(Pause for sound of groaning and gnashing of teeth among my readership).

In all of my extensive magazine and internet researches into chopped Indians, and my (albeit limited) experience of actual real-live Indians, this and the next bike are the only two clearcut (pardon pun) examples I’ve yet seen of a Chief frame having been raked. 

I suspect that most Chief chopper-builders are either too scared, or think it’s too hard, to rake a Chief frame.  More probably it’s the latter, since chopper builders are generally pretty fearless in their perpetration of crimes against classics.  Certainly a cursory glance at the construction of a Chief steering head indicates that it would be harder to rake a Chief frame than a Harley frame.  This has probably been the saving grace for many of the Chief frames still in circulation, while it’s very routine for Harley restorers to have to immediately begin the delicate task of de-raking any frame they’ve picked up from a swapmeet. 

The reason why Chief-raking is not for people of nervous disposition is because, when you cut into and re-weld that enormous Chief steering head casting, you can run into all sorts of problems with the brazed-lug construction of these frames.  Problems like “admixture” of brass into the steel, or cracking of the cast lugs if the temper of the metal gets altered.    You gotta know what you’re doing.  Not that this would necessarily stop some chopper builders from trying.

Unfortunately, most of this first bike’s front end is out of the picture.  Maybe the camera’s view-finder wasn’t wide enough to take in such a long bike?  But you can see enough to know that somebody decided, “Revered classic be damned, lets get serious here”.    They may have done a good job of it.  On the other hand, all that molding could be hiding a real horror story of welding.  Hopefully, all they did was cut a section out of the frame top tubes, heated and bent back the twin down tubes until the cut ends of the top tubes could be married together again, and left the steering head casting well enough alone.  That would be about the only truly safe way to rake a Chief.

And after all that, I have to say that I don’t like this bike.  But then, radical chops are not to my taste.  Your own mileage may vary, etc.

Even if the welds were good, you’d only want to buy this bike for one of two reasons.  Reason One: you’ve fallen in love with it as-is, because it already fits your vision of the perfect Chief-chop.  This is most unlikely, since a chopper is always such a personalized rendition of the owners’s dreams.  Reason Two: you want its frame and engine to form the basis for a new project of your own. 

Well, it doesn’t already match my own idea of perfection.  You already know how I feel about radical choppers generally, and about Mustang tanks in particular.  Besides, the whole thing looks too modern.  It’s lost the antique charm of being a period hotrod.  They might as well have just dropped the engine into an aftermarket Harley frame.  So, I’d only want it for the engine.  For this purpose, and assuming it runs well, I’d offer maybe $3000, or $4000 tops.  But then, I’m one of these miserly New Zealanders who think that Indians are just motorcycles, albeit rather nice ones.

These last three bikes are the most radical that you will see in this month’s issue of Choppers Corner.  They are not necessarily radical in appearance.  However they are radical in construction, because they have dared to do what every Indian chopper-builder ought to do but almost never does, that is, junk the Springfield frame altogether and make a new one. 

I explained last month that the stock Chief frame is one of my “Chief dislikes”.  Well, it seems I’m not alone, although it’s fairly rare to find any Chief engine that’s been built into a non-stock frame.  Perhaps it’s because of the uniqueness of the Chief drive train, combined with reluctance to throw a useable transmission away and start afresh. 

Anyway, take a look at these bikes.  They’re the ultimate in Chief chopperisation.

Anyway, this rebuild is a British effort, done in the ‘70s when there was little commercial support for Indian rebuilders.  Consequently, he used things like pistons from a Ford Zephyr and valves from a Bedford truck.  Americans won’t know what a Ford Zephyr is, because it’s a Dagenham Ford, not a Dearborn Ford.  Ownership of a Ford Zephyr would definitely enhance the sex life of any teenager anywhere in the British Commonwealth, unfortunately many could only afford an Anglia or Prefect.

The other radical component on this bike is a BSA four-speed gearbox with foot-change.  Good idea!  Banish grinding gearchanges forever!  Get a clutch that doesn’t drag!  Vastly improve the looks of your Chief!  I would dearly like to see how the primary drive is constructed on this bike, because I want to fit a Triumph four-speed box to my own bobber Chief.  Unfortunately they only photographed this bike from the timing side. 

Using a British gearbox on a Chief raises some interesting engineering issues, like, does he run a single-row primary chain, and if so, how long does it last?  Where has he put the generator?  Maybe he runs the electrics on total-loss, which is not such a silly idea if the battery is big enough and if the bike is only used for posing around his own home neighbourhood.

The more astute among you will straightaway notice the Ceriani front end, and I refer you back to Part 3 of this column for further discussion of its advantages.

What’s not so immediately obvious is the fact that the frame has been entirely reconstructed, from the ground up.  The only remaining frame parts of Springfield origin are the tubes and lugs surrounding the engine mounts.  Everything else has been cut off and replaced, to make a frame of mostly welded construction, modelled along Harley-framed bobber lines but sufficiently different from a Harley that only the truly ignorant would go and confuse it with one.

My only real criticism of this bike, apart from the lack of a second frame top-tube and a slightly too-goose-necked appearance, is the fact that Larry had not yet come up with a creative solution for the Chief generator problem.  But I know he’s been working on it.  He’s been scouring the world for charging systems that take up no more space than a pack of cigarettes, and he has also (independently of me) been considering the use of the Lucas crank-mounted alternators found fitted to most British bikes.  I applaud and encourage these efforts to further push back the frontiers of chopper-building, and I want to hear from any of you out there who may have something to contribute on this subject.

We’ll give the last word in this month’s column to Indian Larry, and the word is that, to “get the babes”, he has absolutely no need for a pathetic crutch like apehangers (see picture).  Either he’s found a really effective deoderant, or its just another armpit-chilling day there in NYC.  Whatever.  On that note, we’ll leave them to roar off into the sunset together, while we stop to consider the take-home message of this month’s chopper sermon. 

Firstly, that without too much effort one can build oneself a better-looking and cheaper-to-restore Indian Chief by bobbing it, without foreclosing the option of someday getting obsessive about originality again.

Secondly, if you are truly serious about getting radical and really ironing out the various design wrinkles bequeathed to us by the Springfield factory upon its demise, then you have to throw most of your Chief away and start from scratch. 

In other words, Chiefs can be mildly bobbed without too much difficulty, but they make horrible choppers unless you go to a lot of effort.  It is, however, well worth making the effort to turn a Chief into a good chopper because their engines are just so nice.  In the process, you have to get rid of that ugly frame, get rid of the gearbox, and get rid of that silly charging system.  If you strongly feel that these items are all an integral part of the Indian “charm”, then you’re better off sticking to factory-spec restoration, or a spot of mild bobbing, rather than go too far down the chopper route. 

There’s really no in-between for your Chief.  Many of the “in-between” bikes reviewed above seem to look slightly odd or ill-conceived, as if forced into the chopper mold against their will.  My advice is, either stay with mild bobbing, or else go the whole nine yards.

Me?  Well, I own so little of a Chief right now, that I might as well go the whole nine yards.

I’ll return next month for a discourse on what bits of which bikes I need to lay my hands upon, if I’m to apply Minimal-fuckin’-ist principles to my own Project Chief.
 

Next month:  Genesis of a Frankenstein Chief.