Did I lose $14,000 on a Fake 1948 Indian Motorcycle?

so a few months ago i bought this 1948 indian chief with a title that says it's a 1948 indian chief and and i was pretty confident about my 14 000 purchase until i saw some of the comments on the video that maybe this is not actually a 48. so we had a bunch of comments someone's saying that the the tank was not at 48 so some people even said that the frame was not a 48. so now i'm not really confident as to what i have but i know someone who does know and he's going to authenticate the spike force he's going to tell us what we need to fix tell us what we got and then tell us what this thing is worth let's go do it so we took our bike to our buddy matt at wheels through time the expert in vintage american motorcycles and the owner of the biggest coolest motorcycle museum ever [Music] awesome there it is dude here it is the big question is what okay we were told that we have a title for a 1948 and i'm hearing different things i know these uh these are all fiberglass fibergl okay rear one two yeah okay that's all fiberglass i know this was modified a little bit i know this is stock this belongs on here of course yeah right um you need to name it a horse name yeah um so we're trying to authenticate and figure out what's what we actually have here wrong yeah what's right what's wrong got it okay so one guy even told us that he's like he's like that frame's not even a 48 and i'm like how would you even how would you possibly know that from the from the video but yeah how would you know that from the video you got pull down pop that down yeah chris you help him out with that that always it always jumps off the top if you don't do it right well the frame number's over here sure looks like a 48 frame okay so down over here you see right down there it says 348 it's a 48 frame okay so expert was wrong wasn't he yes so it is a 48 frame all right 48 frame yeah what you're looking at is uh here i got my light if you want it yeah there's a number right down there and it says uh three which is threes means chief 48's the year and then this is your production number so that's 348 318 what's your vin number cdh oh man it's a matching frame and and motor so it's like unlike the harleys but they just said that's right this is actually a matching frame indian matching frame and number so this is a matching numbers motorcycle which what that means is that this is the same frame that's that came with this motor from when it rolled off the showroom floor originally and what that means is the value potential of this motorcycle is significantly higher for the future for the right buyer now matt's going to tell us whether the rest of the components of this bike are a period correct for a 1948 and what it might cost for us to replace them with oem or uh or remanufactured parts so that's super strong that's good that's what's going on right off the bat so looking at the motor you know what carburetor do you have on there it's a linker carburetor it's an m88 so that's a harley carburetor they all work just fine is that that's normal or is that um it gets switched out a lot it's a linker carburetor the number on there is specific to a harley wla actually okay but it's a three bolt harley or it's a three bolt linker carburetor which will fit on a lot of applications and indian use something just like it there is motorcycle information and all this learning reminded me of something luke 16 10 he who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much and he who and he was righteousness in a very little thing is also righteous in much another thing you got uh aluminum oil pump 48 was the first year for aluminum okay so 48 to 53 the chiefs use that of that oil pump so that's the proper oil pump you got uh square based cylinders so the cylinders are the right uh year the right era the heads are you know chief aluminum heads right era the gas tanks well that looks like a 48 emblem they're round right here and the round if i'm not mistaken is scout versus chief i think it's square right there um so they might be scout gas tanks not the end of the world um proper chief dash obviously missing a speedo wrong wrong switch this is a different year though this is for uh an older dash no i think that's up to 48 i'm not a hundred percent sure i'm pretty i think that that's up to f might be just 47 but i'm i'd have to check and this 1980s harley ignition is that yeah that's that's obviously wrong but that might be even 60s harley looks like you got proper handlebars all your fork stuff is 46 7 and 8. so that's the indian girder fork they made a couple different lengths of these for different years and i'm not sure which is which and you could probably get in a good indian book and measure center to center here and center to center there and they were just using that to change the rake a little bit but uh oh so the longer one down here would set it out yeah yeah yeah right so some years they're like the same length you can tell that this one is actually a little shorter and i feel like the later ones were probably shorter on top and longer on bottom yeah right risers it's a really good start man their headlight is kind of the proper type headlight kind of yeah you know it's uh i don't it's uh that says cycle ray guide yeah so that's actually like a i was wondering if it might be a harley headlight um it looks kind of harley-ish um so maybe that's like a remade harley headlight okay so that that's probably not it but they look just like that you know a bunch of cool extra trim and i mean it's like one of those personality bikes you know right you know it's kind of got the flavor of the the owner all over it i think your brakes are right your front brake backing plate that looks like 48 this is kind of custom here but how they extended that way out and then this is actually a rear brake arm oh and that's why the way that that comes out and hangs all over see this would just be a a straight arm and that's why they extended it so they extended this out because they couldn't find the right brake arm so they added this bolt yes just to bring it out here instead of just like either bending that or finding the right one finding the right one yeah and i mean they're all it's all hard stuff to find but that's interesting i've never seen that done like that before and i don't see any reason why i wouldn't work working work just kind of yeah you rode this one home too six hours six hours how'd it ride it it rode ran the engine ran great okay way better than that wla they're balanced indian motors are really smooth yeah it was a great ride yeah and plus that rear suspension is kind it's kind of cushy well i i didn't feel any of it because i had this right and that really kind of uh sure it was extremely painful yeah this is a kind of a it's a stock header and then this looks kind of like it was they said it was twisted it is twisted so this would come down here yeah right and the way that they've mounted it and i probably just did that to be hot rod and kid with a kick up pipe but so they welded a bung on there so this thing would twist and the pipe usually hugs back here a little bit yeah so they put the fishtail on that's extra what did they put the bung on for the this the bung yeah to hold that in a kick up position versus oh okay hold it down so how about how would that normally have been held um i think there's a clamp that goes to right here so a clamp would clamp around this like a pea clamp got it um and it would bolt to this lower and then this would bolt onto like right here that's the clamp oh this is the clamp that's the clamp oh got it yeah just hanging up there that clamp's hanging up high to do the the fishtail versus down low um yeah you got like it's all silicone but that's the right tail light and right does it tail light length no it looks like somebody smells seven point something in the uh miles per hour it's got an indian on it interesting it came with quite a few 7.92 miles per hour really that'll be darn yeah i don't know that's cool man it's kind of johnny cash special ain't it it's hands about the size now that alternator that is that of indian thing so what's that you know that's where it went that's an alternator yeah so that's uh i think that's what this is this was converted so this is a it's a 12-volt system okay 12 volts and that's a that's uh points are electronic electronics okay wow it starts up really easy it does start nice yeah um that electronic stuff i never mess with it much and it's not because it doesn't work better because obviously they do it for a reason it's just i always got nervous on if something breaks while i'm on the side of the road i can't fix electronics but i couldn't fix points now the shifter yeah what side was it supposed to be on because i hear they can be on both sides and the throttle can be on either side they can be on both sides and what they did here they obviously did a jockey shift here but that's all long like that because it went through the tank so which side's your throttle on right or left right throttles on the right this these bikes you could do them on either side they so you could really order it either way so that shifter they actually had shifters that were like you know like who's comfortable like right inside your leg yeah you know and yeah it's interesting that this is back there but i mean hell it's kind of ergonomic ain't it it's pretty you're going pretty far yeah they gears way down it's way down yeah way down yeah um cool horns um yeah second neutral so that's that might be third here is that third gear i forget yeah i had to ride to learn it and then it took me a little while to figure it out yeah there's first gears down so third gear you're at least pulling it up to you so when you're going 50 you don't have to lead to the ground um yeah so alternators wrong this shifter if you wanted to put it back up all you need is linkage to get you to the well you'd have to pull the uh pull the transmission lid off um which is kind of difficult with these cylinders and then it it does it goes it goes through here right yeah right so the shifter you know the whole way if it's on that side your arm would come out over on this side your shift rod would come down this way and you have to put a new arm in your transmission tower to catch your shifter linkage and it's got to be the opposite the opposite side of the throttle that's right so it'd be over there so it could have been here but it also could be here depending on what side the throttle was right and you can change all that throttle stuff so that's just rerouting cables but you know you put the shifter over there and it comes out on this side and the shift linkage is on this side even though the shifter is on the other side but cool man that's awesome this this is a stock totally factory yeah i thought so yeah sounds just like it used to [Laughter] so i couldn't be happier about this bike i mean all the stuff that matt is telling us about this thing is really really good i am a little bummed out that that saddle that saddle seat is not original for that motorcycle but that's okay i can always get try to find another original one the big question on my mind is what is this bike really worth was fourteen thousand dollars a good price for it the bike in this condition now we know it's matching numbers yeah ballpark what's the value of this thing um well like it's crazy because right now really nice stock examples restored stock examples okay let me put it this way this bike for the longest time up until a few years ago this bike was worth the same in 2017 as it was in 1995 right they never climbed much but they were always in the the 20 000 range for a nice restored one recently you see these like post war chiefs climbing you know pre-war stuff is always high because it's in you know they made less of them they had to endure world wars and right any number of reasons why there's even fewer around than they made the 48s though have been getting really well i can't say that valley i wouldn't take this as a barometer but a couple of these like really nice restored examples that the las vegas auction just sold for like above fifty thousand dollars that being said this thing's far from stock but you got the best bones you got the right fork the right frame the right motor right trans so you know 15 15 17 grand probably all right and then what do you think it would cause for us to get it to where like top level top shelf that's a good question man and i it's tough to to to speak to some what somebody else's work costs you know but in parts maybe about five six thousand bucks in parts um should get you pretty close to the in the right direction um and then i don't know about uh i don't know about labor you know it just depends what needs to be done to it you said the motor runs great so maybe it's not worth it he rebuilt it before uh before he saw i i i talked him on the phone cool he's like i love that bike that's awesome you know well so it's a good question you know original fenders original tanks that stuff's hard to find there's some really high quality reproduction stuff out there and that's the thing with indians like we were talking about earlier is the indian crowd would rather see really nice straight sheet metal than even if it's reproduction than junkie original do they make reproduction they make them really like the metal ones cause these are all fiber yeah those are fiberglass they make really nice metal fenders oh really and gas tanks yeah so uh there's a company called jerry greer engineering i've heard of them yeah they're south dakota and when you know if i'm going to restore and they've got everything so if you need little hardware packets 10 new tank bolts new dash bolts or a new brake cam like for your front brake there front front brake arm you know all of that stuff is obtainable really high quality and they're kind of like standard yeah who you use if you're restoring chief stuff oh we we tracked down a speedometer yeah uh nice looking one the guy said sell to us for like 325 or something like that yeah i thought so too that's way cheap looks real nice like if i had one it'd be afraid yeah crap we gotta buy the thing before this airs yeah yeah right i gotta jump on that yeah but it's hey man good bones like whenever you find one that's matching numbers that's really cool is there anywhere else those numbers are on the frame just on that lower rear shock so really cool awesome man i appreciate uh appreciate the help yeah and of course well glad to help man and you got a good one check out his youtube channel wheels through time he just gave us a tour the most insane motorcycles and the craziest stories he's got all that stuff on his youtube channel i i really love watching it because i love motorcycles and he's great at telling the story see you guys later it looks like uh i did not get scammed or ripped off on this motorcycle awesome and uh stay stay tuned and see what we do to do with it next cool oh i need to i need to get a gun that i keep in there yeah cool dude he's a nice old revolver yeah yeah oh sick shooter yeah cool

Channel: Bikes and Beards

Views: 2,099,179

Keywords: bikes and beards, sean, caleb, motorcycles, srkcycles, srk, beards, bikes, indian motorcycle, wheels through time, indian chief, wla harley

Id: Qj6TlVyPDBk

Length: 16min 51sec (1011 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 25 2022