I don’t know if I have reached the right community and I apologize if I have not. I am not a bike expert. We have recently been cleaning out old family property with a lot of barns. We happened to pull this out of the rafters of one. We have not tried to clean it as we don’t want to cause further damage. It is incredibly dirty.
Would any of you be able to help me identify the model or direct me on how to find out more information about this bicycle? So far my searches on Google have not been very successful on giving us more than we already know, which is not a lot.
Thank you!
by Ok-Studio-510
5 Comments
Interesting!
The Indian Motorcycle Company is pretty well known, but I didn’t realize they made bicycles, too — but apparently they did!
Here’s a recent eBay listing for a bicycle head-badge stamped with “Indian Motorcycle Co | Springfield, Mass. USA”. Your photo of the front of the bike isn’t especially clear, but to me it looks like it could be the same badge as the one in this eBay sale.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/117089520298
I have no idea how old this thing could be. Some cursory web searches suggest they might have been making bikes at least a century ago — [this eBay listing is for one from “the 1920s”](https://www.ebay.com/itm/358348464986), and [this article shows one from 1924](https://vintageamericanbicycles.com/index.php/antique-bicycles/), along with a bit of discussion:
> > George M. Hendee was a world class high wheel bicycle racer who parlayed his success in racing to making and selling bicycles. In 1899 he bought the remains of a previous partnership and established the Hendee Manufacturing Co. in Springfield, Mass. Hendee then began producing the American Indian bicycle, quickly shortened to just “Indian”, which he marketed with great success. In 1901 he partnered with Oscar Hedstrom, a talented mechanical engineer, to produce the first Indian motorcycle. In 1904 Indian produced its last in-house bicycle and concentrated on its motorcycle business. It wouldn’t be until 1916 when Hendee contracted with the Westfield Manufacturing Co. of Westfield Mass. to produce Indian bicycles again. Like the motorcycles the bicycles, generally, were painted Indian red and were marketed to youth in hopes that they would graduate to the Indian motorcycle. The early motorcycle badged bicycles such as this Indian are highly coveted by both bicycle and motorcycle collectors. […]
These aren’t _quite_ a match for the one you have, but they don’t look wildly different, either.
I’m curious what people turn up about this one!
A shot of the head badge would help. I think maybe mist it with some water and a soft toothbrush to scrub wouldn’t damage it. There might be serial number on the bottom of the bottom bracket. Again mist with some water and a scrub from a soft tooth brush.
Maybe a shot of the seat from the side looking slightly up and the rear and front. When photographing get homogenous light. A poor example is your photo 2, as the play of light and shadow on the bike makes a difficult visual.
It looks like the 1953 Indian Scout that I gave to my son. The rear hub will be stamped with a two digit date code. That will give you an Idea of its age. I should also add that the later bikes were built by Raleigh in England. It was part of a contract to help rebuild Britain after World War Two.
Nice
It’s an Indian Scout, made by Phillips in England. The Sturmey-Archer hub shound have a date code on it, which will give you a pretty close date for the bike.