- Thu Oct 01, 2015 1:32 pm
#51748
Eddie, I think the Indian RE factory already has to some extent - I refer of course to the 350 Thunderbird or the 535 Lightning! To be fair, it's not a hard job to turn these styling disasters into something far more attractive, some of the people who have posted on here recently have done that very thing. To be fair to our hosts, they do seem to have avoided the worst of the customizing options. Have a look at some of the Indian custom stuff on ebay!
Chris, you might be onto something. At Donnington this summer I was quite impressed by a racing Rudge 500 from the 30's and I was taken by how compact and light it looked (more like a 250), compared even to an unfaired featherbed Manx Norton. As far as I could tell it just looked like a nice restoration with the non-essentials (ie lights) removed for the track. It might be possible to find an unrestored WDCO and restore it to pseudo racing trim (without making it look like a crass hipster nightmare), and just leaving off the parts you don't need, rather than chopping an Indian Bullet to suit. I have no doubt, when times were hard under late 40's austerity, lots of ex-WD OHV singles would have had to fit the bill, as genuine new racing machines were scarce and, for the majority, impossibly expensive.
A.
