Some new Product pictures!!

Yesterday Mara and I took 115 pictures for the products section on the company website--www.carlscyclesupply.com. She is working on udating all the parts that are not in our current parts list, as well as up dating the website. What a bunch of work. I am glad that she is doing it.

Here is the oil pressure switch terminal. Oolala



And a stainless steel handlebar lock plated!

Photos from the summer

I got an email from my friend Mike this morning. Mike sent me a bunch of pictures from a road trip that we took together back in June. We rode out to Ohio on knuckleheads together. It was a great trip.


Here is Mike Lange's racer, this is one of the nicest looking bikes that I have ever seen. I could stare at it for hours.



Here is a neat pic of the crew at Kevin and Amy Baas's house. We all spent the night there on the way to Wauseon.

Here is a pic that he took of my friend Kevin and his 47 FL. This bike looks pretty bare bones with black tanks on it.

WR oil line fittings

These were in the box of goodies too. They are wr oil line nuts, they screw onto the oil tank and oil pumps on a 45 so that you can run rubber oil lines. These have been back ordered for quite a while like the gas elbows. Let me know if you need any.

The new American Motorcyclist issue

Mara and I are on the cover of the new American Motorcyclist, which is a huge honor. This picture was taken at the AMA vintage days in Lexington Ohio. I do not have a copy of this issue, so if any of you readers know where I can get one, let me know. Thanks.

WR and KR gas elbows

I got a package from my friend Delmar yesterday, and there were a lot of neat little goodies in it. These are gas elbows for wrs and krs. I made 50 of them when I was nineteen. I sold them all in three years, and they have been on back order ever since. I bit the bullet, and ordered up some more, so if you need them--shoot me an email and I will set you up.


Here are the three pieces that you need to make the part.



Here is the assembly all pressed together.




Here is a neat pic of some of the ones that I assembled this morning. I still have to silver solder them, so that they don't leak.

Frog Eye Plugs

Here are some plugs that our friend Delmar made up. They are for converting knucklehead rocker arm shafts to run frog eye covers instead of chrome knuckle nuts. There is no way that you could drill and tap an 8-32 hole into the end of a 50 Rockwell shaft, so we made up these plugs to include in the kit. I will do a tutorial on converting the shafts in the next month or so.


OOOOOO SHINY

Pop Quiz

Pop QUIZ!
Does anybody know what this tooling is for? I will give you a hint, it makes motorcycle parts.

New welding goggles.

Jesse found some old welding goggles while cleaning out his garage and gave them to my dad. They are pretty neat.


Check out the lightning bolts!

Early 46 Knucklehead

Here is an early 46 frame, it is for a 46 that we are doing for Jim in Michigan.


Here it is with the centerstand and rear brake backing plate on it.



Here the front end, front fender and handlebars have been installed. These pics are a couple of days old, the bike is on both wheels right now. We just got the rear fender from Larry today, so I will make some more progress on it, and fill you guys in later.

Intake inserts

Notice the lip on the intake port, this is stock. All large port heads should have this lip. Unfortunately some heads get damaged or modified and the lip disappears--like the head on the right. This causes problems with the distance between the two heads when they are on the motor, and it makes your intake manifold too short.


Here is the solution to the problem. My dad made up a ton of intake inserts, and had a couple special ones made up. The stock one is on the left, and the special one is on the right, notice that the threads that stick out of the head are longer to compensate for the missing lip. My dad is a pretty fart smeller, or is that smart fellar? You be the judge.

Early 36 Circuit breaker!

I had the flu the last couple of days, so I have been away from the computer, I have some neat pics of what everybody besides me was doing in the shop, I will post them in the next day or two. In the mean time, here is what a early 36 circuit breaker looks like.


Check out the stud for the wire, there isn't a post for the wire to connect to like mid 37 and later studs. See the notch that is cut into the top.


Here you cans see all of the neat little details.

custom valve seats galore!

Once in a while, we have to machine up valve seats for knuckleheads. The seat on the left is a blank, and the one on the right is one that my dad cut the od and id down on. This is a good fix, but you have to remember to check to make sure that the bore that it presses into is concentric, other wise it will drop out when the head gets hot!


After we make each valve seat to spec, we throw them in the freezer for a couple of hours. I found a dead mouse in the freezer, which is really bizzare. I think that Mara put it in there. I am not sure though.

Fixing knucklehead head repairs

This is what a knucklehead that has been converted to run pan head cylinders looks like. This was a popular deal back in the seventies. Chopper guys and girls used to have a hard time finding low bore knuckle cylinders, so they would use pan head cylinders. Four of the bolt holes in pan head cylinders are the same as a knucklehead, but one of them is in a different spot, so they would screw a head bolt into the hole, and drill and tap a different one.


The first step in changing the heads back to stock is drilling out the head bolt hole.



Then you put a bolt in the hole that was previously used for the pan cylinders.




Next step is to drill hole for the knuckle head bolt pattern, then tap it for a helicoil.





Here is the almost finished product. we still have to face the head bolt surface, but you get the idea. This is a good fix and will last a long time.

Tim's frame painted!

Tim got his frame done with the last batch of powder painting. It turned out really well. We are doing a batch of parkerizing at the end of next week, then I get to start on the next batch of 3 bikes. I have been helping my dad with heads all week, ugh. I am looking forward to a change of pace!

Billy's 54

This bike belongs to my friend Billy From Arizona. He rode his awesome 54 panhead to Davenport to hang out. This bike is awesome! Billy sets the standard.


Check out the B and H shifter. These were made post world war 2 and were all the rage in the bobber era. The bike in the famous Life Magazine Hollister picture has a B and H shifter on it.



This was one of the coolest bikes at the meet.




Check out the sticker and the awesome "tour pack"

One of our restorations on the cover of a calender

I got the new America's classics calender in the mail today. My friend John sent it to me. The bike on the cover is his 36 el that my dad and I restored a couple of years ago. It is a great bike, I am glad that it made it on the cover.

Duke's dookie sun dial.

When I drove into work this morning there was this strange geological deposit on the ground. It was pointing straight up towards the heavens. My dad linked the unknown substance with Duke, our shop dog. As far as we can tell it is some type of natural sun dial that Duke strategically placed in out drive way. This picture was taken around 1:15 in the afternoon, which is evident by the large shadow that it is casting.


Here is a picture representing the scale of this unknown object. Does anybody out there know what it is?



That is my dad standing next to the sun dial, you can barely make him out, he is in the shadow.

An invitation to ride Knuckleheads in Sunny South Dakota!

Here is the flier for Ole's benefit in Sioux Falls. Ole crashed his 1939 knucklehead into a truck a couple of months ago and messed the bike up pretty badly, some people in Sioux Falls are having a benefit run for him. My dad , Tim, Mara and I are all riding down for it. We still have a spare knucklehead or two to loan out, if anybody else wants to come with. Give me a call and we can sort out the details.

1946 to 1948 handle bar lock plates

We just got our last few handlebar lock plates back from the polisher today. These are perfect reproductions of the original 1946 to 1948 piece. They are made out of Stainless steel just like originals. The other reproduction ones on the market are made out of steel, and they rust, which is not exactly what you want your handlebar lock plate to do. Send me an email if you need one, they are going fast!

fin repair

Here is a front head for one of the motors that we are doing in this batch. It is a really nice head, all five tabs have never been broken, the insert doesn't leak, and the exhaust port has never been cracked. However there are some fins missing. uh oh.


Here are the fins that I made up. When I first started to do fin repair, I would make each one fit perfectly. This did not work well all of the time.



Here you can see that the new fins are a little taller and longer than the intact original fins. I do this on purpose, so that after a little bit of grinding everything lines up and be parallel and perpendicular.





Holy Moly that is a nice repair.

Ryan's 1940 cases

We got this motor in from Colorado to rebuilt this week. It has had some interesting case welding done some time over the last 69 years. 40 and 41 cases are very weak and tend to crack along the radius on the left case.


Somebody beefed up the left front motor mount, It is a little excessive.



I outlined all of the cracks that are still in the case after somebody fixed it.

These are the inside cracks. This is a terrible repair. The case was all greasy, so it is safe to assume that the shoddy repair was done a long time ago. Most of this material will end up being replaced, blended and textured. I am excited for you to see the after pics, it will be difficult to see where it has been fixed.

No wonder the case was so greasy, there was a hole in it!!! This may be kind of shocking to some of you guys reading this, but this particular set of cases is a matched set of factory stamped 1940 cases, and they are totally worth saving. Check back for updates, I will post pics when they are finished and ready to put together.