1941 INDIAN SCOUT

DESCRIPTION

Scroll down for Pictures

Indian Military Scout

741 Flathead sets Landspeed Record

11/14/2009 106.001

 El Mirage, CA

2010 Racing Updates

The new race season has started! My first run down the dry lakebed of El Mirage, CA, for the 2010 race season, was over the weekend of May 15 & 16. We didn’t plan on doing much to my bike over the winter, our focus was on getting Dave’s Knucklehead up and running for this race season. That was the plan, but while waiting on parts for his bike, Dave snuck a new ignition system in my Scout. I had been running with the original points. My speeds for the first meet were at the 100mph mark. We worked on getting the timing adjusted and hope to go back out in June and up my record of 106.001.

June

Nothing good to report. still tuning with the new ignition. 

July

Ran 105.749 on my 106.001 So close. Made four attempts, as the day got hotter, the air went away and so did my speed. We celebrated Dave’s record tho!

September

As usual we set off for the lakebed with high optimism. I reported to Dave that my bike felt funny…not much for a tuner to go on. We checked it over and I headed out for a run. Felt like running thru cement and wouldn’t pick up speed.

On my second attempt I killed the bike right at the lights to get a clear read on the plugs, intending to coast to the return road. Didn’t make it. When I killed the bike it came to an abrupt halt… and I do mean abrupt. I was now sitting in the middle of the course trying to push the bike to the return road. It rolled so hard I thought it was in gear and was happy to see course workers show up to help. We managed to get it to the retrun road.

When I told Dave what happened, he immediatley knew what was wrong. We had changed gearing and the brake was dragging so very little that it was unnoticeable pushing it around betweens runs but was amplified with speed and heat. With that problem corrected I made a late day third pass of 100+…not good enough. We’ll see in October how it goes.