Born Free 4, pan head motors and seat posts

Here is a picture of the bike that we are building for born free 4. We are going to run narrowed Indian tanks and a sectioned fender on the back. All of the frame tubing was made on Delmar's MX it is tapered from 1.125 to 1.00 over 13 to 18 inch sections. A lot of early bikes used tapered tubing and it makes for a real classy and finished look. This bike belongs to a fellow in PA that we built a 48 panhead for a few years ago.

It is always important to check to make sure the head doesn't hit the seat post. This is Sean's frame, it is just about finished up, I have to fix the tool box bracket and metal finish the welds still, but the hard part of welding the bottom rails in is completed.

Here is a picture of the 55 motor that my dad is just about done with for Jim in Texas. Sorry about it being off 90 degrees. It looks faster, kind of like it's shooting towards the heavens.

Dan is crating up a pair of 52 motors today, We had these crates made up years ago and have shipped tons of motors in them.

Here is the other 52 in a customer supplied crate. This is a nice motor and should last for a very long time.

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.

panhead fender trim

Ray flipped the 52 around this weekend to mount the front fender and sort out the brake business. This bike came to us as an ebay special, and we have had to go over everything with a fine tooth comb in order to get it sorted out. It is a lot more of a challenge to inspect hack workmanship, than it is to just start from scratch. This is coming along well and will be a great usable bike shortly. The rear fender for it is at the painters right now, and the one that is on in this picture will be fit, and then sent to the chrome shop for my dad's 53! that's right, he will have an all chrome pan head. haha


here is a pic of the right side stripe as it was fit to the fender by the previous owner.



here it is after an hour of tweaking here and there.




check out the bow in the stripe! eeeck





and this is how they should look. The strips and tip are both original pieces and are worth the effort of making them fit the proper way.