Indian 640 Canadian

[Stew Robertson]

Keep up the great work Rob
It sure is good to see the Gregg collection being finally worked on
Between all the project you have going thanks for your persistence and push and expertise in bring it to tuition
I thought for many years it was all forgotten and all our work was in vain

I still have the original rope gate for Crear's caravan'
if you have something going west let me know
PS: hopefully some day the caravan will be put onto the right truck

[rob love]

Originally Posted by Stew Robertson

Keep up the great work Rob
It sure is good to see the Gregg collection being finally worked on
Between all the project you have going thanks for your persistence and push and expertise in bring it to tuition
I thought for many years it was all forgotten and all our work was in vain

I still have the original rope gate for Crear's caravan'
if you have something going west let me know
PS: hopefully some day the caravan will be put onto the right truck

Stew
No compliments needed, it is an honor to work on this stuff.

Tuition? I think the word is "fruition". Funy you should use that word. It is one of the prowords I used to use when writing PERs. In fact I used it with some frequency that my boss in Afghanistan started making fun of me. I left for 6 months, and when I cam back he had to admit to having adopted the word himself in some PERS. Anyway, I am starting to ramble.

I was remiss in not following through with those ropes a couaple years ago. I have the purolator account number which I was supposed to give you to get them brought to here. There is a tractor trailer leaving Pet tommorow bringing us some artifacts and taking some back your way (as well as moving a LAV) but I suspect the timelines are a little short to make that work.

By the way, as I think I may have previously reported, we have purchased a closed top Diamond T cab and chassis from California, which is slated to be restored and the van body moved across. On paper this is tentatively planned for 2018, but of course there are always surprises and priorities can change. Then we will be able to re-assemble the open top Diamond T with it's wrecker body.

Hopefully you will make it out here again one day for a visit and see what progress has been made at the museum. Still a long way to go of course, and I am not sure I will live long enough to get it all done, but labor is accumulative, and it's done one hour at a time.

[David Dunlop]

Good to hear about the caravan, Rob. And as for the Indian sidecar setup, that is one nice looking combination! For some reason, an image of you and Mr. Derrin racing about on it comes to mind!

David

[rob love]

The lighting in the shop make everything look yellow. My apologies.
This is the bike in question. There is also a photo of the sidecar outer hub. Something is missing from there.

[rob love]

As an aside, this is the other item I am performing a little maintenance on. Just like the older vehicles, what starts as a simple job turns into 10 other jobs. I brought it in for excessive smoke on start up and hard starting. That was over a week ago. It will hopefully be done this week. On top of the tune-up and checking a few injectors, it has fed over to a compression test, replacing an exhaust manifold gasket, an oil change, replacing all crossover lines, replacing a xmsn temp switch, repairing the tachometer cable, repairing the oil pressure gauge, a zero pressure check and replenishing the oil in the turret hydraulics (thanks for the help Laun), pumping up the equilibrator, refilling the nitrogen in the main accumulator, (shhhhh.....don't tell the artillery.....cleaning rust from the breech area), and likely a few more jobs which will crop up.

The artillery want to come by for a bit of professional development/"the way we used to do it" briefings next week.

[welbike]

Rob,

Looks nice!! but why did they took it apart in the first place??

In the older photos you can see it has a real late "Harley" style airfilter on it, probably from an Indian 741 it should have the civvy version, much easier and cheaper then the tall round one that I have (appx. $1200.00) and you don't need the special inlet tube casting.

Have no idea whats missing on the sidecar wheel as the parts books don't cover the sidecar, but have an Indian 340 p/l somewhere, will look in there if I can find it, they had the same sidecars.

Speedo's are indeed pricey, but so is everything Indian, I have found out!!

This is the Speedo (Corbin) that you need, NOT the same as 741! (see below)

There is a guy in Canada that does real good work;

http://www.speedoshop.net/?p=productsList

Cheers,

Lex

[rob love]

I have noticed that Indian parts are not cheap. When I restored a folding bike the other year I thought parts were expensive. Now I am starting to see what expensive really is. Seems like a speedo runs in the $1100 range when you can find it.

I can't explain why people like taking things apart. It's just something people do. Have you ever left a camera or a watch on the kitchen table to later find out a child has disassembled it just for the sake of doing so?

There are parts still on the bench for it, such as the gas tanks, the lines, and the air cleaner. Once I get back onto this project in a week or so, I have to make up a list of parts to order, and it should hopefully be driving again this summer.