he had 26,000 500 miles because I want to put a good five hundred to a thousand miles on this thing before I really open it up you know we just put the new pistons every minute so that's to keep me honest and it's he's got the famous telltale see the red line there that followed your speedometer and when a cop chased you he would chase you if you said I wasn't going 50 he'd bring you back he didn't need a light see that's how fast I had to go to catch it this is your air meter here charged and discharged this is your key this works your headlights this is gas tank a lot of people want to know what this is you're getting old bikes they go hey what does this do what this does is this you sort of suck some gas up when the bike was cold you'd squirt that directly in the carburetor to prime it this one is filled with oil as I said it's a total loss system you fill the tank up with oil you got probably maybe 150 miles on a quart of oil something like that this was your hand pump if you're doing high-speed work you'd shoot a couple of dollops of oil into the cylinder just to make sure it everything's stable lubricated is your three-speed gearshift here this is your foot clutch on this side see you press enter that's your clutch there clutch as you can see this carburetor here is if you're an Indian guy you know that's not the correct carburetor but it's the one that works best for me on this one see the prime is actually down this here is your normally this would be a high-low beam I just converted to an on/off kill switch because really a high beam you're not gonna blind any weather these lights and this is your advance and on your ignition and this is your hand throttle here this is your front brake the one on one Scout was probably had the best front brake of any Indian at least up to that point you can actually stop with the front brake which was unusual because most motorcycles you couldn't and you got a little light here there's light lights up this dash area lights up your speedometer so you can see at night really comfortable set saddle and you got a luggage rack back here a little tool chest you can carry extra plugs and things like that so it's a very sophisticated neat little package you know we all go crazy for the fancy English and European motorcycles whereas these things not only were they real workhorses but they were sophisticated you know like that gear driven primary that's pretty cool that's that's nicely done you never have to mess with that and these were reliable you know you could go 20,000 miles where you had the pole to head off one of these do any kind of work to it which doesn't sound like much now but back in the day that was a lot I can remember looking at triumph Motorcycles in the 60s and the salesmen telling me you know you have to take the head off this thing to about 7500 miles really Wow I'll take the whole thing apart don't let 7,000 miles well so there it is shoehorn they said front brake if you like to know more this is a book called Franklin's Indians it's about Charles Franklin Harry suture these guys these guys that write these books if they don't get rich you don't sell a million copies of a book on Indian scout motorcycles but I'm so grateful the guys that write these things because they save all this history I mean there's an illustration in the book here of how the primary works on the early scout you see that okay see nice gear driven unit they're way more sophisticated than a lot of the European or Italian motorcycles of the period and this book is filled with all kinds of great period pictures the thing that really killed motorcycling America was the Model T I mean a bike like this was over three hundred dollars a Model T was 260 dollars why would you buy this with a sidecar when you get an automobile that you could take your whole family out in England motorcycling was more popular because people couldn't afford but it's all in this great book it's it's really terrific it's called Franklin's Indians I I have no part of this book it's not like I got a financial interest in it but if you enjoy reading about the early history of American motorcycles especially how they did in Europe you know these won the Isle of Man I think in 11 or 10 something like that they came in like one two three four I mean it was really impressive American motorcycles you know we tend now think of them as little old-fashioned but in the turn of the century Indian even had an electric start model in the teens which was really really rare it wasn't real successful but it shows you how ahead of the time they were but listen let me put this book down and we'll thing for right I see now the engines cold so I'm gonna turn on the fuel now you don't have to tickle these like you do a British carburetor but you might want to put your choke on or your prime and maybe give it one or two kicks just to pull some fuel into the cylinder just like that okay open that up adjust your spark a little bit let's see what happens as you can see very sweet running bike being a 750 you don't break your leg trying to kick it just kind of drop your foot through when she starts I'm not sure what the compression ratio is in this probably six and a half something like that so it's easy to start run school I got to put my jacket on we'll take it for a ride it's a really comfortable riding position you know your hands are kind of apart like this bars aren't too low watching after speed the wind takes all them you know whole Jeff Bezos strain out of your arm and a really steady bike look at that no hand no mountain bikes have gotten so fast that anything less than a hundred seems boring where is this 25 1555 that's kind of a nice cruising speed get to take in the smells and the sounds and things are happening around you when you come to light you can keep it in gear and then you just let out the clutch [Music] I like a hand shift on a motorcycle so old-school there's a lot of stuff for your hands and feet to do you're just in the throttle you got your spark advance got your foot clutch you got your hand shift look at that look how stable this bike in mobile pumps you can see why they use these for stunt shows you can't help but smile when you're riding an Indian exported motorcycles all over the world much more so than harley-davidson back in the day Indians were huge in Europe and in England like the bikes are so good the English actually put tariffs on them because it's hurting their home market even a lot of British twins from the 60s you couldn't even see in degree of you Americans they vibrated to March where is this thing this is exactly the kind of rug this machine likes a fast two-lane be Road and now with this you don't really miss the I'd like to hit a really big Oh just because they go fast they're ones like this because enjoy the ride we now call it is a 1931 you're a young guy 20 years old this is probably like what a lot of fun this thing is you know this is just classic motorcycling at its best big ol reliable engine magneto no battery don't eat any of that although it has a battery electric light just one of the great great bikes of all time I know this episode was a little slower than some of the other ones we do but sometimes it's nice to go slow and just take in the sights around you I gotta go ride some more see you guys next week [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 588,691

Rating: 4.9682102 out of 5

Keywords: Indian, Scout, Jay, Leno, Motorcycle, Wall, of, Death, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus, indian 101, 1931

Id: HiRKg3me43o

Length: 17min 41sec (1061 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 27 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Whitworth]

And they say money doesn't buy happiness... pish posh.

[u/DarkestPassenger]

Leno is a true enthusiast of anything that goes.

Love to meet the guy someday.

[u/AlexSteezeman]

I always tell my Harley buddies that if I ever buy an American bike it'll be an Indian just to spite them.

[u/Jalharad]

My father in law rebuilds old Indians. has 2 39' Scouts sitting in his garage right now.