GL 47 motor finished! and loctite saddlebags

Man O man this bike is going to be so cool. This is a very nice detailed out motor. Click the picture and zoom in.

UNGH

whoa

and we got the saddlebags for Andy's 47 today. I will mount them up this weekend, then we can ship out the bike wooo hooo.

1985 pictures

My Uncle Ricky set me up with these old pictures from a trip that he took to North Dakota after sturgis in 1985 to visit my parents and I. This is a picture of me with my dad's knucklehead when I was three months old. Ricky said that they came over to see the new kid in town- which was me. This is such a cool picture.

Here is a picture of my parents having a blast with some guys that I do not know.

Carl and Deb cruising down some North Dakota road.

Here is my mom and Uncle Ricky. My dad and Rick used to run around California together in the seventies, he has been a great as long as I can remember.

Stanley Update and misc. Wiring and cable pictures

I was digging through some old business cards and found this cool old card from Stanley Miller. Here is an update email that I just got from my local friend Mark Lafluer. I have been getting quite a few emails asking about stan, and it makes sense to post updates here rather than try to keep track of everyone in my inbox. Stan is doing better every day.
Sunday Night/Early Monday Morning... ....Over the Midnight Hour...

I just rolled in from a 1,200-plus mile weekend road trip. Tired, but feel compelled to share with All what I saw in our Man, Stan, today on my way home to Sioux Falls From Chicago.

As Nancy has reported, Stan is out of Expen$ive Care and has been moved to an Orthopedic wing on the First Floor of Saint Anthony's Hospital in Rockford, Illinois.

I went looking for him on the NICU wing on the Third Floor and there was some other guy laying in (what used to be) Stan's bed!

The nurses sent me down to the First Floor Orthopedic Wing. When I walked up to the nurse's station to ask where his room was, Stanley heard my voice and sat straight up in bed.

When I walked into the room, he looked right at me with a big smile and said, "Good to see you, Sharky!" I damned near fell over.

I stayed with him for less than a half hour, but had an incredible visit with him. He is still plenty piled up, but SO much better than he was just Friday!

Stan no longer has the oxygen tubes stuck in his nose, however, he is still in hand restraints. I told him that he needed to be nice to the nurses if he wanted the 'cuffs' removed.

We read a page out of a mutually-approved devotional book and discussed its relative value to Stanley and his current condition. We discussed The Golden Rule, too.

Stanley is FAR from well, but (in my humble opinion) is MILES better than he was just Friday. We had GREAT conversations today!

I reminded him that he has GOT to stop getting all pissed off and rowdy because he can't go home TODAY; that he needs to simply focus on getting well.

He seems to be more aware of the fact that he has been in the hospital for several weeks and that he needs to get stronger before he can go home.

I told him (again) what a STUD he was and that he was the second-most handsome man I've ever seen, me, of course, being the first!

We laughed a lot and cried a little, always at exactly the most appropriate moments. Stanley's World is getting bigger each day, but he has a LONG way to go.

As I was saying "Good-Bye" to Stanley this afternoon, a pretty, young black nurse was about to begin feeding him hot turkey and mashed potatoes. Stan said to me, "I love her!"

I hope he wasn't yanking my chain when he said that, because I told him time and again that he needed to treat those ladies the way he would want to be treated.

I told him that I saw no need for me to return to Rockford, unless I heard that he was mis-treating the nursing staff. Then, I told him, "Don't make me come back here!"

Sadly, I missed meeting Stan's brother, Ben, and Ben's wife, Cindy, by minutes Friday, and missed meeting his mom and dad by a couple hours this afternoon.

Please, All recipients of this message, take just a moment or two out of your busy days, and thank God for keeping Our Man Stan, alive, and ask Him to deliver Stanley back to Texas.

Thanks to All, and may God bless you and your Loved Ones.

Mark LaFleur, Dirty Old Biker
Sioux Falls, South Dakota

I spent the morning wiring up John's bike. I am about as far as I can go until I get some paint back.

lots of stuff going on.

Those are nos terminals that my friend Billy gave me. I gave them to John. They look nice and are in good shape for being 60 some years old.

I set up the throttle spiral on Wayne's 46 and am almost done with the spark. I love early 46s.

JP 38 and Callie

This is my friend Tarah's daughter Callie, she came to our pre sturgis party a month ago and wasn't really interested in hanging out with everyone, she wanted to work in the shop. She helped my friend change his oil and his tire and ran all over the shop and asked about different tools and parts. She has been hounding her mom to come back to the shop and hang out, so Brittney and I set some time aside to have her come out and work on old bikes. We sorted out all of the parts to get Jim's 38 together and went to town. Here is a picture of me explaining something about switching out bushings in fork rockers.

Here is Miss Brittney showing her how to tap out holes in Jim's frame.

We disassembled the wheels and greased everything up. This whole project was a lot of fun. While I was growing up, I hung out in the shop every second that I could. It was a fun experience to give back and answer a million different questions about stuff and build motorcycles with Miss Brittney and our ten year old friend.

Here is a picture of Callie on the 38.

My friend Dan came down from North Dakota to help with some machining. He spent yesterday cutting out the center of this rectangular bar for sears center stands. we are making five of them up. He did a good job.

Ducati picture and 48 pictures

Here is a neat picture of a sixties ducati single that I saw last weekend. The owner bought it for 100 dollars. This bike is very neat and has tons of italian style.

I got the oil lines mounted up on John's 48 today. The return line took 45 minutesto get to fit right. what a bunch of work.

I'm starting to route wires on this thing. The sheet metal is getting painted soon and I want it to go together as smoothly as possible.

New seat post and bushing installed. I love 48s. they are so cool

46 detail pictures from this morning.

an excercise in aluminum welding and 46 progress pictures

I have to weld up the breather gear area on my friend Billy's 16 j case this week. I have never really welded any Harley cases that old, so I figured I would do a practice run on the closest case that I had. The oldest case that I have laying around is an early 29 DL case that i am going to use in an upcoming project. I figured this was would be a good practice piece. Here it is cleaned up, ground and pre heated.

Here is the weld. IT is really gummy stuff and the root pass was a bit of a challenge but I got good penetration and was able to go in with a nice cold weld. I tried it with the case pre heated at 200 degrees and at 250.

Here it is milled flat and with the letters laid out.


This is what it looked like after a half hour on the big kids etch and sketch and a little bit of grinding. There were some pits in the E which is the weld I did at 250 degrees. The x was done at 200 degrees and has no pits. This could be totally unrelated to heat and be a contamination issue. I will do Billy's case at 200 degrees and see how it goes.

I mounted up the ride control and headlight bracket on Wayne's 46 fl today.

Early 46s had black painted horn buttons and dimmer switches. I think this is a very cool look.

I set up the chain primary, installed the coil and kickstand too! Unfortunately, I did not have cad plated screws for mounting the derby cover and inspection cover, so I will have to order some before they can be mounted for good.

With the coil installed, I am able to start wiring. Here is the circuit breaker to coil wire. The terminal is correct for 36 to 47 bikes. Some have the H on them and some do not. I think it is a pretty cool detail, but it doesn't necessarily have to be there.

THe stanley Miller pappy connection

When miss Brittney met Mr. Stanley in Wauseon, she said that he looked like Betty Boop's Grandpa. She called him pappy for the rest of the weekend and called him pappy in davenport as well. I just googled "betty boop grandpa" and the resemblance is uncanny.

The picture speaks for itself.

In other Stanley news,

He is conscience and doing well. He is still heavily medicated, but awake and talking. There was a story in one of the update emails that I got about him trying to devise a plan to ride his el back to Dallas. I am so glad that my friend is going to be ok. He is truly an amazing dude and has had an impact on thousands of people.

46 and 39

Here is Wayne's 46, I finished fitting the fenders, tanks and dash last week and took them over to get painted on my trip to the cities. It doesn't look like much of a bike anymore, but that is ok. I am going to set up primaries on these two 46s, a 45 and a 65 this week. Should be pretty exciting and fun.

Here is the sheet metal for the four six. It is off at mr. Gilby's getting coated in shiny black paint.

Here is Jim's 39. I probably stared at this bike for two hours today. Bikes always seem so much more real when they are on the ground and on their own kickstand. Man I love 39s.

REBUILT 40 frame and flood run pics

I ran to the twin cities to take care of a bunch of business this weekend and saw this amazing factory straightened 40 frame. When you got in a frame twisting accident back in the day, you could have your local dealer disassemble your bike, ship your frame to the factory, and they would re straighten it, repaint it and ship it back. whoa check out the stamp. I have only seen one other frame like this.

this toolbox bracket threw me for a loop.

uhhhhh

6 UNG
N

G

When HD straightened frames for the dealer, they stamped the frame in this forging.Somebody asked me if these numbers were some type of code at davenport this year. That is a pretty interesting question. I do not know the answer, but due to the rough chronological order and lack of a pattern, I would be willing to guess that they are just a way that the factory kept track of the frames after they re straightened them and shipped them to the dealer

The next day I went to the flood run with kevin baas. it was fun to ride old bikes for a couple hundred miles in Minnesota.

I got to ride the 47 and he rode the strange brew. the bikes worked great.

When we got back to Kevin's house, we pulled the plugs in his 58 so that his five year old son Mason could practice kicking over the bike.

Sunday we went to a car show and swap meet. I had a great time. I bought some cool stuff , but only took two pictures. One was of this delorian and the other is below

This is a pedal car Oscar Meyer wiener mobile. I don't know what demographic of kids these were made for, but I don't think that there were very many parents camping out in front of walmart to buy these things to put under the Christmas tree. In retrospect, I wish I would have bought it, but I guess you can't have it all.