My dads birthday is in a few days woo hoo

This guy is turning sixty on may first!

update of all sorts of stuff.

 Here is a great photo of my friend Katsunori's son starting his 37 el in Japan.   Katsunoris bike has one of my mufflers on it.  This photo is so cool

 Lock Baker from Eastern Fabrications flew in last week and helped finish up Brittneys race bike.  He made the tanks and helped with a bunch of fab work.  He is such a great friend and he has nice hair.

 We got Bob's tanks blasted for his 39 project and were kind of dissapointed to find all of these holes in the top.   I would like to find a better set.  Do any of you guys have some?  Thanks.

 Yesterday was Jesse Law's Last day .  He did a six month apprenticeship with us and helped out on prepping frames  We got a lot of them done and had a good time   HEre is the fourth 36 frame that we did.   The fork is a 36 fork that I put together for Jim's el, which should be a roller sometime soon.

 I pretty much have Ed's 55 finished.  I need to start riding it and breaking it in, but it keeps snowing here in Aberdeen.  It snowed a foot this weekend and we are still supposed to get more.  

 Check out the 55 only fender emblem.  It is so nice.

 Pete's 46 is just about as far along as we can get it.  I set up the primaries, fit the oil tank and oil lines.   we are having the retubed handlebars and primary cover powderpainted and hopefully will get them back next week

 I love these frames, they are so beautiful.

Here is a 45 fl shortblock that my dad is finishing up.   He has been jamming out on the engines.  Ill post more pics later.

motors!

 Brittney, Jesse and I went to the circus last week.  This act has been my favorite act since I was a kid.   They started putting lights on the dirt bikes.  This is the only time I have seen lights on a bike and thought it was cool.

 Brittney got to ride an elephant it was pretty cool.

 Here is a 23 j motor that we are just about done with.

 My friends Matt and dale sent me these wheel rings for 19 inch rims.  I am going to make up some copies of them.  I have been looking for a 19 inch sample for over eight years.   If you guys need some let me know,  I will probably only make one batch.

 Here is a good photo of petes bike. the one that i posted last week was not that good. 

 And the left side

 My dad has been jamming out on motors. here is Scott's 38.  Its so nice.

 ccheck out the three hole relay base and the early circuit breaker cap.  HD went to the later style cap sometime in 38, so its kind of tough to pin down an exact cross over.  We did a 38el15xx motor ten years ago and it had anearly cap,  but later ones didn't  Who knows

d  This is Jims thirty six motor.   its so nice.

Hhere is another shot of the23. 

a weeks worth of time

 This weekend we did a huge batch of parkerizing.   Jesse and craig have been blasting for the last two and a half months to prep for it.   This is a lot of work and the process is pretty finicky.   The batch turned out pretty good, and we only had to redo a few parts.

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The parkerizing allowed us to get the rest of the parts for the 55, 65 and this 46 bobber.   This bike was found in a field in colorado and was in very sad shape.  It was a lot of work to fix up these parts, but it is turning out nice.   

 These are keystone plates, they were used on harley race bikes.  The top one is a copy of a stock one.  It is made out of the same blank as the right side one, so it has a hole in it for the case drain.  I didn;t lke the way it looked, so I asked my friend jack to waterjet out a new style one.  I think they will look really cool once  mounted on the bike.

 My friend Jerry sent me this awesome photo yesterday of a painting he is working on for one of the tiles in the Wall Of Death.   Thanks a ton Jerry.  It is a huge honor.   If you guys have the chance to see these guys perform, do whatever it takes to go to their show.   It is a great piece of American Motorcycling history.

This is Sean's frontend.  I have been a little nervous about this job for a while.  I wasnt really sure about the best way to re attach fender tabs onto the fork.   Jesse and I just bolted a really nice oem fender onto the fork and used it as a guide.  This repair took about 4 hours.  It was a lot of work and welding.  

 Here it is all shipped up with the frame and headed east.

 Here is Bill's 51 motor.  It is coming together nicely.  The end play is set,  now we just have to take it apart, clean and lube everything one last time, install the cylinder studs and its going together!!  Bill wanted us to build the bike around a reproduction frame, but has since changed his mind and wants to find an original one.  Do any of you guys have one laying around.  we have cash or parts to trade.   Thanks!

 Here is one of the crusty thirty eight motors my dad is working on. My dad spent the weekend patinaing up three sets of cases for crusty bikes.   His first attempts were a little light, then a little dark, but then he finally ended up with this look, which is spot on.   I cant wait to see the motors all together.

 and the saga continues. 

motors and frames!!

 My dad has been mowing through bottom ends.  Here are four straight bearing engines that have the flywheels in the cases. 

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Here is tims frame.  We have it all togethere and ready to go.   I have to weld the top motor mount and tank mount on, but it should be done today.   

 the next frame on the list is Jack's 36.  He bought this from the west coast.  It is a real deal early 36 frame.

 the top tank mount was replaced some time in the last 15 years, it is a ferrels one.   They are pretty nice.   The big problem with this photo is the nickle rod  that was used to weld the neck back onto the casting.  If you look closely you can see that there is a line in front of the dif hallmark. Somebody cut the front of the neck off and welded it back on.  When Jack bought the frame, it was painted and this was not visible.

 here is a shot of the front motor mount.  The holes look rough on the top, but they are nice on the bottom,  I have no idea how they got so banged up on top, or why?

 Here you can see the repair of the bottom rail on the left tube and the damage on the right.

 somebody did some serious grinding and cutting on the top of the backbone to fit a pan or shovel motor into this frame a long time ago.  you can also see where th e backbone is cracked in half.

 the flash makes this photograph, not the best,   but the seat post is very relieved for a rear head of a pan or shovel. the seat t yoke is pretty awesome and a big part of what makes this frame so cool.  If you know, then you know.

 uhh.

 here is what it looked like after jesse cut it apart.  we eneded up deciding to cut and replace the top tubes after this photo was taken.

and here it is in the fixture.   Still a bit of work to do on this frame, but we should be able to figure it out.

old 36 video

Here is a video I put up on youtube a while ago.  It is almost at 200 thousand views.  I like to shoot these first start up videos with sandles on, just to see all of the comments that pop up.   Go check em out on youtube.  It is pretty funny

frames and engines and some cuba pictures

 We got petes 46 frame back from being powder coated.   It turned out really nice.

 here are some of the frames we finished up this month.  

 Jesse is making good progress on Tim's 42 frame.  Tim was in a bad accident with this bike, and it needed to have a lot of tubes replaced,  This is probably the second hardest frame we have had to work on.its coming along nice though, so thats good.

My dad is putting flywheels in cases this week.  Here is a quick shot of some of the ones waiting to go together.  

 I really loved this photo of this indian.  The bike looks like a futuristic indain custom. 

 A lot of the cubans would put swingarms on their frames to handle the rough roads in their country.  here is a pic of one in progress.

I want to find some of these bags, just so I can paint them up like this.  This bike belonged to a fellow who had a business with his brother.  they had a nice restored red and white car and they would rent both units out for parades and funerals.