Roland Sands builds radical Indian Scout

Roland Sands Designs in LA have further cemented their custom king title with their latest venture, this radical Indian Scout.

At the age of 19, Roland Sands began racing and fixing his bikes, winning the 1998 AMA 250GP National road racer championship.

Ten years later he retired from racing and began designing and building custom radical motorcycles at his Father Perry’s motorcycle parts company, Performance Machine.

He came to worldwide attention in 2005 when he beat renowned builder Arlen Ness in a custom motorcycle competition on the Discovery Channel’s “Biker Build Off”.

So Roland moved out on his own, opening his RSD shop at 10571 Los Alamitos Blvd, Los Alamitos, California.

In 2012, Motorbike Writer visited the rather innocuous little RSD shop in LA’s commercial district and they were putting together a custom build for actor Mickey Rourke.

At that stage, RSD was gaining notoriety and building many customs for a host of celebrities.

Since then, motorcycle companies as diverse as BMW, Indian, Victory and Yamaha have engaged the bike designer’s talents to make official custom bikes.

Some of them have even led to production models such as the BMW R nineT tamed down from RSD’s radical Concept Ninety.

Indian and Victory have had a long association with RSD and for the recent Wheels & Waves custom bike culture festival in Biarritz, France, they put together this radical Indian Scout that is almost 90% hand built.

Basically it’s a bespoke bike, as Roland has used the engine only and custom-built everything else.

Even the motor came in for a massive rebuild with a whole new dual-radiator system.

The RSD Scout features a chromoly tube girder frame and an Ohlins single shock at the rear and Ohlins shock up front for the old-fashioned girder forks.

It’s not RSD’s first Scout custom and probably not the last.