Shortster

1" over stock

Tired of being in the 4" stretch ironhead club

with a whole world of things to worry about, never underestimate the therapeutic value of stripping paint. its +15 degrees in the garage, i have a head full of nicotine, Coalesce blasting in my ears and a big ol' smile on my ugly mug.  

these are things you can only know when you work on your own stuff. regardless of what you are doing, it always feels better when you know you've done it with your own hands. this is the only way to say something is truly yours.

update on chris' trumpet

the pipes came from a collection of bends and some NAPA tubing. considerations were taken for performance such as almost identical lengths, no bends are smaller than a 4" radius and the pipes  immediate after the exhaust port have a 3 1/2" straight throw before they bend. these considerations made the design a little tricky but i definitely approve of the results. the clearances to the engine, oil tank and frame rails are super tight and the ends are dead-nuts level to the ground.     

i miss my van

it smelled pretty funky back there sometimes but it was home.

some dumb pictures...

the front end is just getting new grease; the bearings, seals and fork oil all check in at the predictably sub-standard level that harley envisioned. 

 mighty mouse. i need to further strip this down to put on some high-temp.

 i like to mark things as they come apart and put bolts with their components. i really don't know under what circumstances may surround the re-assembly so why take chances.

winter teardown

so the winter tear-apart is mostly complete. the sporty is down to the frame and my imagination is working on a paint scheme sense i have the opportunity. i normally don't give paint this much thought but i have recently come to terms with owning this lump for awhile. also, it may "only be an ironhead" but its mine and its old and i don't want it rusting out from under me. after all, i've had quite a few adventures because of this bike, the least i can do to partially repay this moron-mobile is to take care of it.  call it karma or whatever. i may not be a bike builder but i do know that a well thought out heap is always better then a heap that got that way through neglect and ignorance.  

and here is a prime reason why home made things should be inspected every once in awhile. particularly when one plans on flogging said home made contraption. this bolt was one of 3 that holds the eerl tank in place, no idea when or where i lost the nut; glad i used 3.  

and a thank goes out to dylan for putting me on a safety-wiring frenzy way back when; no oil was lost due to drain plug failure. too bad he wasn't around to remind me that i tied a drain plug to the frame. made pulling the motor that much more fun. 

gah

this will be pain in my assholes

item number 18 is leaking and messing with my brakes. arggg.

trying to do it better

 so, like i said before, i am in the middle of doing my winter fixes. some of these have been pretty simple and one is proving to be tricky. while i was riding through canada, i tried to pass a logging truck off in the middle of nowhere. unfortunately when i goosed the throttle my bike fell flat on its face. this was due to the accelerator pump's action not moving. this was caused by about 4,000 miles worth of road shit being caked into the moving bits. so i thought to myself: "self, someone ought to come up with something to help with this".
well shit, i got nothing but time right now...

so here is a first draft made from carbon fiber. this little bit is why i have not been posting very often. carbon is a huge pain to work with and i've had to come up with my own process for making them.

Trans rebuild

.005" endplay on the countershaft...
and .005" endplay on the mainshaft. Right in tolerance. Everything spins freely and shifts smoothly. Going to try to get the kicker and primary in Friday.

thought this was kinda neat.

i made a casting of a finished seat and to keep the resin from ruining the leather i put down a shopping bag.  the epoxy ended up pulling the print right off the bag. i know this is a thrilling topic but i still think it's neat and thought i would share. 

If you want it done right, do it yourself.

After and expensive transmission rebuild that left my bike shifting poorly and me questioning why I ever let ANYONE else turn a wrench on it in the first place, I finally decided to pull my trans one more time and do it myself with a little help from the village elders. To make a long story short, there were 4 obvious problems that were easily fixed with the CORRECT parts installed PROPERLY. The trans shifts smoothly on the bench and is now installed in the case ready to measure the mainshaft and countershaft endplay on Monday when I can bring my dial indicator home from work.

Wheelie Monster Flywheel Refreshments

Well, I have been busy gathering go-fast parts for my burnt-out Evo Sportster. Heads and cylinders are back from Advanced. The heads were shaved, dual-plugged, ported and polished and were treated to a complete valve job with some bigger valves. Actually, the valves belong in a twin cam and were machined to fit in my 1200 heads. Cylinders got .005" more taken out of the bore to make it an even .010". In those holes there is a nice shiny new set of Wiseco forged dome-tops. The stock HD cams are down at Zipper's getting the Red Shift treatment. They actually fit new lobes onto your stock cam shafts, this way you retain the correct gear lash the engine came with from the factory.
Left over (but still pretty fresh) from the last time I did the top end, are some S&S lifters and quick change push rods. Last week came some S&S roller rockers, and today the UPS guy brought a new set of S&S heavy duty connecting rods. They should give me a free S&S T-shirt, or at least a sticker!

This picture here is the reason why this whole project was started in the first place. It is where my mainshaft bearing used to sit, the one behind the sprocket on my transmission. The cases needed to be split so that I can get some machine work done on that sloppy, oblong hole. While this is being done, I will make a flywheel jig and check the clearances with the S&S rods installed. Material might need to be removed from the crankpin nut, the cylinder spigots and maybe the cases. Haven't figured out how I will be removing the material, prolly with a whizza wheel, but I may just heat it up with a torch and beat on it with a BFH. (an old Coconut Customs lower end trick)
Then, after the alterations, the whole assembly goes back to Advanced for balancing. All bearings, bushings, shafts and seals in the lower end will get the royal treatment.
I am looking for a flywheel scraper/windage tray, if anyone knows who makes one for a four speed evo XL, let me know please.

This is a huge learning experience for me, I have never been this far into a Harley engine before. I am lucky enough to have some of the best old HD gearheads around to help me through this. After all, I want to go fast, not explode! (again)

I don't have a magic camera, so my pics aren't as trippy as Warren's are. I don't know, eat some mescaline or something, maybe they will glow in the dark. Better yet, eat some peyote and get as far away from your computer as you can. Even better than psycotropic cacti and white fire wolfs, eat some good old-fashioned LSD-25 and go ride that motorcycle into the next dimension instead of trailering it to gay bike shows and make-believe photo shoots. Just because your bike is dirty and broken, doesn't mean you ride it. Get real.
Oh yeah, here are some giant ginger tits and cool art from Easyriders. Click on them and they will get bigger!

chris' whip in progress

aside from some of the scarier bits like the hardtail, he is doing this whole thing himself. next on the list is a Biltwel kit i believe. '73 motor in a '66 frame. 

download these, cut them into stencils and tag everything with them. why? because i have subliminal messages embedded into this blog. why the hell else would you be reading this crap?

this is chris' cave

so i put up a flyer at the local college looking for some insight into engineering questions that i continue to come up with. a couple weeks later i got a call from chris. this dude is barely 19 and balls deep in a sick chop project. he sent out only the essentials out for re-working when it came to the guts and rebuilt the engine and trans himself. it may not run yet but it sure looks pretty in his living room. the frame's front hoop is getting the bolt-on treatment while the front has a spring of unknown flavor. i will do my best to keep the innerweb abreast of this nonsense.  

stupid four-doubleya-wheel-drieve...

this post is mostly for dylan's sake. he was the unfortunate being that answered the phone when i was calling around asking about locking hubs. now its all pretty clear how the whole thing works but when things are making strange noises on your only form of transportation in a town where you know no one, it gets me nervous.

locking mechanism off, but with the bushing still in place.

same thing but with the bushing out, thrilling.

on the right is the inner gear

i am sure you can see the cover on the left and directly in the center is the outer gear, between those things is the cam and spring that moves it all around.

and this is the variable that made the whole thing so much fun.

hay, know what's sweet?

when its so cold out that ice forms in your craberater, rad.

i wish i was high cause then some of my creations might make more sense to me.