Who Made This Beasty?

similar Indian

The down tube on the Indian is curved, Elmer's is straight, because the motor is different.

Looks like a Sears to me.

Yeah and we know how Sears works - who made it for Sears? That appears to be it sans the top tube/fuel tank covers with the brand name on it. Motor and down tube definitely match well.

this may help

From History of Indian Motorcycles

1906 - Indian Motorcycle introduced the “loop frame” that was more similar to racing motorcycle design than the previous “diamond frame” that originated with bicycles.

Look at the photo in the OP. There is an outer ring on the far side of the rear wheel for the belt drive. Nearly all of the Indians I've looked at do not appear to have this.

nearly.. see #7

Sorry for the first reply - I think you nailed it. I thought about south central Pa in those days, and the only place to get anything was the PRR depot. (heck it was still about the same when I was born - like farming - you fit right in - like the city life - travel 200 miles) I bet this was a mail order bike from Sears, not the original manufacturer's bike, as I originally thought.

No worries.

It's speculation at best.

well take a look at this little indian .. it has all the bells and whistles too.

Looks like a 1908 Harley Davidson...

Okay - that is very close, again, the manufacturer's name is on the top tube cover and is missing on Elmer's bike. So either lyn was right with the "Sears" guess, and tricky Elmer decided to remove the Sears marking so it looked like what is really was, a Harley, or, he took the long trip down the river to York to pick up this beauty. Of course it also would have been a short PRR ride from York to Elmer's hometown, which had a very busy freight house in the first half of the 20th century. But why are the covers missing? Maybe the "strip it down for racing" necessity amongst young males existed way back then. I know by the late 1950's, if a kid had those fancy covers on his cruiser bike, they HAD to come off. We all ran just frames with wheels, tires, cranks and saddle, interestingly enough, in the same part of Pa.

I imagine back in the day it was a lot more hands on than today....I mean you were an owner mechanic, you had to know the bike pretty good to keep it running....and if you had the money I imagine you did some custom work....this could be a combination of several different bikes....

Tend to agree on this Harley with the exception of the bike having a different fuel tank design, but sure on the Harley motor.

The gas tank that's not sculpted to fit the frame intrigues me.

maybe a search for tanks and tank history will yield something..

btw.. great uncle elmer was a pimp!

Great uncle Elmer came from money - at least a lot of money for the farming area where he lived. The family had a very large and prosperous milling works, until the Great Depression hit. 90% of the land and most of the equipment was sold. I grew up thinking we were poor, and we were. It wasn't until the 1980's that my mother told me about all this. No one in the family ever talked about the mill works and the time before the depression. She, and her brother and sister were very much children of the depression - we washed and reused paper towels. She only got to enjoy about 6 years of prosperity as a child.

I believe if you look at lyn's submission and Solar Eagle you'll see the cover for the tank is missing on Elmer's bike.

Can't see a model name on the fuel tank or the cover is missing? Which is it?

..that 1908 engine looks like pretty close if not a little later model

maybe the son of Jesse James, Jesse james..not to be confused with his son.. Jesse James.

..Maybe he made a Harlindiaears bike and sold it to Uncle Elmer. maybe

... the crap one can conceive when babysitting equipment

As an aside, all the pictures I have and have seen of that era show men and women dressed elegantly, compared to the rags we wear today.

My Arkansas relations were dirt poor but all their pictures show men and women and children all dressed to the nines. (to perfection)

Now, he must have lived in a ''rough neighborhood''...

I suppose that when WWI broke out, this guy was one of the early casualties?

So tell me - if he wanted to go quickly in reverse, did he just pull the trigger?

Looks like an early Harley to me...

Harley for sure; notice the double downtube (fork) on the front, and that squiggly thing (folding kick-starter??) that Elmer's foot is pointing at. Indian and Sears only have a single downtube.

That appears to be the engine. Does it say "YALE" on the bottom of the crankcase? I blew up the picture of Elmer's bike and managed to pull out that name with a bit of photo manipulation.

I don't know.

I went to Google.

1910-1912 motorcycle engines.

Copied image.

Looks very similar to an early Douglas that my dad had. My memory is that the sprocket? housing was on the left hand side, but your pic might possibly be a negative reversal which would put that housing on the LHS also.

This could be a Home made machine I have looked through my American Motorcycle encyclopedia and there is nothing quite like it but a single cylinder Curtiss is close.

Well, this is the part of Pa where modified auto racing started in the 1930's, so mechanics with the fore thought and ability to change things quite a bit were in this area.

The Flying Merkel. This bike held the speed record for several years.

I 3D printed master patterns for reproduction engines for a Merkel club a few years ago.

That is very close, too. Down tube appears to be different where it goes around the engine. Wish we could see what the Sears and the Harley looked like without the covers on the top tube/fuel tank. Also, wish Elmer had taken a 3/4 view as well as a side one.

Now, was the Merkel a commercially available unit or a custom build from another bike? Perhaps a slightly different model or production year?

The Merkel was a brand of its own. They built it in a single cylinder and a V twin cylinder at 5 and 7 HP respectively with their own design engine.

The strangest thing about this early engine is that it had a cam operated exhaust valve, but used an "air balance" intake valve that pulled the valve open by intake vacuum against a spring, like many other engines of the time period. The top end rpms were limited by intake valve closure time and intake valve spring force. I don't remember whether the engine we were reverse engineering used a spark plug or a mechanical igniter.

Take a look at Marsh, MM, Marsh Metz, and Marsh Brothers

mmmm Motorcycles

..and check out their tanks..

Tanks.. Tank you very much

.. oh and Winchester.. pow

I am starting to think that one manufacturer and many re-branding versions existed a long time ago, in this case the frame and motor crankcase. Apparently this is not just a new phenomenon. The individual manufacturers then outfitted these parts as they saw fit.

(to see this re-branding now, check out safety relays sometime and note 4 major brands / each a different color / otherwise exactly the same right down to the terminal markings, and wiring schematics)