Steve Huntzinger (left) and I with my second Indian Big Base Scout. n the last issue I reported on my new project to restore an Indian Big Base Scout into a replica of the machine that my dad won the Daytona 200 on in 1948. Next year it will be 60 years since his big win and we need something to use as a centerpiece of the celebration.      This project is a real contrast to most of the projects that you’ll find in our magazine, mainly because most custom parts needed for the current machinery can be found in the pages of the Drag Specialties FatBook. Brian Klocks’ latest custom on our front cover and inside this issue is a good example of that. Sure, he too had to make a few special parts, but as you’ll see in the story, the parts list of stock items is a long one.      In case you didn’t read my previous story abut my Indian project, these 45 cubic inch Big Base Scouts are pretty rare items. There were no more than 6 of them known to have been built before Indian’s decision in the fall of 1947 to make a production run of factory built race bikes for Daytona. The official account was supposed to be that they built another 50 of them, although knowledgeable Indian historians set the number closer to 20 or 25.      Amazingly, after I bought the red #96 Scout in Daytona last March, in April another one surfaced on sale at an auction in Kansas City. So off I went and luckily came away as the winning bidder. So now I had two of them with the plan to use the best and most accurate parts from both bikes to make one really good one and sell the other one. Extreme? Yes, but where else do you go for parts for a bike that rare? You could hunt for years for some of the parts I needed that the second bike had on it.      I went to Steve Huntzinger to do the mechanical work on the bike. He is one of the very best restorers of vintage motorcycles there is, the older the better. So I recently loaded both of the Indians up in my truck and headed north to Steve’s place near Santa Maria, California. As I write this, the two bikes are apart and in the process of a metamorphosis into an exact replica of the 1948 Daytona 200 winning Indian.      Looking ahead to Daytona, I now have a lap of the Daytona International Speedway lined up at the AHRMA races early in the week, as well as a ceremony and autograph session lined up at the Daytona 200 monument at the beach on Wednesday. As we get closer we’ll provide a schedule of our activities for the week there.      Stay tuned for more updates as we continue our project. My two bikes upon arrival at Steve’s shop. Some examples of his other early machine work can been around the shop. Some of the top collectors in the world have come to him to get their old collectibles back into running order.

Parts Magazine
Volume 14 #7

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