Indian Scout Midwest Urban Dirt Tracker

Launched in November,2015, the Project Scout competition gave dealers from around the globe a high-profile forum to showcase their passion for Indian Motorcycle and their team’s talent by building a custom Indian Scout.

There were no restrictions on the bike’s theme, cost or build style, the only rules being the dealers had to use an Indian Scout or the newly introduced Scout Sixty as the base model and use a minimum of three authentic Indian Scout accessories from the current catalog.

This Midwest Urban Dirt Tracker in the Project Scout contest comes from Indian Motorcycle of Metro Milwaukee out of Wisconsin.

We chose to build a "Dirt Track" style Scout while incorporating some tactical accessories from Midwest Industries, Inc. to give the bike a rugged look. We elected to utilize the dirt tracker theme due to our shop's passion for all forms of racing and competition.

We started by removing the fenders, fuel tank, suspension and frame from the stock Indian Scout. From there we started with powder coat on the engine covers. We also powder coated the frame satin texture black to contrast with the color on the engine covers.

Spent ammunition shell casings were attached to the engine fasteners to enhance the rugged look of the powertrain. We fabricated mid-controls for better dirt tracker positioning. This involved fabricating mounting brackets, adapting foot pegs and utilizing a pair of muzzle brakes from Midwest Industries for the shift and rear brake pegs.

The stock rear fender and structure were completely removed and a rear tail section, in holding with the dirt tracker racing look, was fabricated from aluminum. We clearanced the lower portion of the frame to allow the rear suspension to use longer rear shocks from Progressive Suspension. Along with that, we adapted and fabricated components to install a chain final drive utilizing a rub block on the top of the swing arm and an idler pulley on the bottom to maintain tension on the chain throughout the travel of the swing arm.

The stock front end was removed in favor of an inverted set of Showa forks mounted on modified triple trees. We adapted hand guards from Midwest Industries as fork guards on the fork lowers. In true dirt track style, the front brake was removed.

A pair of 19" Performance Machine wheels were adapted for the front and rear by constructing custom hubs and spacers to work for the Scout application. The wheels and hubs were powder coated and then wrapped in Maxxis DTR-1 dirt track tires.

The exhaust system is a one-off custom setup that was designed with two things in mind: 1. Show off the right side of the Indian Scout engine 2. Incorporate more of a race-style in conjunction with the custom tail section. For heat shields on the exhaust, we again utilized hand guards from Midwest Industries on both the front and rear headers.

For the handlebars, we went with a set of Pro Tapers and Pro Taper Grips mounted to a quick release scope mount from Midwest Industries. Clutch control is providing by a Brembo RCS clutch master cylinder and adapted in place of the stock cable driven system.

Paint on the tank, tailsection, and number plate were masterfully done by Jason at Artistimo Custom Design. He used a candy base coat with black striping accented by including a key mod design. Silver leaf was used to bring out the logos and numbers. "01" on the number plate and tail section is in reference to the founding year of Indian Motorcycle - 1901.

Source indianmotorcycle.com