The Art of Riding an Indian Motorcycle: A Hands-On Guide

As I sat in front of my trusty Indian motorcycle, I couldn't help but think about how it had been a wild ride so far. Just the day before, I had cut the line to pump oil and it had all over my leg, causing a nasty crack right down the middle. But as any rider will tell you, that's just part of the game. You've got to be ready for anything on two wheels.

After finishing up the repairs, I decided to take her out for a spin. The first thing I noticed was how much fun it was to ride an Indian. The engine purred like a contented cat as I tickled the carburetor and gave it some gas. I closed the compression release and held on tight, feeling the vibrations of the engine as it roared to life. It was exhilarating, but also a little intimidating.

As I started pedaling, I realized that this wasn't just any ordinary bike. The Indian had a unique feel to it, with its left-hand throttle being a bit tricky at first. But once I got the hang of it, I found myself enjoying the challenge. The clutch and throttle were on the same side, which meant you had to work them together in perfect sync. It was like a little dance, where you had to balance the gas and brakes just so.

Now, I'm not going to lie, it's hard to explain how to ride an Indian motorcycle without actually doing it yourself. But I'll try my best. The key is to find your rhythm, to feel the bike responding to your every move. You've got to be smooth, like a surgeon cutting into flesh. Okay, maybe that's not exactly right, but you get the idea.

One of the biggest challenges of riding an Indian is getting used to the compression release. It's like a little secret valve that lets you slow down or stop without having to shut off the engine completely. But it takes some practice to figure out when to use it, and I'm still working on it.

As I rode through town, I had to deal with the usual traffic and pedestrians. But the Indian handled like a dream, gliding smoothly over the pavement as I picked up speed. It was like magic, except instead of wands and spells, we were using engines and gears.

I stopped for a bit in front of a gas station, where I refueled up on some gasoline and took a deep breath. "This is it," I thought to myself. "We're really doing this." The problem was, I was feeling a little overwhelmed by all the different controls and levers on the bike. But with a bit of practice, I started to get the hang of it.

As we rode through the countryside, I couldn't help but think about how cool it was to ride an Indian motorcycle. It's like nothing else out there, a true classic that's been around for generations. And despite its quirks and challenges, I found myself falling more and more in love with her every minute.

We took off again, this time headed towards the mountains. The road wound its way through the hills, offering breathtaking views of the surrounding countryside. I felt alive, like I was a part of something bigger than myself. And as we climbed higher and higher, I realized that this wasn't just about riding a bike - it was about freedom.

We rode for hours, taking in the sights and sounds of the world around us. The wind whipped through my hair, feeling like a wild animal on my face. It was exhilarating, but also a little scary. But that's what made it so much fun.

As we finally came to a stop at the top of the mountain, I felt a sense of satisfaction wash over me. We had done it - we had ridden all the way up the mountain and back again, without any major mishaps or dramas. And as I looked down at my trusty Indian motorcycle, I knew that we would do it all again in a heartbeat.

And then, just as we were about to leave, Alex brought his Indian out for a spin. It was clear he had been practicing - the bike ran smoothly and he handled it like a pro. We chatted for a bit, exchanging stories of our rides and sharing tips and tricks. And as I watched him ride off into the distance, I couldn't help but feel a sense of pride and admiration for these young riders.

As we packed up to leave, I couldn't help but think about how much fun it had been to spend the day riding with my friend Alex. It was an experience I would never forget, and one that I knew I would always treasure.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI'm close H there you go there you go yea yea only 3,36 miles to go welcome to the episode of Jay Leno's Garage we're talking motorcycles today this is probably the oldest motorcycle we've had on the website this is a 1912 Indian single cylinder with uh kind of an amazing Story the young man that owns this Alex traner I met him a long time ago in fact here we go that was him when I first met him sitting on this very bike well now it's about 26 years later and he rode this bike on the Cannonball which is 3,000 mi from the East Coast all the way across the United States on a single cylinder one-speed four horsepower motorcycle and he just came off the Cannonball he pulled into my garage it still got all the dust and dirt on it from the 3,000 M trip Alex come on in buddy good to see you hey Jay good to see you again thanks for having me it's been a while since this picture it's really funny good thing we've kept in touch since then yes it is it is it is and uh this was your dad's bike right yeah yeah my dad bought this bike in uh uh about 1962 okay and uh he he rode it around for a while and then it kind of got put in storage and uh um we had gone on several tours and stuff and I guess you know this picture my mom had caught me on one of the car tours I guess I wanted to sit on it so it started a long time ago and what did he pay for this in 62 do you remember he bought three Indians and he paid 650 for three of them and he sold two of them for the 650 and he kept this one he thought he was robbing the bank wow well I'll give you a double that for it right now yeah I bet you would yeah no these I see these are probably 60 $70,000 yeah yeah they're getting up there and and you know what the the thing that really intrigues everybody about this bike is that it's so original yeah and there's so many guys out there that are taking a motor you know build them up because that's that's all that's left anymore and I can't knock them for doing it but it's really cool to have one that where you can say original Wheels original carburator original spark plug mag mag drive all you know everything is stock it really is stock and know 1912 that was the Heyday for Indian actually that's was their largest yeah their largest production year was 12 in 1912 they had 1,200 dealerships yeah they had them across the United States they had them in Europe in Australia in fact I understand I think in 1911 they went to went to the a of man and got first second and third place yeah and won the race well Indians always been better than Harley what can I say well well we'll get into that now here you go now the comments will start and you'll be you'll be beaten to death uh there was a twin in 12 wasn't there yes there was Indian actually had twins as early as five right okay so in see Harley you know they were real late 11 you know and there are a lot of cool things about these motorcycles that uh people forget when they restore them but when they're original you see what we're talking about like these yeah the Rough Rider grips now see most people think you ride this motorcycle like this but you get that bone shaker thing going the idea is when you're riding you're supposed to bring your hands back onto this rubber you see and that would take the pounding out of your shoulders over long Journeys oh it did and you went 3,000 how many miles in this thing 3 3,38 miles I I can't say I got a perfect score uh I I did miss some miles I I lost a bunch of spokes in the rear wheel we uh um one of the valve Pockets exploded one day so I ended up doing a a little over 3,000 probably 3,100 some miles and but safe to say you probably riding this flat out right yeah pretty close to it about what 40 45 40 yeah it it liked between like 38 and 42 just depending on the grade and what it was but I know that doesn't seem like much back in 192 there wer no paved roads on dirt road so you probably went 20 yeah so that was so that was really Revenant quite sure quite a bit um yeah like you say it's all original got the horn right here that'll get that'll just annoy people out of the way else so what did you do did you truck it back east and then drive AC a buddy of mine actually up in Santa Cruz Doug fad he's another motorcycle guy he uh he actually really helped me out on this event um he he volunteered to carry the bike from Santa Cruz back there so I just flew on the uh we we took off in Atlantic City New Jersey oh okay oh right really right from Ocean to Ocean yeah so so a bunch of these guys in The Cannonball they went up to Davenport Iowa to the big motorcycle show went to Davenport and then went directly to Atlantic City from Davenport so we left Atlantic City you know right from uh one of the big casinos and uh we took off we went uh uh New Jersey through Pennsylvania through West Virginia um uh Indiana you know Kansas Missouri kind of we zigzagged the whole goal was to stay off of the main roads and how many quarts of oil did you use a day I was bringing like five quarts of oil a day five quarts a day cuz this is total loss oh it's total loss and it's uh as you can see here I brought one of the Pistons just two well there's only one piston there's only yeah one one of the Pistons um two ression Rings no oil ring yeah that's right because the oil splashed up when theate yeah which used to lubricate it but look at that just a perfectly flat piston yeah no nothing special you know and uh what I loved about that you know and a lot of these guys are are really adamant about uh you know modernizing these bikes put an aluminum piston oil rings I I don't care for that because the cast iron piston and the cylinder expand and contrast at the same rate right and these guys would seize Motors and you throw them away the Piston's done you got to tear the whole thing down if I started to stick I could pull over cool it down and take off again yeah so it's like for me that that way you know obviously I didn't have as much power as some of those bikes and stuff but and this is a bike you can literally rebuild by the side of the road yeah I did many times yeah we had the cylinder head off and and and uh a few things you know went through the carburetor a couple times had to adjust the mag points you know there there was always something to Tinker with what's the most mileage you did in one day do you remember um over 300 300 one over 300 I think it was a 318 one day we did so that's what 8 hours 9 hours eight hours of solid on on the on the bike and see the the problem with like I was a class one bike um the problem with that is uh there just wasn't enough time in the day so like I I would skip lunch what I would do is I'd go into the gas station on one of my fill-ups and I'd grab a slim gym or something and and just go right through because if I stopped at at the lunch stop I was behind I didn't get in on time and get all my points and what kind of gas mileage were you getting probably 50 m to the gallon well that many yeah oh my God cuz you know it's it's got that stock soup can and it's a one-cylinder so it really doesn't burn the gas and it's one speed right single speed yeah yeah it has a clutch and the poor clutch here you know it's all taped up the uh the clutch that that clutch it's a hand clutch yeah it's a hand clutch but this uh this housing bolts to the bottom of the tank and it started vibrating so much that it was making the tank leak oh okay so I was like oh so we took the gas tank apart and we fixed leaks and then another time it started cracking on the top here we had to take it apart and fix it again you know everything you don't realize the vibration the thing was just shaking shaking shaking the whole time and obvious no front brakes no front brakes I just have that one single rear brake right here yeah right and uh you know that that was everyone was uh kind of scared for me but we made it happen and this is kind of cool what do we have here this is your map this is our map box okay so so that would tell us where to go you know you you turn the wheels there and it would why is it not turning when well it's it's spooled up you got to turn I say so it's so it turns and then it tells you it's just like the old days you know cuz we we actually weren't allowed to use any GPS or smartphones or anything like that so this was where you went and I know there were several guys that would miss a turn and they next thing you know they were 50 miles out yeah I was going to one guy ended up going to Arkansas and Arkansas wasn't even on the map we we were down at the bottom of one state and they ended up in Arkansas and they were having lunch and they finally went back on the map and they said wait wait a minute we never turned on that street you know the other thing that really impressed me Jay is um and I got to hand it to Coker Tire on their tires these are the same two tires I ran all the way across the US and had bought three sets of tires planning on using more than them the only thing I had to do was switch the rear to the front and the front to the rear about halfway through yeah cuz the front tire doesn't really work you no break uh 7 days into it I'm looking at it it still had the the nipples on the top of the tires and I said wow that was cool so but the rear it definitely wore because all your weight you know I'm sitting right on the rear the cylinder is facing to the back you got your stuff in your box so the rear is what really took the beating even your box is a period piece isn't it says it's a superx uh uh rifle uh oh oh ammunition ammunition box okay so what year is this box you think probably around the same era I'd guess so and you got a little tool box here yeah this is kind of neat and uh you know everybody was you know kind of making fun of me but I I kept a lot of the original wrenches like this is the headbolt wrench right and the reason why I like it is this sits down on the nut and you won't break any fins off of the head if you see the head they they a lot of them have fins missing that's because somebody got in there with a regular wrench and hit one of the fins cuz they tighten a little too this one you cannot break a fin with that wrench oh very good so you know I got and then this spanner you know this these are all original Indian tools that came with the bike this one opens up big enough to do the um the exhaust nut now how uh how many spark plugs did you go through you know I used those same uh mic sparklers I used two and one of them just fouled up it didn't break yeah so two for the whole trip but one mistake I made is I had my spark plug sitting here in the box and I didn't realize that the vibration of all the tools around the SP plugs it actually wore the threads off of the plugs really from the tools vibrating against it wow yeah that's interesting it's a lot of vibration well yeah you just this whole thing you'll see when we start it up it's the whole thing just nothing is balanced now you don't have a Kickstarter on this no there's not you just pedal start and then you disengage the clutch I the way I ride it and I've ridden it my whole life is I just open the compression release just start pedaling it and close the compression release and go oh okay that's the way I I do it cuz it's a single cylinder but you can the clutch does work you can disengage it's kind of hard to actuate it right now cuz it's right you know I haven't done anything to the bike we literally came back a couple days ago and and uh you know I'm going to go through things you know and fix everything we got some pictures of the trip let's show those yeah yeah we got a whole photo album here um this is U this is going over the uh this was called The Cannonball bridge and how many bikes did The Cannonball uh I believe there was over 100 that registered I believe only 93 actually did did most of the race okay I saw one guy burned to the ground yeah uh John feifer actually a good buddy of mine his his bike on the very first day he bought um long range tanks and I guess they didn't quite clear the rocker arms oh and a puncture one of the Rockers punctured a hole in the tank and next thing you know hot gas on the hot engine wow so anyhow they the problem is they couldn't get the fire out is you know the gas kept pouring and they they got those little fire exting just didn't work yeah so but uh so these are the clothes you wore on here these are my these are my clothes I just this was my example of a of a daily attire and they would be clean in the beginning of the day and this is what they look like after I'm guessing single man are you no married with three kids oh you got three kids three kids yeah and your wife wow how about very you know what I got I got a hand it of all people to my wife for taking care of the kids and and letting me go out and play oh yeah so yeah well let's see what we got yeah I don't want to I don't want to step on this and get your shirt dir oh yeah yeah you don't want to get that yeah yeah yeah and these are some pictures yeah these are some pictures of our start uh there's a uh going through uh the Grand Canyon there Arizona um there's a bunch of now did your wife happen to see this picture no no no no don't show her that one did your wife see this picture with the two girls by the side of the road there two Good Samaritan sto yeah of course of course okay that's very cool okay wow he was this Grand Canyon that's in Arizona that was just one of the rock formations I happened to get hot right at the same time so pulled over and it was a photo this is Wolf Creek Pass that's a if you read on the sign there uh 10,857 ft wow and this climbed it okay it did so what I actually did was on our we had one rest day um a a guy actually gave me an old sprocket we cut the center out of it we went to a farm store and we bought a 102 sprocket and lowered the gear ratio on it wow so this what happened here well that was the intake valve and it broke clear out of the housing there yeah look at that yeah yeah broke clear out of the house I just all of a sudden lost power one day now what is that Indian so actually yeah this was a this was my my claim to fame here this was uh this was given to me by The Cannonball this was called the spirit of the Cannonball Award right right so I guess you know I was uh the third youngest riter believe it or not yeah I wasn't the youngest uh there's two guys and I'm 28 yeah there was a guy Tanner was 23 and buck Carson is uh uh 26 I believe okay very cool so yeah but uh anyhow that was an award that was given to me it's so funny you can just see where the other SAR is supposed to yeah yeah and the funniest part is Indians you could put a twin in this Frame the frame is exactly the same oh okay yeah you can put a twin right in there you know a twin single single speed as well what is that 8 horsepower probably the nine is what they rated it yeah I don't know why but uh they they called it a nine horsepower and you started just by pedaling it and pull clut in and exactly so there is an oil pump on it the problem I've noticed with the oil pump is after about 20 mes per hour the oil pump can't overcome the crank case pressure so you have to manually push the so you reach down and you you reach down you pump it so I got it to about every 2 miles I gave it a half of a pump okay and that that keeps it just right and you can tell you know when you got blue smoke coming out of the back of the bike you know that you know that she's happy you want to keep a little bit of oil but um you could see this little uh Pat's job here that that uh that's an original Factory line and it it looked like somebody took a hacksaw and cut it right in half one day and all of a sudden I go to pump oil and it's all over my leg waa what happened the line it just split just the the vibration a a you know vibration caused it to crack right in half well can I fire it up and take for ride go of course you can let's go through the starting procedure now you've tickled the carburetor you see some G here's a carburetor here yeah here's a little Tickler up there you just lift up on that and lets the uh the bowl fill all the way up this is intake here correct okay and this is uh this opens and closes yeah here's the this pushes up on the uh on the exhaust lifter there to open let that means there's no compression now the valve is up so so that's when you kick it'll be EAS you start pedaling it and then as you start pedaling you get the revolutions going you close the compression then it starts okay you close this is your throttle right here here corre we're dripping gasoline so we're about ready to go yeah about ready to go we got the fuel on you should be able to jump on and kick it over sure all right let's give it a shot here and see I'll put on my helmet my Harley Davison helmet this so this might cause a clash with the here so you got your compression release close I got to oh I want it open now well you want to Pedal it a little bit first and then open it close it a little bit more J there you go now now pedal it and then close it as you go pedaling now close it give a little gas there you go I am exhausted now 20 minutes of this will help you live uh 2 years longer let's see here it Clos the compression release and it should fire off now okay there you go look at that give a little gas give it a little gas oh okay try it again close the compression release step one closed okay open it there you go all right give it a little gas which that the problem is you don't have enough hands to work everything trouble is I'm dying again okay well your best bet is to jump on it and we push you get you started and then you you just you can turn the compression release when you want to slow down or stop and then you open the compression release again not the throttle no well yeah you use the throttle to give it gas and stuff sure yeah yeah okay sure but you you use the compression release to when you come to a stoplight or something all right let's try the problem is you can't work the the biggest issue with Indian is you can't work the throttle and the clutch at the same time because they're on the same side right well yeah okay yeah it's it makes it really hard so when I put it all the way forward I'm disengaged it'll disengage freeing you're freeing let's try that okay now okay open the compression Rel yeah and then close it when you're ready and just give it a little bit of gas ready okay go ahead close the compression okay it is close it close it is give a little gas close the gas open the gas hold it hold it hold it there you go I'm closed uh go ahead close your compression okay give it a little gas not too much just open and close it open it up now I am close with throttle and then open it again open it again there you go now it should go give it open it up no uh what am I doing here there you go there you go 3,000 miles of this Yea Yea only 3,36 mil to go well as you can see it's a little tricky to once you get the hang of it it's fun I see what I'm first of all I'm I'm not used to left hand throttle it's all backwards and that was one of the downfalls as Indian having the the clutch and the throttle on the same side and plus you're also backwards either wide open or shut now that's shut and that's open y yeah I I mean once we got gone you're fine every time I slow down you run into trouble you run into trouble together that was the nice thing about the Cannonball is we were wide open for a long time and you you didn't have to adjust a lot but going to the town I did uh two miles in this and I'm exhausted so 3,38 Miles Alex congratulations my friend it's good to see young guys getting into this old stuff cuz usually it's old guys like me they're kind of crazy but it's nice to see they are insane young people as well so Alex thanks for bringing this by and congratulations on doing the cannibal cool thank you appreciate it see you guys next week I hope you like this one\n"