report (1) : Red Indian 101 Racer

Words & Pics: Rich King

Fashion comes and goes, and technical advances add more and more refinement to each successive generation of motorcycles intended for the road, so much so that it is not a difficult task to place a road going machine in its own time.

Red Indian 101 Racer

 

RACING MACHINES, HOWEVER, ARE DIFFERENT: a purity of design that works, the necessity to stick to the absolute basics means that even oldest racing bikes are still able to pluck the 'phwoarr!' chord in a modern biker's heart. Yeah, the long history is there and you feel the same nostalgia as you do with any other classic, but that additional emotion bubbles to the surface as you survey it's lines. Age is forgotten. 'That!' your whole being tells you, 'That is a proper bike!'

I spotted this Indian at the Indian Riders rally in late September 2002 and approached its affable owner, Fred Weare, to ask if I could photograph it. I had no idea what it was, I just knew I liked it a lot. It was red and, like an old prizefighter, looked more than capable of inflicting severe humiliation regardless of its age.

Red Indian 101 Racer

But what was it? The complications started soon after I'd finished the photos. Fred and I had sat around a table in the marquee to complete the all important spec sheet: I was there to learn, and I knew I was at the very bottom of a sharp learning curve. Fred impressed me in that even though he'd been around Indians all his life, following his fathers love of the marque - and his father is still very much alive and still very much an Indian man - he didn't pretend to know everything, and so soon after we started, he enlisted the help of a fellow club member, Mike de Bidaph.

As soon as I saw Mike I knew he was somebody I ought to have known: if I was worth my salt, I should have known. It was embarrassing to have to ask his name, but I did anyway. He has the natural air of a born leader, obvious aura of 'been there done that' and guru rolled into one, and it was Mike who originally found the bike. But for all that, what follows is everybody's best guess. Nobody claims it to be wholly accurate - corrections, suggestions or, better still the full story, in an e-mail please.

Why? Because this Indian is, first and foremost, a working competition machine and therefore it has been heavily modified for racing. Different parts have been used to build up the machine, and many of those parts have also been altered, and it will have been built up by young and talented guys, eager to get it to go as fast as possible, over 70 years ago.

Mike located the Indian in Florida, USA, towards the end of the Eighties. It was part of a private collection in a private garage along with other machines, and for sale as part of the estate of man in his 80s who'd sadly passed away.

Red Indian 101 Racer

Instead of the usual Indian airfilter cover, many racers replaced the filter cover with handmade items, often bearing their name, nickname, team name or bike's name: in this case, the airfilter cover bears the name 'George Beerup'. Does this ring a bell with anyone out there, we, but particularly Fred, would love to know more. Mike is not sure whether the dead man in Florida man actually was George Beerup. The only one we know of is a George Beerup (George Birop) who ran a bike shop in California in the forties, which was the launch pad of pinstripe wizard, Von Dutch, but the name could even be a pun - legend has it that the riders used to get well and truly plastered BEFORE the race - especially the savagely dangerous (wood) board racing which finally was outlawed in the USA in the late 1920s.

However, we don't think … okay, Mike doesn't think, that what we have here is a board racer: he thinks it is more likely to have been raced in the late 1930s, and its stance and modifications suggest it campaigned on Short Circuit.

Learned colleagues, let us examine the evidence:

At first Fred and Mike believed the engine they had jointly worked on was based on a 1926 600cc Scout, but which had later been modified for the track with 750 Sport Scout heads and barrels. After all, the oil system is total loss over the crank and rods but what angle were the footboards? 'Eh?' I thought, and grabbing my pen and paper scuttled after Fred and Mike who'd just wandered off to check.

Ah, the footboards are flat, that changes everything.

Mike was able to state with some degree of certainty that this Indian was originally a 750cc, and almost definitely a 1929-ish Indian 750 101 model. The heads and barrels are Sport Scout, added later, mid '30s as a performance mod, so there is a chance that the cam could also be Sport Scout too. Another performance modification would be the big bore Linkert carb, a carb which came as standard on the later big twin Chiefs.

Nobody was surprised to hear that the ignition runs from a magneto ('Doesn't 'alf 'urt!' was Fred's comment) nor that the exhausts were straight through. No help there to help date the machine. But I held out hope for the gearbox. Oh the naivety of the thick, I can hear the titters of Indian owners world-wide …

Why?

Because, foolish child, 'If it ain't broke don't fix it!'

The Indian Motor Co. built an agricultural, chunky 3 speed helical gear driven box back in 1915 which basically worked so well they never needed to think about changing it - whatever the application, whatever the year. Well, I was there to learn.

The foot board angle meant that the frame is almost certainly a 1929 101, it's obviously a hardtail, and always was. However, the rear end has also been modified for Short Circuit racing, being shortened to bring the rear wheel in. A shorter wheelbase means quicker turning and with that in mind the racers reversed the linkage of the front forks too, bringing the front wheel in as well. Interestingly the handlebars have been shortened, there must have been some good reason for this but I have no idea what. Wind resistance? Narrower machine? Short armed bloke?

Red Indian 101 Racer

While going and steering was obviously a priority with these guys, stopping, just as obviously, wasn't: the Indian has just one brake at the rear wheel, a band brake which by all accounts is 'totally useless!' and indeed, looks it.

Not at all contemporary with the rest of the Indian is the seat: a modern looking sand/speedway single seat which just happens to look spot on. Fred however is on the lookout for an original solid pan seat, so if anyone has one …

So there we have it, Fred's 750 Indian 101 Short Circuit racer: 'George Beerup'. Any additional information gratefully received of course, but at the end of the day it simply stands on its own as one hell of a stonky bike.

sources : http://www.american-v.co.uk