picturesque riding pictures

My dad and I took the 47 and 42 into the Palm Garden for lunch. The bikes ran great.

My dad took Andy's 47. This bike is stellar. I love black 47 knuckleheads.

I had to adjust the clutch push rod and I chose to just leave the derby cover off until later.

I am pretty happy with this bike. There are still some growing pains to sort out. I should have it ready to roll in the next week or so.

footers and 42 exhaust

Here is a cool picture of cement being poured into the footings. They will do the stem walls tomorrow then we can set the barn on them.

I finished up mounting the exhaust on Don's 42 this afternoon. I love how this bike is turning out. It should be done very shortly. wooo hooo. The yellow bike in the back ground is a 54 that we did for our neighbor a few years ago. We are servicing it for the summer.

I am working on the rear brake and other stuff. Check out the n.o.s. foot board mat and brake pedal stuff.

carbs and wiring

My dad is making good progress on the batch of carbs. Here is Don's 42 carb all finished up and ready for service. This is the only silver carb that we are doing in this batch. Check out all of the nickle plated hardware. this is so damn neat. Here are some more waiting for assembly. HEre is a pic of Randy's m74b installed and ready for action. I am putting the tanks on this bike today. I should fire it up in the next day or two. This stage is always very exciting. I spent the morning sorting out the tail light and brake light. All of the other wiring worked like it should.

The dirtiest part of a knucklehead

I am working on seat posts today while I wait for a few parts for rear brakes. Here is one of the bashed in seat post springs from Don's seat post


Here is a picture of the replacement spring all cleaned up with the other seat post parts. All seat post parts are natural finish. HD did not feel the need to plate any of this stuff because it is always covered in grease!



Here it is all put together and ready to install, my cannonball scar seems to be healing up pretty well. I have another set of x rays in a few weeks and hopefully The doctors will give me the go ahead to start lifting more than 15 pounds of weight with my left arm.





Here is the seat post installed. The bottom of don's bike is just as clean as the top. I love knuckleheads.

knucklehead pics

I put the vent and return lines on Andy's 47 last night. They look great.


I spent two hours last night trying to get some original horns to work. No matter what I did, I couldn't make them work. My dad came out this morning and spent a half hour on it and it was fixed. He is so damn sharp. I am very lucky to have him for helping me out on projects.



Here is a repro 41 and 42 front brake lever perch. I looked for an original one for the last two years and could not find one, so I pulled the original one off my dad's 41 and made some copies. This is a terrible business decision, because at the most I will probably sell two of them, but I have them for the bikes that need them. I have to look at the big picture in cases like this.



here is the side profile. I still have to sand down the parting line and polish it, but this piece is almost done.

rising tides

I have been making the best out of my few extra days in South Dakota. I worked till 11 last night and prepped and ground a bunch of castings and welding. Here are the squashed birds that we are going to use on Don's bike. These are for 41 and 42 deluxe sport solo bikes and impossible to find. My dad's op 41 had a mint one on the front that I pulled a mold off of to make some for my bike.


I spent this morning installing the steering dampener on Dons bike and putting the front fender on. This bike is soooo beautiful The pictures do not do it justice.



I set up the holes for the lower horn bracket and drilled the wire for the fender light terminal. This is all very tedious work. Lots of fun though. I am kind of on the fence about using this hub cap, I think that I might end up putting a cms one on. They are smaller and make the wheel look a lot bigger. What do you guys think?




Here is a pic of Dave's wl motor finished up and ready to install. WOW!

Little things

I spent most of the day keeping Jesse, my dad and ray moving and tonight I finished mounting the rear fender and crash bar on Don's bike I don"t think that i have ever posted pictures of the wing nuts that i made up five years ago. Early wing nuts have rounded edges and look a lot more finished when compared to modern wing nuts. I think that modern ones look cheap and blocky

Here you can see the difference. the modern wing nut has straight sides and the early style has convex sides. Pre war ones are made out of brass and post war ones are steel. I only make bronze ones, but will probably re cast them in steel when I run out of these. You can't tell the difference once they are cad plated.

Here is a pic of Don's 42 tail light base.

And here is the nos gasket that I scored for it. 42 was the first year for the gasket felt material gasket, 1939 to 1941 gaskets were made out of thick rubber

42 sheet metal pics!

Last night Gilby delivered a set of skyway blue 42 sheetmetal. He drove straight from Hudson Wisconsin to our place, hung out for a few hours, then drove home! he is a machine. the blue is quite a bit darker than the pictures, it is just difficult to photograph in our shop. Gilby has done some work for us in the past and he always does a good job. google gilby's street department and check out his site.


Check out how straight and smooth this is! I have always been very jealous of painters. The work that they do is what 95 percent of the people see when they look at a bike. The tin for this bike looks like a marble. I am so grateful to have mike and gilby in our lives. Finding good painters is a real challenge