Dads Sport Scout

[PaulCDF]

Nice:
I to have found "Professor" Mosher to be a wealth of information; approachable and willing to teach and share. Remarkable these days.

[FLFD7]

A little update. All set to put the heads on and button up the engine for good

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Everything laid out and ready to go….

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Sprayed the gaskets with Permatex copper gasket seal, started torquing everything down and then…

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WTF….stripped one of the holes in the rear cylinder…figure I’d check all the holes and

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Sure enough stripped a hole in the front cylinder too. I am not a happy camper. No sense pouting over it, have to undo everything and get those cylinders off.

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Which I did. Contemplated drilling, tapping and installing the heli coils myself, I’ve done it before on other jobs but nothing so hard to replace as these cylinders and not wanting to f them up I decided to take them to a real machinist and have them done. I know a guy that owns a machine shop my company uses as a vendor. Showed him what I needed done and agreed to take the job (he owes me some favors anyway). So now they are in his shop and I’ll have to work on other parts until they are finished. I told him to take his time and do it right.

Oh well.

[FLFD7]

While I’m waiting for the cylinders to be repaired I decided to get to the rear fender. There is about 60 years worth of grease and grime on it, and it needs to be cleaned up for a welding repair.

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You can see on the chain guard side the sheet metal extension is split off from the rear of the fender, there is only about 1/8” left holding it on. Gonna take some parts off and give it a good cleaning before giving it to my friend Pete to fix it. I’m not gonna be “that guy” and give him a filthy greasy fender to weld. A little light scraping with a dull paint scraper along with a bunch of WD40 and a fist full of rags and now we are getting somewhere.

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I love the look of the original Seafoam Blue paint! Those red panels were not done at the factory, I found red overspray on the frame when I was cleaning that.

After cleaning most of it up inside I took it outside and gave it a good wash with soap and water, got all the grease off. I must have deleted the pictures of it cleaned, but you get the idea.

In addition to this big repair a couple of the mounting holes are either torn off or f’ed up enough that they need fixing. Pete will get it right, I told him not to worry about the paint too much, most of the repairs will be hidden by the frame and the rear suspension. I’d rather it fixed and mounted right then worry about some bubbled paint. If it’s bad enough I’ll try to match the red with some rattle can red, that’s what they did 70 or so years ago.

[FLFD7]

Surprisingly (not) Pete was not out shopping on Black Friday, maybe he’s waiting till cyber Monday. I was able to drop the fender off to him. Since it’s a holiday weekend I decided to tackle a few simple things and relax. I had pulled off the rear fender tip, gave it a quick bath, tweaked some of the bends back, and put some new nuts and washers on it so it’ll bolt right back on.

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Came out halfway decent, on to the next thing.

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[FLFD7]

Next up the taillight

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I got a bunch of taillight parts, think I’ll replace the sawed off license plate bracket and the big rubber spacer. It’s also missing the thick foam gasket on the inside, well not missing the old one is disintegrated and stuck half in the metal and half on the lens. By chance I have a new one, probably from Greer I don’t remember.

I have quite a few of these lenses, I was curious as to the differences. Here is the one that was on the bike lit up.

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next post let’s look at some other lenses.

[FLFD7]

In my late friend Jules stuff I found a NOS lens in the Indian box

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Looking in the parts book 101278 is correct for 1938-1940 Scouts Chiefs and Fours

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One thing I notice is that this original lens does not say LUX on it like the one on the bike ( actually it says LUX with an A above it ).

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a little different then the LUX A version.

[FLFD7]

So here are all my lenses laid out to compare

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On the top left is what I know is an original lens in the box correct for 1938-1940. It has no LUX on it. Directly to the right of that one is another lens with no LUX on it, but the goldish area on top is very dark, still mostly red. On purpose, or a manufacturing flaw? Don’t know.

On the bottom row the three lenses on the left all have the LUX A on them. Another difference I can see is that what I would call the pebble texture on the inside of the flat surface is finer then the original lens. We’re these lenses used in later years? When did they start? Are they even correct for the Indian? Are they automotive?

On the top row the two lenses on the right say LUX on them, but no A. The clearer section for the license plate is a bit smaller then the others, taking up about 30% of the lens vs about 40%. It has the finer pebble finish in the flat section. On the no writing lenses and the LUX A lenses the flat section ends about a 1/2” from the bottom flange, while on the LUX no A version the flat section ends less then 1/8”.

Finally on the bottom right is a car lens, non license plate light. It has the finer pebble surface, and the flat section close to the flange, but is marked LUX A? What the heck. I did some googling and these were used on the Bantam cars.

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I believe I bought the LUX no A lens second from right on the top row along with this lens at a car show as a pair. Most of these lenses I got at car shows. In the screen grab (credit Bantam car site) it says these LUX lenses were used on Willys, Bantam, Crosley and Nash cars and Cushman scooters.

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Here they are lit up (with a flashlight).

Does any of this bulls**t matter, probably not. But it’s interesting, no?

[PaulCDF]

Bummer about the head bolts; but it is wisdom knowing when to farm out a step to the professionals
.
I like Indian Seafoam Blue also great color. A million years ago in the 1960s I had a neighbor who had an old blue motorcycle tucked away in his cellar.
We kids all thought was a Harley nope it was a Seafoam Blue Indian!

Interesting yes; it is the details: We had a little discussion of tail light lens' going on earlier under the Chief forum thread: "Taillight Lens Original vs Repop"

[willphelps52]

Just found this thread. This is a really great build! I grew up in Clifton, NJ right next to Paterson. If the Indian dealer was still there when I was growing up, it would have been closer to my house than the Harley dealer on the other side of Clifton. I might have gone to the Indian dealer instead of the Harley dealer.

[FLFD7]

Hey Will,
Yeah, I remember going to Bub Tramontins Harley shop and then stopping at the Hot Grill for a chilli dog….

[FLFD7]

Still waiting for the cylinders to be done, unfortunately the machinist I gave them to dropped a 180# mold section on his foot and was out of work for a while, but he’s back and hobbling around so hopefully he’ll get to them.

in the mean time I got the rear fender back from welding from my friend Pete (thanks Pete!), and I think it looks good

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This section by the chain guard was literally hanging by a thread but he fixes it and reinforced it with a plate, and fixed the mounting hole that was torn off underneath it. The red paint got messed up of course but most of that area is hidden by the rear shock. I may try to feather in some red rattle can, it looks like a pretty generic red.

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Pete also fixed up the bottom front mounting hole that was also torn off. Should be a strap and a floating square nut but the welded nut fine with me. The original Seafoam Blue looks so nice I think, too bad somebody two toned it.

[FLFD7]

Getting back to the taillight I got the base and the plate bracket painted up and used a different rubber spacer as the original was cracking, I wanted to change up the bulb. I have an original base and socket and the old original bulbs had parallel locating pins, whereas newer bulbs have offset locating pins.

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Since this bike is going to be 12volt total loss I want to use LED bulbs for less draw, more light. Finding a two stage taillight brake light with parallel pins seems impossible. So I did an experiment with an old bulb and filed off the “high” locating pin and it worked just fine. So I found a LED bulb I liked on Amazon. I read the reviews and some say these lights are so bright they make to red lenses look pink, so the solution is to just use red LEDs. Here is the bulb I picked.

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It is a little smaller then the original, fine with me.

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And is super bright.

[FLFD7]

Here is the assembled taillight

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And here is the LED driving and braking. 41A9995D-5889-49FE-A3A6-F2CAABD61BDF.jpeg4E67FC70-AB6D-4F4C-A9D0-6EA3D22B84AB.jpeg

The pictures don’t do it justice, it is so bright.

[FLFD7]

Well it was a year ago this week that I snuck this bike out of my fathers shed. I had hoped to have it finished this year but that ain’t happening. No biggie, I’ll just keep plugging along. The stripped cylinders have really stopped major progress. I gave them to the machinist the week of Thanksgiving and haven’t heard back from him, he got injured at work and I don’t want to bust his ballz about it as he’s kinda doing me a favor. So I’ll keep doing little things that need to be done anyway. I got some vacation time I’m taking during the holidays so I hope to get the rear frame reassembled and then tackle the wheels. For now I think I’ll take a look at the toolbox. My father had it wrapped up with wire and the door was still hanging off cause the hinges were broken, time to fix that.

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Yuck, these need a good cleaning. Once that was taken care of I ran into a snag. Every time I put the door on the latch would catch, and I don’t have my fathers keys. Again I’m fortunate that I got a bunch of stuff from my late friend Jules including keys.

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Hey, I guess I found the toolbox key to my Four! And it works on this toolbox too. So does the key in the lower right of the picture. I have no idea what the other keys are for, maybe pre 38 Indian ignition?

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Problem solved.

[FLFD7]

This toolbox has the three small hinges and all of them are broken

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Anybody else notice the manufacturing mistake? The bottom two door hinges have a single knuckle, the top hinge has two knuckles. Must’ve flipped it around when making it. I guess QC didn’t catch that one. Well I got to get these old hinges off, they spot welded so I’ll drill them out.

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Ok, the old hinges are off. I know it’s not correct but I think the easiest way to do this is to use a piano type hinge. I thought about getting a cheap spot welder but the problem with that is they must’ve had special offset arms originally cause I think it would be hard to manipulate the workpiece into the proper position. I also thought about trying to solder the hinge on, but in the end I think I’ll just pop rivet the hinge on. I can line up the knuckle on the door side and put the box together then drill into the body. I have to wait for the last part cause there was only a little piece of petrified rubber gasket and I ordered a new gasket from Greer. With the gasket in place I can line everything up properly.