We have all heard of the Vindian, and some the Indian-Vincent but how about a pre WWII HRD(Vincent) Indian Scout, I bet hardly anyone. People seem to think that Vincent started an agreement in 1948 with Ralph Rodgers head honcho at Indian after the war and most of you have seen the Vindian replica’s and my genuine Indian -Vincent in Australia but the pre war version was thought about in 1930-31 while Vincent were using proprietary engines such as Rudge or JAP even a Villiers but after the debacle of all the HRD’S not finishing with JAP engines in 1931 Vincent looked elsewhere and with Indian’s Scout being a fantastic reliable engine plans were looked at. Unfortunately it never came to fruition and Phil Irving developed the famous hi-cam engine that eventually was made into a world famous line of “the Worlds Fastest Standard Motorcycles” from 1938 till 1975 some 37 years later when Laverda Jota took that title.

I’m not a very political person never have been since voting Labour as the Whitlam Government were abolishing National Service for Vietnam, but when it affects my hobby then that’s fighting words. That f*****g idiot (pictured above) that brought this scare in because of the Chinese building products is about to destroy our hobby with this move that’s currently in place and most people in the industry have had the Nazi’s in the Australian Customs/Border Protection implementing these procedures already. Personally I have been stopped and checked for importing bolts, nuts and motorcycle wheel rims, what this has to do with asbestos has me bewildered, and I don’t import from China. The thing is that nobody in the brake industry that I know have never died of any asbestos related disease, yes I know people in the building industry and the mining industry have suffered, but if there is a problem thousands or millions should be dead in Australia alone as the braking of trams, trains, trucks and cars in Melbourne City alone from brake dust should have had our hospitals full by now. The reason this hasn’t happened is most braking material was bonded or exposed the extremely high temperatures and the fine fibers were cooked into a solid mass so no issue, the problem is the building industry as standards have “slipped” allowing the Chinese developers to import asbestos materials into Australia and with little or no checks now we have problems, all to late “shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted”. This is having a huge effect on our local industry now geared to imports as the Governments “level playing field” policy on tariffs have been whittled away and we import everything or worse still sell what we have to overseas buyers, the only way to fix it is, adopt a Australia First policy which is what Trump is trying in America, meanwhile I wouldn’t think of importing an old vehicle into Australia unless this policy changes, the idiots don’t realize that most of the imports into Australia are packed in s/hand cardboard boxes from China and they are made of reconstituted cardboard the have had asbestos product mixed in, the day they find that out  90% of all things come here will stop.

Australia, Asbestos and Collector Cars

Usually I use Friday to “bag” Harley’s and have done over a couple of years, this time we are getting it back, but after this amount of time we can handle it.