An Indian winter
Cruisers are summer bikes, right? Not if you prepare them for the worst of the weather with some well-chosen accessories
I’VE BEEN TALKING about fitting bits to my Indian Scout Sixty for a while now. Bits began arriving but no progress was made. Eventually I had everything I needed – I just had to stop putting off spending a day in the garage.
Not being very proficient with tools I can’t even name, I enlisted the help of the other half – who knows a thing or two about bikes. He was under strict instruction to do nothing but ‘advise’ unless I asked him to actually take over. As you can imagine, he wasn’t looking forward to watching my ham-fisted attempts without being able to say anything.
The extras included a mid-sized screen and a set of saddlebag panniers from Indian, some heated grips from R&G Racing and a set of handlebar muffs from Oxford, all of which would make the bike more pleasant to ride in colder weather. Fitting them shouldn’t have been too taxing – but for a novice spanner twirler like me it was still a daunting task.
I started with what looked like the easiest job - fitting the screen. The instructions said six minutes. Yeah, right – they’ve obviously never seen me wield tools.
In reality the bit that took longest was reading the instructions twice to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. There’s only one component that needs a 4mm Allen key, which is a securing clamp fixing the screen bracketry to the handlebars to stop the screen being stolen. It’s not necessary but you might as well fit it.
Full of confidence, I moved on to the saddlebags. The instructions told me this was a 12-minute job and, trusting Indian’s instruction sheet, I approached it with enthusiasm. Each pannier has a one-piece rigid plastic inner, with a leather outer, which looks great but I hope the salty roads won’t affect them too much and I’ll be able to clean them easily.
The fitting kit simply replaces the rear mudguard mounting bolts with spools that the bags clip over, using a clever internal latch system to fix them in place. A quarter of an hour later I was standing back with a warming cuppa marvelling at how two saddlebags can dramatically change the look of the Indian. With the new screen and the white paintwork, there’s now more than a hint of CHIPS about it.
Up to now I’ve managed with virtually no intervention from the Boss but I’m now entering technical territory – there’s
electrickery and real work involved in fitting the heated grips. And it’s where I discover my first rookie error. Taking the grips out of the box it becomes clear that they can’t easily be fitted to this particular bike. The Sixty has a fly-by-wire throttle which means no cable. Ordinarily this shouldn’t pose a problem when fitting heated grips, but it looks like the righthand twistgrip is very solid and the outer rubber can’t be removed from the throttle tube without destroying it, which I can’t do to a test bike.
So instead I settle for just attaching the Oxford Muffs which is pretty easy and doesn’t require any tools, though if I wanted to pierce the top side of each muff I could pass the mirror stems through for extra security. The Muffs have a central strap that connects with Velcro across the headstock if you don’t want to do that. I’ve heard tales of some muffs putting pressure on brake and clutch levers at speed so I’ll be careful on my first few rides.
A pretty successful and enjoyable day all round – though I probably only really needed an hour to get it all done. I now understand why it takes the Boss so long when he says he’s just popping out to the garage for ‘five minutes’. I’m off for a ‘five minute’ ride now.