This was the time when I had to sit down and really ask myself “Would I be content with a stock Chief?”  And the answer, after much reflection, was “No.”

It might be a good idea if I now explain my reasoning for this. 

It’s partly, but only partly, related to cost.  One fact of life I immediately had to face was the fact that you Yanks pay altogether too much for your hobbies.  As cherished slices of Americana, Indian motorcycles are a more costly hobby than most.  Another consequence of this “Americana” thing is that Americans tend to worship their Indian Chiefs as-they-are, warts and all, without too much questioning of why they were put together that way.  What Springfield says, goes. 

Well, I’m not an American, so I don’t give a damn about Americana.  I can worship Indians as motorcycles, but not as Americana.  If I truly wanted a slice of Americana, warts and all, then I guess I would just bite the bullet and save up for all the stock parts that I need.  But there’s more to it than cost.  As a “furriner”, I suppose I can approach an Indian Chief with a more objective eye than those of you who were all busy saluting the flag from a young and impressionable age.  Maybe this is why I do tend to question the way that Chiefs are put together.  And if I’m going to the trouble of putting one together from scratch, then I want to indulge my urge to put one together differently from the way that the lads and lasses at Springfield used to do.

To explain this urge, I will now tell you my Chief likes and dislikes.

What I like about the Indian Chief

The Chiefs attract me on two levels; mechanical, and emotional.  The emotional part was well covered in the February-issue column “The Indian Allure” by Bob Kelley so I won’t dwell on this too much more.  I do, however, want to say that he spoke for me as well when he wrote “… the passion for Indians … has to do with recapturing a sort of innocence and heartfelt pride not corrupted by pretentiousness or deceit.”  Or, to put it another way, Indians are good, honest motorcycles.

Mechanically I like the Chief engine because you can see what everything is.  There is no tricky “engine styling”, or attempts to hide things away behind fake covers or tin pressings (’50 – ’53 Chiefs excepted).  The engine is what it is, yet still manages to look tall and handsome.  The crankcases are circular, and so they should be, because flywheels are circular.  Contrast that with the Japanese cruisers where, as Jerry Hatfield put it, “form follows function, so any shape is suitable for a fuel tank”.   Well, over in Japan they’ve finally got the fuel tank part right, but continued adherence to this philosophy explains why their crankcases still all look like amorphous blobs!

I also like the timing chest layout of the Chiefs.  Having two cams actuate four valves is more simple and elegant than the four-cam Harley flattie arrangement, but doesn’t run into the excessive width problems and out-of-kilter pushrod tubes of the single-cam OHV Harley Big Twins.  Ariel used a near-identical layout for their big singles, and it is difficult to imagine a simpler and more elegant timing chest layout. 

But having this two-cam layout does not guarantee a great engine.  Compare Indian Chiefs with the other heavyweight sidevalve contenders, on either side of the Atlantic.  Some of the more astute among you will probably have wondered why I didn’t consider the U-model Harleys among my V-twin wish-list in Part One.  Don’t they have the same attributes that I’m now praising to the skies for Chiefs?  Well, in theory, they do.  Narrow four-cam timing chest, generally similar layout, you can see what everything is, etc.  But in practice, they’re firkin’ ugly, man.  They have all the grace and beauty of industrial air compressors.  Same goes for the Matchy/Ajay, Oily-Henfield, and Beeza V-twin offerings.  Perhaps it reflects the utilitarian and thoroughly non-sporting uses for which they were intended.

Thirties Chiefs also suffer in this way, being a tad compressor-like.  The post-’40 Chief cylinders and  heads, however, are one of the most beautiful casting jobs I have ever seen.  Elegant and handsome, they have been deliberately styled but in a way that does not resort to trickery or fakery. If I had a pre-’40 Chief, I would soon find myself wanting to fit post-’40 cylinders and heads to it.

They say the engine is the heart of the beast.  If so, then the post-’40 Chiefs have a lot of ticker.  In most ways, they’re what I’ve always imagined that a heavy-weight V-twin would look like.  Having OHV in the manner of the JAP of London V-twins, or alternatively with rockers enclosed like on Ariel singles, would make them perfect. 

If only the Aussies, who recently went to so much trouble to cast up OHV top-ends for Chiefs, had made them this way (like a JAP or Ariel) rather than try to ape the look of the side-valve Chiefs.  But their target market must be the people who own Chiefs as Slices of Americana, who don’t want them to look any different from the way that Springfield made them.  The latest Starklite catalogue contains a one-page feature about these OHV top ends, which says words along the lines that “The designers have done a good job, most people have to look twice before they realise it’s not a stock Chief engine”, as if this were the main criterion for its success.

To me, an OHV top-end that is disguised to look like a side-valve top-end is just as fake and contrived as anything that ever graced a Japanese cruiser.  If Springfield had produced an OHV Chief, it would surely have been an enlargement of the 1920s 45-ci hillclimbers that they’d made a small batch of, but with the addition of enclosed rockerboxes.  The Wigwam would have wanted to brag about their modern, new OHV model, so would have made darned sure its engine was recognisably different from the side-valve ones.  But now, when Indian enthusiasts can finally get their hands on an OHV Chief (60 years late!), they want them to look the same as a sidevalve one!  This reminds me of the Mrs Haversham character in Dicken’s “Great Expectations” – all the clocks have to be stopped and nothing can be changed since 1953!  As they say in Yorkshire, there’s nowt as funny as folk!

What I don’t like about the Indian Chief

I have a long list of things that I don’t like about Chiefs, mainly relating to the frame and running gear.  But lets start with the engine, which by-and-large I like very much.

I really only have two beefs with the engine.  Firstly, I wish I could lose the magneto horn that sticks out the front.  It takes up space, and partly blocks my view of the handsome cylinders and the nice circular crankcases.  I hate metal that doesn’t do anything.  Hardly anybody runs a mag on Chiefs these days, yet they all have these bloody great horns poking out in front, like an Elizabethan cod-piece.  Indian Larry felt the same way, so he sawed off the magneto horn and deck on his own bobber Chief, and welded up the cases to close off the resulting hole.  This gave it a very neat and tidy appearance.  I wish I had the guts to do the same, but I’m just a little afraid that the Indian Gods might get angry with me.  The supply of intact Chief cases in the world is still fairly limited, so I didn’t want to cut into my ones just yet.  However I would gladly swap for another set of cases where the magneto horn has been broken off, so that I’ll have the excuse I need to commission some major cosmetic surgery.  The motorcycling equivalent of a nose job, I guess you could call it. 

My second beef with the engine is the fact that the gearbox bolts to the back of it.  I know that engineering-wise this is actually a good thing.  Far better than the contemporary Harleys with their long and leaky pressed-tin chaincase and pivoted gearbox, which add nothing at all to structural integrity or oil-tightness.  But to my eye, the Chief primary drive is too short for the tall engine, and looks out of proportion.  The engine and gearbox unit does not fill the space in the frame properly, and leaves a yawning gulf between gearbox and rear wheel.  A gulf filled only by the stupid place that they put the generator, and the less said about that the better.  The Harley primary-drive and gearbox arrangement, though engineering-wise it is inferior, looks just right.

Next, the frame.  These only look good if you keep the Chief fairly stock.  Once you start stripping them down (in accordance with the Minimal-fuckin’-ism Theorum) it soon becomes apparent that Chief frames are ugly and gawky in the extreme.  Frankly, they look like a component of the Brooklyn Bridge.  Huge, awkward-looking cast lugs, sharp bends and corners everywhere.  It is testament to the styling prowess of the Springfield crew that they could take such an ugly skeleton and dress it up so beautifully.  The tinware such as fuel tanks and chain covers all dovetail into the frame castings so nicely that they obscure most of the ugliness beneath.  But try stripping it off, and you run into problems.

Contrast this with a Harley frame.  H-D screwed up royally with the layout of the Big Twin engines, in my humble opinion.  But with the frames they got it just right.  The more you strip off a Harley, the better it looks.  I think this is the main reason behind the vast numbers of chopped Harleys out there, while chopped Indians are a rarity.  It can’t be attributed solely to heightened sensitivity about Indians, since chopper builders are notorious for their lack of sensitivity and they would have picked on Indians big time if they thought that Indians made good choppers.   I reckon there are so few Indian choppers around because some bikes, like some people, look better with their clothes on.

Next, the forks.  Well, Springfield gave us a choice of three for Chiefs, but only the last ones, the telescopics, would I consider fit for a bobber Chief.  How Indian got to be a style leader with that leaf-spring fork is beyond me.  Talk about agricultural!  George Brough apparently felt the same way when he chose a fork design for the Brough Superiors.  He must have known that Indian forks worked better and kept on working even when the bushes became worn, but he still opted to copy Harley’s neater-looking springer.  I know that the post-war Chief girders work well, but they look too spindly and kick back at too much of an angle.  It spoils the flowing triangular themes that give bikes of this era their great looks.  So telescopics it has to be.  Or alternatively, a slightly extended 741 girder.  Since ’50 - ’53 Indian telescopics are about as common as ’50 – ’53 Indians, I think I’ll go and shop around for something else a little more readily-available.  No myopic Americana for me!

The two things I do like about the Chief ancillaries are the fuel tanks and the headlamp shell.  Although Harley’s have a more bobber-able frame, any bobber worth its salt would definitely have to lose those fatbobs.  Harley owners seem to regard these tanks as things of great beauty, but I find them bulbous and obese-looking.  They really suffer in comparison to the sleek teardrop profile of the Indian tanks.  If I owned a Harley and wanted fat-bob style tanks, I think I’d prefer to fit Indian ones.  And Harley chopper-builders know it very well.  Almost all of them fit Sportster or Mustang tanks. 

Mind you, I can’t fathom the popularity of Mustang tanks.  One of the best-kept secrets of chopperdom is the small tear-drop tanks fitted to BSA or Matchless/AJS rigid-frame singles up until 1954 (when the change-over to swing-arm frames brought new, rounder tanks).  Sleek, streamlined, suitably small compared to fatbobs, yet they still hold a useful 3-1/2 gallons.  They’re also available with tank-top instrument panels.  I fitted a BSA B31 tank onto my 741 project (cost me US$20 at a swapmeet) and it looks fabulous.  Ssshhh!   Don’t tell anyone I told you!  If those Americans find out, prices will go through the roof!

Lastly, the headlamp.  The Motolamp, the one with the pointy rear.  To me, these are an Indian trademark.  Again, they reflect the sleek, triangular styling themes of those times.  Better than the bulbous things fitted to late-model Indians, or to contemporary Harleys.  I want one!  And thanks to Moen, I got one (but I’ll tell you about that another time).

So, that’s it.  My pet peeves about Indian Chiefs.  Along with the things that entrance me about Indian Chiefs. 

This month’s column will evoke one of two possible responses amongst my faithful readership (both of you!).    Either you firmly believe that the various niggles I’ve identified (the generator location, the magneto horn, the bolt-on tranny etc) are all an integral part of the Indian “charm”, they’re what make an Indian into an Indian, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.  Or you’re going to wander out to the garage and suddenly things you didn’t notice before or took for granted will now be a source of irritation. 

I sincerely hope you have the former response, rather than the latter.  Because the last thing I want to do is make anyone dissatisfied with their $15,000 pride&joy.  If I were fortunate enough to have a $15,000 pride&joy, I think I’d be satisfied with it as-is, too.  But since I’m starting with a pile of scrap, and since I don’t necessarily want to wear Indian “charm” like a hair-shirt, I plan to work on some of these niggles. 

Probably by now you can see where all of this is headed.  Next time, I’ll show you a range of chopped Indians, and tell you what I like and dislike about those.  And after that I’ll tell you what parts I’ve decided upon, to give me The Look that I’m after.
 
 

Next month:  Chopper Chiefs from mild to wild 

 
 

Pic Sixteen.  Wot’s that sticky-outy bit, in front of the oil pump?  Cut it off!
 
 
 

Pic Seventeen.  Indian Larry cut his off.  See how much nicer it looks without it!
 
 
 
 

Pic Eighteen.  “Gee boss, I guess we forgot to design it with a generator … um … I know!  We’ll stick one under the seat!”
 
 
 
 

Pic Nineteen.  Let’s play Name-The-Part.  Motorcycle? Or bridge?
 
 
 

Pic Twenty.  Harley frames look better the more things you strip off them.  Though you probably don’t want to strip it quite this far!
 
 
 
 
 
Pic Twentyone.  Name the part.  Motorcycle?  Or agricultural implement?  Part of a seed drill, maybe?
 
 
 
 
 

Pic Twentytwo.  Harley fatbob tanks.  Yecchhh!  Time to diet.
 
 
 
 
 

Pic Twentythree.  Indian tanks and headlamp.  That’s more like it.  I want them!