★★★★★ | MotoShed’s ‘Road Runner’ Indian Scout Sixty
MotoShed is a like-minded and free-spirited bunch of mates who have spent the last 20 years in various aspects of the motorcycle industry. Their experience is wide-ranging from bike building to race preparation, design, marketing and generally living and breathing motorcycles. They operate guerilla style, preferring to stay out of the spotlight. They don’t talk shit, they build cool bikes.
Their list of badass builds is long and distinguished just like their client list, including some names you might recognise; Jonny Rea, Fogarty, Adam Ant and plenty more.
Indian Motorcycles are America’s first motorcycle company, founded in 1901.
In 2016 they launched the Scout Sixty. It was on that launch in Spain where a couple of the MotoShed team hatched their plan to build ‘Road Runner’.
“The main thing I wanted to achieve was a more ‘sporty naked’ ride and I wanted to do under seat pipes, as nobody else had done it on a scout.”
A few hours kicking ideas around about how you could modify one and the under seat exhaust idea was born. They ordered a Scout the next day.
Standard Indian Scout Sixties ride very well. It’s a good looking, well-built bike out of the box, but Moto Shed could see there was potential for more, it just needed releasing.
There’s a more aggressive riding position with heavily upgraded suspension in the form of fully adjustable HyperPro shocks at the back and rebuilt stiffer front forks with black nitride coating. The increased ground clearance, thanks to a stiffer suspension, allows more lean angle. All of this means dramatically increased cornering performance. To further enhance this, the standard foot controls have been switched out for a set of Rizoma rearsets mounted on custom plates and there’s a set of lower Renthal bars. The more aggressive riding position means you can ride the Moto Shed Road Runner harder and faster.
What about the under seat exhaust?
On modern bikes with their ever-increasing electronics, packaging is always an issue. There are a lot of important components hidden away under the seat, such as the battery, ECU and miles of wiring. It’s an impressive packaging job by Indian Motorcycles.
In order to achieve a light-weight aesthetic, while retaining the factory look, the team had to get seriously creative, relocating the ABS pump, building a custom battery box for the smaller race-style battery, regulator, rectifier, ECU and extend the wiring loom to accommodate. Serious work, and all done to Incredibly high standard.
Once the space under the seat had been created, the team set about fabricating the under seat exhaust.
It really was the most complicated part of the build. Serious thought and skill was needed to route the pipes around the engine and through the new gap under the seat.
Managing the heat was a big concern so the exhaust was wrapped to try to insulate the heat and protect the bike and rider. There’s also a rear hugger/heat shield to deflect the heat and keep the road dirt away from the exhausts.
A Dynojet Power Vision CX system was incorporated to log data and help to perfectly re-map the ECU and fly-by-wire throttle. The guys say the fueling and throttle response is superb but man it’s loud.
Road Runner is dripping in bespoke parts. For example, Chris Walton of CW Engineering hand made the headlight nacelle, front mudguard and rear hugger and Steve Adams, an ex-Aston Martin upholsterer, re-finished the 1920 Solo Saddle Seat and Illusion Race Paint did what they do best.
A host of high-quality accessories and parts were chosen to compliment their work and enhance the performance and aesthetics of Road Runner. There are a black Galfer clutch lever, brake lever and master cylinder and a JB Speaker LED headlight. There’s even a unique carbon fibre water header tank, sourced from a renowned British Superbike team.
The team invested over 100 hours of labour in the Road Runner build, not taking into account the many long nights of discussions, planning and head-scratching that lead to what you see here.
If you fancy a Moto Shed bike in your life, they can be contacted on; build@motoshed.co.uk
