mint green hollywood 55 stuff and crooked studs

Mr. Mike delivered the sheet metal for Ed's 55 today. It is hollywood green and very nice. 55 was the only year hd offered this shade of hollywood green. They had a green in 1938 that was also called hollywood green, but it is grass green. We are doing a 38 that is painted that color. Anyways, it doesn't get any more fifties than a mint green panhead. I think the only way it would be cooler is if it made milk shakes

I had to see how chrome and different platings looked against the green, so i put the derby cover and inspection cover on the outer primary

the camera is a little messed up. Sorry about that. The inspection cover is polished stainless steel. The inspection cover on Bev's 55 is stainless too, so they must not have been just for 49s.

Miss Brittney is taking studs out of Bill's 51 cases to prep them for some welding and machining.

She told me that the studs looked crooked...

so i brought out the trusty square which confirmed Miss Brittney's precision eyeball.

It really bums me out when people play machinest and put taps or inserts in crooked. There is nothing wrong with knowing your limits. If you can't start a tap straight, ask somebody else that can to do it for you. I don't buy stocks, do dental work, paint or cut hair because I don't know how to. lol

Here is the insert coming out with the stud. This is going to be a bit of a challenge, but it is fixable.

some HD museum pictures from this summer and misc. photos from the last two days

Here is evil Brittney. I though that this cut out was pretty neat. I have only worked on one sportster in my life and it was one of Evil's. Dale Walksler owns it and let me change the clutch on it, it was a pretty cool experience. It was neat to get a picture of Miss Brittney at this display in the museum.

Here is the first magnum 45, This bike is legendary, it is a wr bottom end with a sportster top end.

I think that this is a 16 Harley mail delivery rig. This bike is so cool, I would love to build something like this. Check out the lettering and the striping on the box, it is unreal.

I spent the morning working on lists of painting, plating and polishing that still needed to be done on this batch of bikes. There is another sheet, but I didn't get it in the picture.

and here is all of the stuff rounded up for blasting, straightening and re finishing. This should wrap up the rest of the black paint for the five bikes we are working on right now. Some of it will be powder painted and some will have to be body shop painted.

WOOO HOOO we got some more 42 to 57 brake crossover shaft spacers in. These little guys are one of the few parts that Harley made that didn't have a part number. There is a similar adapter for 45 front brakes, but the male threaded portion of it is smaller than the male thread on these spacers which is 5/16 32.

Here is the 1938 only dash base for Jim's 38. It doesn't have spacers on the side mounting screws, and they are a 10 32 machined thread rather than a self tapping screw like 39-46 dashes. The post that the speedo light knob goes into is also shorter than the 39 and later posts. It is nickle plated, The dash base on my dad's 40 and 41 el are also nickle plated. I took this picture before I rebuilt the speedo light spring plate and the generator socket.

These are the wires that I am going to use on Jim's 38, they are new old stock and in good condition. I will have to cut them to length, but that isn't too big of a deal

space ship stuff

Woo hoo, we got some fenders ready for fitting today. the front one is for John's 48 and the rear one is for Ed's 55. Next week I can get these two bikes off for paint!!!!!!!


I have been working away on fitting all of this goo gaw stuff on Jason's 65. There are so many rails, bumpers and ornate details on this thing. What a bunch of extra weight It is a real challenge. But i Like it. I should have it tore down for paint and chrome tonight sometime.




Good god all yall

castings and carbs

Here is a pic of ed's 55 motor with the carb installed. It is like the crown jewel in a detailed out motor. I love tricked out linkerts. hd started using this carb support in 55 after finding out how much the one with the big hole in it sucked. This is not much better, it is very difficult to tighten up the 3-8 24 nut on the bowl nut with this support. I guess that it is the price you have to pay when bolting on more goo gaw stuff on motorcycles. I got a box from the foundry today. I am so shocked that I had to do a second run of gen saddles. I didn't think that I would sell more than 5 of them. Anyways, if you have asked about buying one in the last month, hit me up and I will fill your order. ahhh and the aluminum squashed birds! I am going to put a set on my 36, they will look so cool all polished up.

45 and a 55

Delmar and Gerald came down to hang out for the afternoon. Gerald borough his 25 jd motor to get in the mix. It is pretty nice, but has a few issues that need to be addressed. Delmar brought down a gas shut off rod that he made. These are so nice. The three of us have been working on figuring out how to make old bikes from the thirties through sixty five gas tight, and are on our way. There is still some work that needs to be done on this, but we are getting there.


KNURLING
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G is so cool. These look just like oems.



While Gerald and Delmar were here, I took advantage of their strength and had them install the motor in Ed's 55 panhead. This looks so nice. I still can't lift anything over 15 pounds with my left arm.




Gerald asked if I needed any other motors installed, so I had him put Dave's 45 motor in. HEre it is. THis bike is going to be so cool.

55 and 65 panheads

The handlebars on Jason's 65 were very loose and squishy so we replaced the rubber insert bushings. They are supposed to stick out .625 from the bottom of the tree.


we finished up cleaning the parkerizing. it turned out really nice. Our oven broke half way through the batch last week and we had to get a new oven. I am surprised that it held on as long as it did. I don't really think that they were designed to be run on high for eight hours straight.



Ray and I are working on Ed's 55. This should be a roller in the next few days.




Here are some of the parts for it. This bike is going to be sweet. It will be atomic blue with black hard bags.

Carb pics

Some of our friends From the motor company are flying my dad and I out to York to do a tour and talk to some of the employees on wednesday. We will be back on Sunday. So I am trying to get some projects ready for Jesse and Ray to work on. My dad is gearing up to do a batch of carbs.... like 18 of them! All of the bowls in the front row are for early nickle plated carbs, that are still off at the platers.


Here is a dirty nasty bowl for a 45 that probably has not been cleaned since it was new!



This raised casting code is in all 38 and earlier aluminum bowls




The upper left bowl is for Jim's 36, the lower right one is a bowl that I have been holding on to for years. It is the hardest to find linkert bowl of all time, It isn't mentioned in any books, I have only seen two other ones. It is for super late 38s. It has the early casting date on the inside, and is machined with a fly cutter before the drain is drilled and tapped. Later ones were counter bored-drilled andthen tapped. Anyways, I am going to put it on Jim's 38 carb. I have to do a wild fix on the stem hole, but it will be worth it.

Ed's 1955 Panhead Progress

I did an interview tonight and worked on Ed's 55 frame. It takes quite a while to prep these things, but it makes a big difference in how smoothly things go together.


HEre are all the taps that you need to use in order to clean out the pain in all of the tapped holes.



Here is a cool picture of the date code on the top motor mount. HD started date coding frames when the went to the heavy duty top motor mount. This one is a 5A. Anyways, we got the fork legs back from being re bushed this week, and will hopefully have this thing set up as a roller before we go to PA next week.

Oil tank repairs.

I welded on a bunch of oil tank brackets this morning. This is Paul's 37 tank. It is an early tank and the bottom goes down farther than mid 38 and later tanks. So you have to section the back bracket.Here is is tacked in place


Here it is welded up.



DRUM ROLL

Ed's 55 motor.

My dad finished up Ed's 55 motor yesterday. I really like how subdued the mid fifties and sixties motors are. These things look ssooooo good.


55 was the first year for aluminum pan covers. They were brushed aluminum, this is a very tough finish to achieve. I clear coated them with a clear engine enamal to prevent corrosion. I am not sure what hd used to protect this finish back in the day. these d rings are one year only as well, they only have six bolts.



Check out all the neat different finishes. lots of neat detail going on.




This cam cover has never been polished and is mint! i had to build up a nasty gouge in one of the ribs and re grind it into looking like something. The fork legs for this bike are off getting re bushed and should be back shortly, then we can start putting this thing together.

grinding surprises, nerdy details and oil pump fixes

A lot of people try to take the oil pump off without taking the key out of the shaft and mark up the hole that the shaft goes through. This was the case on the 55 that my dad is putting together. This is a fairly easy fix, you just put a dab of material in the hole and re machine it out.


I got my 976 stamp that I have been waiting for. This is a cool detail that we are now doing. Our 46 and 47 each had a white stamp with 976 on it. Our 41 and 37 horns are too rusty to tell if there ever was a stamp on them. I have only seen this on hummer horns and 42 to 57 horns. Have any of you guys seen the stamp on an original paint nine bolt horn, or a six bolt vl horn.



Here is an original horn off of a 45 big twin with the stamp. Pretty cool detail.




I prepped a bunch of stuff for aluminum welding tonight. This is the corner of Doug's 36 case. It had some pretty nasty repairs done to it in the past. You can see where I cut it with the cut off wheel in order to break the chunk out. Well I pryed on it with a screw driver and this chunk came out about a 100 thousandths above where I cut the case. Check out how dark it is, this has been cracked and ready to let loose for a LONG time. I don't know how to put into words how difficult it is to take a cut off wheel and grinder to a super early 36 knucklehead transmission case. After seeing this, I am glad that i did do it.





Here are some of the parts I ground on. Should be welded up and fixed pretty soon!