all sorts of stuff

My dad is almost finished up with Bob's 52 engine. It just needs the intake manifold installed then it is off to the left side of the country.

Here is a chunk of aluminum with some eighth inch holes in it.

oh cool, you can use those holes to make choke rods.

I asked miss Brittney what she wanted to do for Valentines day a couple weeks ago and she told me that she wanted to learn how to weld aluminum, so we spent some helmet time together and she got to learn and practice aluminum heliarc welding.

Here is one of her practice pieces. She still has a ways to go, but it is pretty good for a first effort

I am working on dashes and front brakes today. My flash is messed up on my camera, but you get the idea. HD switched to cad plated cat eye lens bezels sometime in 46.

Jason's white solo seat showed up in the mail today. Chuck and Jo always do a good job, so I just decided to leave it in the bubble wrap until we were ready for it.. I am so scared to get it dirty.

Here is the bottom of the seat. We are going to leave it in the bubble wrap until we are absolutely ready to put it on the bike. I am scared to even look at it lol

Happy Valentines Day

Here is a neat picture of a 32 tidal wave paint job on a 39 btsv. I always liked this layout. Happy valentine's day everyone

Here is Jim's 52 motor. It is almost done. It was one of the first FLs made in 1952 and has 1951 belly numbers.

Ready to ship!

last of frame fixture pictures

Delmar and I finished up the frame welding fixture this last week. Here is a shot of a go no go gauge that we made because we didn't have a 1- 14 tap or bolt to check our threads with.

Thread milling in process

Neck fixture pieces coming together. The top plate has a 1"14 threaded hole in it. We didn't have a tap so, Delmar showed me how to thread mill on a haas. Thread milling is really cool. You use a cutter that is cut at 30 degrees and circular interpolate around the hole while the spindle goes down.

This is what the neck stem in raw material form? It is made out of 12l14 which is commonly referred to as screw stock.

Here is a right side view of the neck holding

This is the bottom plate for the neck holding apparatus. We put in a row of 3/8 16 tapped holes for adjust ability when we set it up for the 25, 28 or 30 degree neck angles to take up the x movement. The neck stem and adjusting cones take up the z play.

With the neck fixture finished we moved onto the table legs. So we got out a blank piece of paper.

Then we got distracted and went out and shot guns. This gun was very neat, it has a bayonet.

Here are the back legs for the fixture installed and ready to go. The wheels are cool, they were made in the USA.

There is nothing worse than a rocky table, chair or frame fixture, so we applied some ancient tractor technology and built this pivot point so that the front legs will move and the table will always be level.

Here it is installed. The front legs have quite a bit of travel. I think that if we wanted to, we could weld frames together on the side of a mountain with out the fixture rocking.

here it is in all of its glory. It was a lot more work than anyone anticipated, but will end up saving hundreds of hours over the course of my life. We had a good system for re tubing frames before, but it was a four step process. Hopefully this fixture will cut it down to a two step process. The hardest part of the whole job will still be frame and forging prep...

We got it unloaded and the fixture looks monstrous in our shop. I think it is because of the lower ceiling height.

Here is a picture of miss Brittney on the fixture for scale.

dangerous dog pictures,plastic and hoses

ON the prowl

LOOK OUT

when I was up at Delmar's working on the frame fixture, he showed me this neat set up. That is a 5c collet with a little piece in it to put fuel resistant gas line in. notice that the block is at an angle. that angle matches the taper of the gas valve lever.

The grinding wheel is radiused to match the od of the the gas valve lever.

here it is installed, we are talking about making a fine threaded screw to adjust the pressure that the seal has on the gas valve lever.

I dropped my camera and need to get a new one. So this picture is a little blurry, but you can still see the two orings that seal the assembly on the ends.

With everything put together without a spring, this passes the suck test and seals, we still have to test the flow and see how they hold up.

JM 52 pan motors and batch of heads

Jim's fenders showed up on Friday. They are perfect.

My dad said he had to put the back one on to see how it looked. I will bolt it up for good sometime this coming week. I have to put a black painted oil tank base plate on it, HD didn't start parkerizing them until sometime in 1939.

Last week my dad made some progress on Jim's 52 motor last week. Here is the bottom end coming together.

cylinders installed.

This is the letter that came along with the engine. I love the "I'm looking to be able to ride this machine for 100 miles in a day with complete dependability and smooth operation, Haven't had that for some time. That's why I'm sending it to you. " What a great line.

Miss Brittney and my dad worked on these six sets of heads over the time that I was up north. All of the seats, and valve guides have been installed. All of the welding has been completed at this stage. (new exhaust ports, fins, misc cracks. intake port threads, etc...)

Here are five sets of alloy heads with the valves installed.

And Jim's 52 motor. This is coming along nicely.

engraving tools, motors and clutches

Delmar sent me this picture of the neck fixture, he used his awesome new engraving tool on it. It is an insert tool that holds a little diamond shaped insert that cuts the finest lines and doesn't leave a bur. It is pretty sweet. I can't believe how cool modern day tooling for machining centers is.

We got our first seat from Jordan at union speed and style. It turned out really nice. I sent him the original 46 seat that was on our original paint 46 that crashed this summer. He took the original seat apart and made vacuum forms of the leather and padding. It produces a really nice and consistent finished product.

Here is Bob's motor. the carb is a donor m35 that we put on so that we could put the manifold on. His hardware is off getting cad plated.

Bob's 47 oil pump. The little bolt for the oil pump is off getting cad plated along with his carb stuff. I love how nice the case castings look on early motors. they are so beautiful.

I got this clutch pedal and rod hooked up. woo hooo. I should be firing this bike up soon!!!!!