“The best bike I’ve ridden in the last three months…!” reckons Mark. He’s talking about this 1934 (it’s thought) Indian, which we first saw as a project bike two years ago when some machining needed doing on the head stock to take a standard metric bearing.
A rare groove indeed – Jason Kersley's 1934 Indian. Yowzahs!
Jason Kersley is owner of the beast, and in his possession are a whole raft of bikes that we see from time to time – but the Indian has turned into a long-time, long-term project for him. It was bought from the States (where it was hanging on the wall of a bar in the mid-west…), painted candy red and a thorough non-runner, as you’d expect. Part of the process of getting it running was fitment of a magneto to the side-valve pushrod engine, so Jason dragged the bike in for us to have a go at it.
Bikes of this era are well out of our normal remit (!) but we did the work and the bike started quite easily. Once we’d struck it up and got it running sweetly Mark couldn’t resist taking it for a spin up the lane – no helmet, it’s that sort of bike – and came back grinning from ear to ear; “It’s that rubbish it’s great… left foot clutch, left hand gear change, three speed box, once you’ve got through the wobbling all over the place as you change gear stage it’s a scream!”
While the BSD Ducati 1098 project bike’s future is secure, we can sense something side-valve and vintage maybe winging its way to Eye sometime in the future…
