Rods, bearings and wiring

I finished up most of the wiring on the fifty five today, I still have to hook up the headlight taillight and horn but the hard work is done. My dad has been sorting out rodsets and bottom end part all day. Check out the photo of some of te rodsets he's working on. The picture of the Rods In the screw press is a picture of the races being replaced. We like to use original rods when we can but sometimes it just isn't feasible. Even if we buy new rodsets for a motor we still have to fit the bearings and make sure the fit is exactly perfect. I also threw up a picture of my lovely wife making a blueprint for her fork. We made an assembly drawing that had all of her steering components , then the height of each component and were able to work backwards and come up with a blueprint for a part that never existed but will work for her bikes needs

Bye bye forty seven

We finished up the el. The born free bike is coming back tomorrow and this ones getting picked up. I really like the eighteens. Greg is going to have a ton of fun rising this bike around.

Wheels spokes and free bird

Here are some cool pictures. We got gareths other wheel laced up, but in order to do that we had to strip black paint off of the old spokes that came on his thirty eight. We just soaked them in laquer thinner and it worked pretty good. Craig also laced up the wheels for my dear friend Scott's 38 It's going to look so sweet.


I installed the eighteen inch wheels on the forty seven that greg requested. This is the first fortt seven that I've worked on with eighteen inch wheels . I've seen them On others, just never worked on one. These wheels make the bike look so much better. I think that the fenders were designed for 18 or 19 inch rims and I love the way the side profile matches up with the valance Of the fender. I have to tidy up a few loose ends on the bike and then it's off to its new home!!! I'm also uploading a picture of an awesome thirty right that my friend Greg used to own , just for comparison on the fender/wheel topic

Hubs and forks

Here is a picture of some springer front ends that I put together one is for 1940 EL and the other one is for a 47 WL.
The picture of the three hubs are ones that we just had reground and hard chromed from by Lee in Ohio. they turned out really really nice and we put them together so Craig will be able to lace and true the wheels on Monday

Second chances

Right before we left for Japan I posted this bike for sale on the blog. it sold within two days. the customer wanted 18 inch wheels and a four speed gearbox installed before he took delivery of the bike.

This is a bike that my dad and I restored together 13 years ago, it was a bike my dad bought for himself but sold to buy some two thirty nine el projects. This bike was done before we made any reproduction parts so the position that we were in as restorers was that we could fix everything up as good as humanly possible and we had to use the best aftermarket parts available. we weren't at the stage of making our own parts yet so we had to settle for less.

Fast forward a dozen years --the bike is still in the exact same condition as when we first finished it, but it lacks certain details that I take a lot of pride in doing in on bikes we restore now. I spent the day changing out a bunch of Wire ends and rerouting a few wires, changing some minor hardware and installing one of our seemed and rolled Sheetmetal 41 to 49 mufflers and it made a world of difference

The bike was really nice before and now it's even better and it makes me feel very happy and satisfied to know that it is brought up-to-date with the same standard that we do things nowadays

I guess the moral of the story is that you should always try to improve upon your craft and skill set and if you're given a second opportunity to improve on work he did a long time ago you should be grateful and happy that you get to do it

Mounting fender and pipes

Here are some cool photos of Ed's 1955 Panhead I mounted up the exhaust and you can see that there is a space between the exhaust Spigot and the header pipe. exhaust gases will leak out of there so you have to weld up the header pipe to make sure that there isnt a gap there. I also mounted the front fender it turned out pretty nice , and looks really really really mint green

Some other Yokohama pics

Today was pretty boring I boxes up a bunch of parts So. Rather than post some pictures of brown boxes I'll post some cool Japan and cannonball pictures. One of my friends on instagram posted some crazy photos of brittney an me rising down the isle. They're the best pictures I've seen so far to show how crazy it really is