Installing a new battery case on my dad’s Indian Scout should have been easy… it wasn’t! It wasn’t a priority either but every little progress made, while waiting to resolve bigger issues, is progress anyway.
So I’m glad we did change the battery case, but boy was it painful!
And if you don’t know by now, what this restauration project is about, I can only recommend you to check out the main Indian Scout page!
The story of my dad’s old battery case
My dad was quite young when he bought his bike. Although he’ll never admit it, he was probably also a bit careless at the time. He did admit having 2 accidents with the bike, but those do not seem to explain all the bumps & scratches on it. Some mysteries will remain!
I’d love to know of course. Amongst other things, I would love to hear how he swoon my mom with his bike. How much of a James Dean he must have looked like. How popular he must have been within his friends for having such a cool bike. I’d love to know, but he will never tell.
Anyway, with regards to the battery case, he did mention that he built the one that was currently on the bike because of one of the accident he had. At the time, he had to fall off his bike to avoid a car and the battery felt as well. So he built a battery case. Not the prettiest one but an efficient one!
It isn’t a great story really. Just a story of a problem solved!
The thing is that 1940’s batteries seemed to be bigger than new ones. The image below is from the Indian manual and it seems that what is shown is the battery, not a battery case.
So now that the batteries are smaller, they do not fit as well within the battery mount. So comes into play the new battery case!
No super clear but basically, you need a battery case, to keep the actual battery in place and dry.
New battery cases for vintage Indian Scout bikes
I’m so glad someone is manufacturing battery cases that look like old batteries. Seriously, I don’t know who you are but I am so thankful! You are clever!!
As you can see below, the new battery case looks like an old battery. It has “Indian” written on one side and the battery filling instructions on the other side. The top has 3 little plugs and 3 red buttons. Those are fake. They can’t be used but it’s a nice touch.
Of course, as this is a battery case, it is empty and you have plenty of space inside for your battery… yep too much space really!!
Installing the new battery case
So I naively though this new battery case would take about 30mn top to install. Remove the old battery case. Put battery in the new case, put the case on the tray … Move on to the next thing… But nooo… this is not what happened!!
Instead of 30 minutes, it took 3 hours!
Why?? Partly because the battery case is much bigger than the battery itself.
Our battery is about 12cm x 6cm. The case is 15cm x 8cm. Aaaahgggrhhh…
Depth wise, I can’t recall but the first step was to add padding at the bottom. Dad cut off a wooden board of approximatively 2cm height. This did the trick and the battery stood high enough.
At the end it worked out well. The alignement of the rods were ok, not perfect but ok. The bending did the trick although one of the rods required a little further adjustment.
We have the battery clamp and dad has found, in his bolt collection, a bolt that will be perfect when it is ready to be installed permanently. We have to do something about the old wires! 😉
So why did it take 3 hours?
This question leads to the next issue…
I think my dad is dragging on…
Although we are far from the end of the restauration project, I sometimes have the feeling my dad is dragging on. Part of me understand this. He doesn’t really want to see me leave with his bike. There are probably lots of feeling at play here, which I can only imagine.
For sure he doesn’t want me to sell his bike and he should know by now, I have no intention to. Why would I bother spending so much time restoring it and learning mechanics to resell it? It make no sense. If my goal was to resell it, I would have just paid someone to do all the work.
As mentioned above, I also think he might be scared to see me leave with it. He does like to pamper it, even when I’m not there. And just knowing that it’s there or looking at it, is probably enough to remind him of his youth.
I also think he might be scared that I’ll kill myself driving it! Well, not sure what to do about that?
Most importantly, I have the feeling that he is worried that once it’s completely restored, I won’t need to come as often, I won’t need him anymore. That’s a big one. I can tell how much he likes teaching me these things. We have found something to do together that means a lot to him. At his age, it’s probably quite rare to get so much attention for something you have, something you know. Probably especially from your own kids. Well, it’s probably hard even when you are younger!!
I can only assume those are some of his reasons. They all make sense to me but I’m not sure how to ease his worries.
Going forward…
The good news is that things changed slightly after the installation of the battery case.
As we were talking about the next time we’d be working on it, I mentioned a couple things that seemed to have brought some peace to his mind.
The most important one is that once we are finished with his Indian, we’ll restore his second bike!! Ahah!!! Yes my dad has a second bike although it’s not an Indian, it’s a Peugeot and it’s even older than the Indian.
This seemed to work. He genuinely seemed excited about the idea and within 5 days, he has worked on the Indian everyday, making significant progress! I’m really happy too!
So I guess I’m not done getting my nails broken and I’d better buy a whole stock of medical gloves!!
Do check the main page for this restoration project if you want to have clues on what’s coming next! I’m going back in 2 weeks for probably a week because there’s a big challenge we need to tackle!
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