Bandit,
I've been meaning to write this story for at least 2 months. I finally got off my dead ass and got it done this evening. I made an attempt at the proper coding for the website. Hopefully, you won't have to do a ton of “fixin” to it. My uncle restored a 1940 Indian. I'm attaching the story and a few of the pictures I have of it. I have more pictures if you want them, but these were the ones I thought told the story. All I ask is that you make sure you use the one with him in it. He has emphysema and has come close to losing the battle the last few weeks.
By the way, I made the pictures I'm sending lo-res. If you need them in a higher resolution, just let me know. Thanks for getting his story out there to the biker masses that care.
Chuck
criddle123@earthlink.net
This is a story I’ve been sitting on too long. I left Texas at the end of January and used the trip to Virginia as an excuse to stop in and visit family in Alabama. One of my ulterior motives was to snap some pictures of a motorcycle my uncle restored and interview him for this story. That was almost two months ago and I’m just now getting around to writing it. Oh well, better late than never. It’s a story I know will be appreciated by the readers at Bikernet.
Sometime back in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s (I don’t think anyone remembers exactly when) my Uncle Leroy got a call from an old friend who told him; “If you want this thing come get it out of my way.” The thing he was referencing was a 1940 Indian that was being stored in pieces in his barn. When I say in pieces, that’s exactly what I mean.
The original owner was Robert Riebeling. He bought the bike new in 1940 for $300 and went off to war shortly after. Robert came home from the war and like my Uncle Leroy eventually wound up living in Baldwin County Alabama. That’s where Uncle Leroy remembers seeing Robert riding around on the bike. He was just a kid, but he can remember pestering Robert to let him ride the bike even way back then. Over time, the pestering became, “Let me buy the bike.”
Robert enjoyed the bike for years and ultimately broke it down and stored the pieces in his barn with every intention of restoring it one day. As life can do sometimes, time slipped away and Robert never got around to the restoration. Eventually, he made that call to Uncle Leroy.
The bike, or should I say the pieces, sat in Uncle Leroy’s garage another 20 years or so. And, just like Robert’s son remembers, my cousin Ray can recall playing on the frame as it sat in the barn. Finally, around 1992, the rebuild started. For the next 10-plus years, the magnificent Indian moseyed its way back to life, and what a glorious resurrection it has been.
Like most restorations, it was a labor of love from a multitude of sources. There’s a network out there in the world of Indian enthusiasts who know where parts, knowledge and ideas exist. The problem is finding and tapping into that network. Uncle Leroy figures he probably spent a good chunk of the first 5 years just finding out who knew what and how to contact them. Once he figured out the network things began to happen. Not that there weren’t some significant challenges.
For example, Uncle Leroy stored the engine parts in buckets filled with diesel fuel. The idea was to keep them from rusting and deteriorating. Makes sense to me, but apparently over the years the diesel actually seeped into the metal. The guy who rebuilt the engine spent hours baking the diesel out of the heads. Uncle Leroy rebuilt the transmission at least a half a dozen times. When he needed help with a part, he would fax a hand-drawn picture to his various sources to find out where it went.
If he couldn’t find a piece he needed, he’d hand draw it and have it machined. To turn the engine over originally, he hooked the kick start up to his lawn mower axle and used it to turn the kick start, adding a plug as it moved forward until it eventually fired up.
He spent hundreds of man hours rebuilding the speedometer. The original plan was to replace it, but when a replacement couldn’t be found, he pulled out the book (after searching all over the United States and Canada to find one) and rebuilt it himself.
That process took about a year and half by itself.
He reversed the original position of the clutch and shifter from the right side to the left and moved the throttle to the right. He just couldn’t imagine riding it in the original position.
The original color was a hunter green, but they didn’t discover that until after it was repainted. So my cousin, Ron Roberts, did the paint job on it in the 1946 color, kind of cream-like. He’s a talented painter who’s worked with Bubba Blackwell on his stunt bikes. One of these days I need to send him the skins off my Fatboy and have him give me a nice custom paint job. Problem is: I ride that Fatboy all the time. I need a second set of skins!
Maybe I’m biased because he’s my uncle and I love him, but I think he did an incredible job. Here’s the rub. Robert passed away before he could collect on that payment of a ride on the restored bike. Uncle Leroy has been gallantly battling emphysema and it has him hooked to an oxygen tank and in a wheel chair. Luckily, Ray has been able to fire it up and give it a good blowing out, but the two guys who loved her the most haven’t had the chance. I can only hope that God has one heck of a ride planned for them when they get to heaven.
For a guy like me, who’s actually drawn blood changing a headlight, I’m amazed when someone can rebuild something as beautiful as this bike and it actually runs. The level of patience and devotion that goes into this type of restoration is something that my generation can’t understand.
May God bless you and keep you in the palm of His hand. Know that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of us out here who appreciate your commitment to keeping a legend alive.
If you want more details on the bike, please feel free to contact me at criddle123@earthlink.net and I’ll see what I can do to get you more info.
