Splitting the crankcases revealed a can of worms. One main bearing thrust washer had disintegrated, allowing the crank to run against the timing side main bearing, scoring the flywheel & rubbing away the end of the main bearing outer. Amazingly all the bearings (drive & timing sides) were perfect, and the casings were undamaged, all the wear being limited to the timing side flywheel & main bearing, so it wasn't too bad......until I split the flywheels. There are four caged roller bearings in the big end, or at least there are in most Indians. Mine had three, plus a few hexagonal rollers and no sign of the fourth cage. Once again, amazingly, there was virtually no damage to the rods apart from a little scuffing, and there was superficial damage to one flywheel. The big end pin, however, was kaput.
I soon found the cause of all this, the oil feed through the big end pin was blocked solid with carbon deposits.
Now, I'm a great believer in fixing things rather than replacing, mainly because I have little money, so it's time for some serious hours on the lathe to repair the flywheels. Spinning a flywheel in a lathe that's not bolted to the floor is interesting, the bob-weights make it rock. The centre of the wheel was turned down until all the damage had disappeared, then an insert was made. This was screwed to the flywheel with 4 tiny 3mm screws. Holes were drilled through the insert into the flywheel for two 3/32" pins, which stop the shims rotating. The two countersinks you see are to aid removing the shims when setting up end float.
The repair was so successful on the timing side flywheel that whilst all the machines were set up, I did the other side too. The rods were posted to Moen at Indian Parts Europe to be checked out. The inside of the flywheel where the big end had scuffed it didn't need machining, but the shim pins were damaged, so they were replaced.
Blimey, I just made it sound real easy. In fact, that took me 4 attempts and nearly a week to do!
On a different subject, can anyone tell me how to post full size pictures on here?