In another episode of the custom video series «Forged», Indian Motorcycle unveiled the Indian Scout with the signature of Roland Sands Design (RSD) – the RSD Indian Scout. In this video, Roland Sands and his fabricator, Aaron Boss, presented the bike to its owner – none other than Twenty One Pilots drummer, Joshua Dun.
This is the first of three creations by renowned builders based on the new Scout, showcasing the best of what RSD has to offer in transforming cruisers. At the front, an FTR fork and triple clamps were installed, along with dual discs and radial Brembo calipers for the brakes.
At the rear, an FTR swingarm and piggyback shocks from Indian Motorcycle were added. The braking system includes a disc and a Brembo caliper. Both wheels are 17 inches and from RSD Dymag, fitted with Dunlop Sportmax Q5 tyres.
The rider sits on a custom Saddlemen seat, and the decoration is dominated by a black and yellow scheme. The bike pays homage to Ed Kretz, with an image of Sylvester the cat under the tail.
The RSD Indian Scout also features a custom stainless steel exhaust with an SC Project silencer, a modified Scout Bobber upper fairing to fit the FTR fork, a stock headlight, and a Baja Designs rear light.
Roland Sands commented: ‘What makes an RSD bike is taking a machine and elevating it. We’ve always taken cruisers and made them into sport bikes. This bike has that RSD silhouette, but the cool thing was how easy it was to make the new Scout fit the RSD mould. 100% it’s a bike that I would personally own. How do you design a bike that makes you feel like a badass? I think that’s the formula right there’.
Aaron Boss said on this project: ‘From there, it’s a little bit of this and a little bit of that such as modifying the front fairing to hook onto the new forks and modifying the stock foot controls for a more street bike riding position. With the engine dialled in from the factory already, I fabricated a full custom titanium exhaust and the basis of the tail was the original design of RSD’s flat track tail for previous generation Scouts. But we’ve amped it up with new sides and an undertail tyre hugger. The reason why I’m building bikes is to excite other people. And he came in and his jaw dropped. He paused for a second, speechless. That’s when you know you’ve got him and he’s excited about it’.
Joshua Dun is relatively new to the world of motorcycles and didn’t hide his surprise with the build: ‘Walking into that bike shop for the first time, I was pretty much a blank canvas. in terms of like, what’s my style? What do I like? So I walked around, looked at everything and kind of narrowed it down to two bobber-style bikes. Ultimately, I was just like, it’s gotta be the Indian Scout. Wow. This thing’s perfect. The colours are perfect. This whole thing makes sense. And I think that my intuition was right, that, you know, the brand and the people behind Indian Motorcycle are just a cool group of people’.