By Mark Turner of Blacktop Media.
MotoShed are 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 is 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 underseat pipes, as nobody else had done it on a Scout.”
A few hours kicking ideas around about how you could modify one and the underseat 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 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 MotoShed Road Runner harder and faster.
What about the underseat 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 lightweight 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 an incredibly high standard.
Once the space under the seat had been created, the team set about fabricating the underseat exhaust. It really was the most complicated part of the build. Serious thought and skill was needed to route the pipes round 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 of S.W. Adams Upholstery — 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’s 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 here: [email protected]
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Is Polaris still making snowmobiles?
Easily the best Scout Bobber custom I’ve seen- I can’t find the words to fully appreciate, just awesome. Out of my price range, but it’s got me thinking- maybe if I can find a tatty Scout Sixty and go from there?
I need the bike how much and how can I get it