bf 47, pm37 and bucks

I spent yesterday and this morning welding up Paul's 37 frame. it is getting pretty close and should be ready for metal finishing by the end of the day.

Here is a picture of the dangerous dog and the guard cat. Our mail man is afraid of Duke.

Here is the Born Free roller. It is looking pretty good. We had to heat up one of the seat posts and flatten it out to get a bit of clearance for the exhaust port, but we got it shoe horned in there.

This is a copy of the 37 frame picture that I uploaded twice

I picked up some sheet metal and aluminum to make some bucks for the oil tank and the back sides of the born free tanks. Dan made the bucks, cut out the blanks, and I welded them up.

The buck for the oil tank top looked like a heart, so I used some red lay out dye and turned it into a month late valentine for Brittney, She was into it.

The edge of the buck has a 3/16ths radius on it so that the sheet metal ends up with a nice edge after it is formed. Notice how the radius edges are pie cut, these slots get welded up after forming.

Here they are all finished up

This is the inside of the left tank. It was made the same way.

In this picture you can see the lip that will slip into the tank. This makes for a very sturdy and rugged set up.

Here is the tank sitting on top of it.

36 and 37 pictures

This is Paul's 37 frame. This bike has been a complete bike for its whole life and has a lot of nice parts. It is an early frame, with an early 37 fork, which is the same as a 36 front end. The seat post broke into three parts and he rode it for a bit like that. I think that it must have really high centered a few times, I am not sure when, but it did get a little twisted up. The lower rails needed to be replaced and there is a bit of a twist on the exhaust side as well, It should be going to gether soon, This is the most twisted up back section of a frame that I have seen and it is nice to have something challenging to work on.

Check out the large hall mark, machined reliefs in the curved bar and the 7/8 head on crash bar. This is the same neck that was used on 36 els and through out some of the 37 year, I am not sure when they changed necks, if any of you reading this have some specific serial number cut offs it would be great to know.

Here is a picture of Doug's 36 next to a 1905 harley at the Eiteljorg museum They opened the exhibit on friday, I was in Daytona at a board meeting so I couldn't attend unfortunately. Doug said it was a great time.

Here is a cool picture of Jean Davidson and Mr. Doug. Late last year we went to Milwaukee and hung out with Jean's son and watched old family videos that her grand father Walter had shot during the 1928 to 1942 time period. It was really neat, there were a few shots of her as a baby.

This is the name card for the display bike.

florida, frames, motors and a cool strap tank

There is an awesome 08 single on ebay that my friend Lonnie built. It is sooo cool

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Rare-...item256e0d9f05

Here is a picture of the dangerous dog.

I got a big box of 36 to 40 muffler tips right before i left. I got them welded up and ready to go.

Here is Doug's new 39 frame. It needs some new bottom rails, seat post and sidecar loops. Dan worked on prepping it over the weekend and it should be going together this week along with a 37 frame.

Here is a nasty repair on the seat post. this is very common and pretty easy to fix, at least with the right tools...

The 40 frame is just about finished. I still have to weld the front tank mount, right foot board tab and oil tank bracket on.

This is Jim's 55 motor with the pushrods installed and ready to go. This is pretty sweet,

This is my friend Matt's 41, I got to ride it in Florida this weekend, it was a pretty gnarly bike. It won the Alabama state enduro in 1951. He bought it off of craigslist and tracked down the original owner. What a fun bike, Taking it for a spin was the high lightof my 3 day long trip to down south. I borrowed this picture off of the AMCA facebook page, go check it out if you have a facebook page, there are over 1500 pictures of neat old bikes on it and over a 11oo members. the url is http://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/111664952275098/

38 and 40 frame work

This is Bob's 40 frame, it was a pretty nice uncut frame, but the seat post was snapped in half and the bottom rails were crushed. After sandblasting i noticed that the left down tube had a poor repair done to it a long long time ago, so I chopped it off.

Here it is mounted up in the jig. The seat post is just slid over the slug

here it is with the new tubes in and most of the welding done to it. I have to take it out and get into a few tight spots, then metal finish and put the foot board tabs, oil tank bracket and bottom tank mount on.

Here is Gareth's 38 frame, This was an original paint frame that was severely beaten, bruised and broken. We are making an old looking bike out of it, so I left as much of the old paint on it as I could. I had to shine it up in a few spots where I was welding though. These are all the slugs and tubes that will be added in to make the frame one piece again.

This is Gareth's motor transmission mount, we set up the angle plate on the Bridgeport and bore these out. There is a huge variance in height between the top of the transmission mount and the top of the motor mount, the distance between the holes is different from casting to casting too. HD did not hold these dimensions very well, which forces you into having a flexible set up for boring them out. My dad leaves about .010 in each casting to hand sand out, which insures a tight fit on the final product. This is a picture of Gareth's mount after it had the extra .010 taken out of it to fit on the 1.500 seat post. Notice the large hallmark which was used through some of 39

Here are some of the other motor and transmission mounts that my dad bored out while he was at it.

Here is the hardtail bolted in the jig,

Seat post and motor mount, this part gets a little tricky, up above I mentioned that there were slight variances in motor pad to transmission pad height, so you have to shim accordingly to make sure that the back motor mount doesn't tilt at an angle. The entire motor mount slides front to back on key stock to accommodate for the variances in distances.

front motor mount installed

here it is with most of the tubes in and welded.

All glued back together!!!

And the finished product. I put a 46 el motor in to check the front mount height and it had no gap on the left front mount and needed a .005 shim on the right. The paint held up pretty well too I still have to weld on the lower fender mount and tool box bracket and do a little bit of grinding and texturing. I also have to rust it up and put some black enamel on it

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.

knuckleheads from outer space starting up some 46s and frame photos

My friend Doug sent me this picture of a 30 foot banner at theEiteljorg museum in Indiana, he owns the bike on the banner. My dad and I built it for him a couple years ago. Larry Medwig did the body work and paint job. He did such a good job that they blew a picture of the bike up to giant size and you still can't find a flaw.



I started up both 46s yesterday, I have to shim the generator up on Wayne's 46, but it only takes five minutes. They both started up really easily, and sound good.

Dan and I spent the rest of the day prepping Sean's 47 fram

Here it is bolted in the jig. The axle plates were a little off.

Here is Brittney with the LASER!!! and appropriate eye wear.

Making slugs for the bottom rails.

The pads on the motor mounts were really worn, so I surface ground both sides, it took .020 to clean them up, but now they are perfectly flat and ready to go.

laser checking center line on motor and neck fixture. These things are so damn handy

All ready for welding the main parts together

fremont booty

Here is the booty that we got at fremont. Every AMCA swapmeet has it's own personality, some are just for shopping while others are just for getting together with your friends and talking about old bikes and shooting the breeze. Fremont is some where in between. There are a few vendors with a huge variety of parts for sale. I saw parts for German, English and a four different American brands at the meet. We are always working on all sorts of different bikes so we have a big shopping list and can usually find something to use on different bikes. Here are some of the parts we scored. I also got a 41 to 46 tank that I forgot to take pictures of.

Check out the neat riser set up and 65 to 67 pump and all sorts of other consumable parts.

We found a 49 right case for dan's bike. It has had the front motor mount worked on and the really mount was shaved off, but it is a workable case and should serve his purposes well. There is also a nice 38 to 57 brake backing plate, duo glide center stand and a 39/40 oil pump in this picture.

Here is a later 46 shock that my dad picked up.

Miss Brittney Found a front fork for her 23 j race bike too. This front end is for 1919 and 1920 excelsior military bikes and sidecar bikes. They were also used on some old race bikes back in the day too. Check out the extra reinforcements on the front end. This fork is wild. I have wanted one for years, and was very happy to find one in fixable condition.

Here is the intake manifold she found and the side view of the fork. It is so cool.

If Brittney is happy, we are all happy.

my dad found an early fender in workable condition too. It has the typical extra holes and a little bit of rot, but over all it's a pretty nice usable piece.

This fender had the little bags that hung on towel hangers early on, but the owner realized that he needed bags bigger than a purse and upgraded to something with more room. I did the same thing on my 36 too haha

It is pretty common to find rot in this area, there isn't any on this fender, but it does have a huge dent in it which is pretty hard to photograph. I am in no way complaining, these fenders are 70 to 80 years old, and they all need loving in one area or another.