uh oh!

at the gasstation i thought i had a slightly sticking brake. the digger was slightly hard to push forward.
i thought i'll look into that later and went of for a nice ride.
after 70 miles or so i discovered why the digger was feeling like the brake was sticking.

the battery box had broken, and the battery had been rubbing the tire for at least 70 miles..

the tire had eaten right through the battery casing and the mats were exposed.

i found an old bicycle tire and used that as a emergency solution to keep the battery away from the tire.

 

ah well... true customs do fall apart sometimes!

updates?

yeah, well. updates...
shoot me and the blogger app to!
i just lost my recent posts.

so to make it up a little, i'll make a short recap.

night ride.

as it was a nice warm Friday night, we opted to take a midnight ride.
there's nothing better than driving in the middle of the night through the silent countryside.
no traffic just calm and open roads. try it and enjoy!

Toxic woos

although the project has been idle for over a year i started building Toxic in cafe racer style.

the initial plan was a dual front head setup, but time and money made that idea go in the drawer for now.

so the engine could be rebuild in "normal" setup again, with some minor head work.

also minor fuck ups are part of the game...

i forgot to put the bolt back that connects the head to the frame.. and with the engine build i can;t put the bolt back.. so the engine has to come out.

cams back in, and these cams are why the '87 evo sportster is faster than his newer brothers.(including 1200's) the cams have bigger lift on the exhaust compared to later models. in and out have the same lift and duration.

i also made up some handlebars of crap i had laying around.

it doesn't look like it, but it's actually six pieces.

also i changed the tank plan, the same tank will be used but i took the easy route.
from this idea: (which would give me almost 27 liters of fuel) (and a great way to fuck up a big sheet of stainless metal when you ditch it)

to the easy way out which will give me 19 liters of fuel:

and yups, there is a fuel sender laying around.

and after many thoughts i'll go with this taillight setup, it has running, braking and indicator lights all in one.

White ride.

peter pan has a white bike since he liked daddy cool so much.

and we opted to ride our white bikes and make some pictures of the white thunder and bee.

Daddy not so cool.

Daddy Cool had a sticking valve. but as always it managed to limp back to the Garage.

with an awful rattling noise and no power from the front cylinder...

after opening the front head i suspected to see hell with bend valve stems, shot pistons and damaged cylinders..

i was in luck! valve stems were straight as an arrow, the intake valve just slightly brushed the piston and did no damage.

so i did some work on the guides, lobbed the valves and seats cleaned the whole shabang up, closed the head again and ride like hell again..

that should do the trick for your update needs!





o yeah... i have a little weekend trip ahead of me with the digger. normally i'll tie my stuff to the back seat, but this will be a 2-up trip, so i have a human on the back seat instead of my stuff..
so i have to figure something out to carry all the stuff..

fricking Honda V4's!

i should have kept my word, in October 2011 i said never to touch a V4 honda engine again, but i forgot all about it when my neighbor asked me to fix his SuperMagna.
it ran like shit, wouldn't hardly start and some one had looked at it and couldn't find a problem..
"ah well" i thought, let's be a good neighbor and help him out..
so once in his shed i saw a magna with lot's of stuff taken of it.
i cleaned the carbs, replaced a broken fueltransfer tube and started the big fight with the V configuration carbs.

but behold, the Magna is a cali import, so it has all the environmental hoses and BS on it.

and there were a lot of hoses. so first i tried to discover what should go where and once i thought i had it allright i started the fight to place the carbs. after a few hours fighting them i thought it would be more easy to use ratchet bands (those to tie down your bike or other heavy stuff to a trailer) and a crowbar.
brute and blunt force was the answer! within 10 minutes the carbs were placed! woot!

crab! the hose sticking out in to the air is the main fuel line. and i couldn't find a place to stick it on the carbs..
off with the whole shabang and start my search again.. damn cali rules! i used the wrong hose on the wrong plug. as soon as i found the culprit it was time to put the carbs back with the aid of my blunt force tools!
and replace all those hoses and crap again..

once it was all in place i rebuild all the missing stuff on the bike rolled it outside and started it.
BAM! it fired right up! woehoe!

fun was of a short time.. as i opened up the throttle there didn't happen much, the engine reved up to 2000RPM and that's it.. at wot??
damn, i told you i hated this kind of engines! so my guess is i fucked up a vacuum direction in the california environmental bullshit and the slides in the carbs can't get a descent vacuum to lift..
or the timing advance is all wrong. 

fuck it! next week i'll tear all that hoses from that bike and see what happens! 

still alive.

dangit! i had some rough times and some good times. all that's important is that i'm still here! granted, i have been awfully quit on this blog for the last year, and i also have been scary little in the garage. some of the rough times were that all my tools got stolen. the tools i collected in the past 18 years were gone. and since i collected them in 18 years i had not much proof for the insurance to claim enough to get my tools replaced. this my friends was such a bummer i stayed out of the garage for way to long. so not much work on bikes and not one spanner on my own bikes. i have ridden a lot with the digger though..

 also the XJ got his needed miles at high speed. ;)

 Peter Pan (you know the dude with the franken pan (european) scored a nice little suzuki but it looked like crap. he is in love with Daddy Cool (the digger) and wanted a quick fix.
so with a little grinder action and white paint he was satisfied for the time being.
 

i promise i will try to ride and share more of these rides and build more on my bikes! i'm back! and i'll keep on riding and chopping!

hope to see you soon on the road or the blog!

it's cold!

inside the Garage... real cold...

the heater had been on for a solid 4 hours on max..... and the temps were still below zero..
although i like the winter wonderland and the air is nice and dry with these temperatures, i'm done with these cold temperatures. i just can't get myself to do a lot in the Garage..
but i'm addicted to building.. so i will slide on some extra thick socks and i will try to do something in the garage..

wish me luck..

HD paves the ground for competition? and crumples their P&A sales in one blow to?

as some may know, HD is issuing their dealers to stop part sales overseas, to home builders like you and me outside the US, and independent bike shops inside the US and abroad.
and the MoCo will not sell directly to the indy shops inside the US and abroad .

home builders outside the US (like me) have to pay the 4 times higher price for parts, because they have to buy it at the overpriced dealerships. the small home builders (or at least i...) just don't have the dough to pay 4 times the price of the US price including shipping and local taxes, and still build nice bikes.


but the problem for the indy shops is that they can't stock original HD or SE parts any more.
on a parts sales standpoint of view the indy shops are going to miss a lot of income, because their loyal customers have to go to the dealer to buy some parts. but remember! the dealer sales the parts to the indy!
if the indy gets his parts from another manufacturer the dealer will loose income, the other parts manufacturer (like S&S to name one) will have more sales in little parts, and HD dealers and thus the MoCo will have less parts sales..

also, the Screaming Eagle (SE) parts can't be sold by any other than the HD dealer to the end user. for the bling bling shit, that isn't a big loss.. but stuff like heads and cylinders are a big loss. more than halve of the SE performance parts like heads, cylinders, cams and A/C's are put on bikes by indy shops.
performance shops use SE parts to make entry level performance kits. these kits can be bought for reasonable prices, and be put on your bike for normal hourly wages.
after market performance companies will jump in this void and can produce and sell more performance parts for lower prices. (hopefully)


when this happens the sales of parts and performance parts from HD and SE will plummet and giving the MoCo even more problems.



now this is just another fine example of the sick and twisted ways to kill HD from Mr Wandell.

yes.. the same idiot who pulled the plug on Buell in an effort to save some bucks. killing Buell did not save the MoCo money... it made an income loss of almost $100 Million!

so now the second step is to kill a big part of P&A sales, giving the competition more room, and killing the P&A sales done by dealers to indies?!
(bear in mind: some indies do order in excess of $40.000 worth of parts at their local dealers annual!!!)

and on another fine side note.. Wendell gets over one million dollars a year for his "services"!!(salary and bonuses)  if the MoCo hase to save some bucks the best million dollar save is to kick Wendell out and start selling to indies again!

those fuckers!