Old Warriors: Four Indian Sport Scout Racing Bikes

By Phillip Tooth
Published on July 11, 2007
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Photo by Phillip Tooth
Amazingly, all but one of the Indian Sport Scout racing bikes Larry Feece unearthed could still run. Not bad, considering they sat unattended in a shed for the better part of 30 years.

It’s the stuff of dreams: Stumbling across a windowless, tumbledown tin shed, you push open a door and peer inside. There, abandoned and lost to time, sits a battle-scarred race bike that hasn’t turned a wheel in 50 years. Only this time, the dream is real.

That’s just what happened to Larry Feese Sr. — except there wasn’t just one old warrior covered in dust and cobwebs. Forcing open the door to the tin shack, Larry let his eyes adjust to the darkness and slowly counted. One … two … three … four little Indians. In this case, four Indian Sport Scout racing bikes.

But before you start wishing you had Larry’s luck, stop and consider this: Luck doesn’t just happen. You have to make it.

Making the Luck

Twenty years ago, Larry helped his local Yamaha dealer in northern Indiana value old bikes brought in for part-exchange. “Most of the bikes I looked at were nothing special, although occasionally something interesting would turn up. But I never expected to be asked to appraise old Indian racers.”
The seller told Larry he had bought them in the late Fifties from a man named Buck Rogers and had intended to convert them back to road bikes, but never got around to it. He had cancer, and what he really wanted was a new V-Max …

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