Have you ever painted a piece of furniture, or even a room? If you've done either, you already know one of the most important things you need to know if you're going to work on your bike yourself. What do I mean? Easy: That good preparation is about 60% of the battle; maybe even more.
The better you prep to do whatever work you plan to do on your bike, the fewer headaches you'll have. Well, assuming you remember to open a window when you're using that can of brake cleaner, of course.
The man, the myth, the legend known as Aaron Colton just started a new build video series, and it's a little different than the ones he's done in the past. This time, it's a brand new 2025 Indian Scout 1250 that he's modifying, after having taken it for a couple hundred-mile-long trip first to familiarize himself with how it is from the factory. Good news is, he likes it; but as always, there are a few things he'd like to change.
So, that's exactly what he's prepping to do in this video.
This video is all about the prep work, and Colton gets right into it by first giving the bike a good wash so it's nice and clean. Incidentally, that not only makes working on your bike a lot nicer an experience for you, but it also helps you to get more familiar with any new-to-you bike, as well as its individual quirks. You'll start to notice details about any bike that you might not have noticed before if you really get in there to get it clean and dry.
After the wash and dry, it's time for a whole lot of careful measurement. Since Colton wants to change the suspension, raise the bike's ground clearance, change the bars, change the seat, and more, proper measurements are key. So, he gets out a notebook and starts taking all kinds of measurements, then writing them down to keep track of them all.
If you don't like a simple pen and paper, you could of course always type it all into a spreadsheet. How you do it is less important than that you do it, and everyone has personal preferences. But having all the measurements will make your job easier later, and help you order the parts you actually need instead of accidentally ordering the wrong ones.
By the end of the video, after a whole ton of really trick editing to somehow cram hours of work into a single 16-ish minute long video, Colton has the Scout fully disassembled. Now it's ready to start doing some hardware plating and Cerakote work, and he gives some insight into what he wants to do and why as well.
All in all, it's off to a promising start, and I can't wait to see how it turns out. How about you? What would you do if this was your bike? Drop your thoughts in the comments.
