vid of the day

still the weather is great out here!

so time to ride some more!

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!

Vacation!

woehoe! time for a short vacation!

i've made a luggage rack for the Digger..

and it needed fresh sparkplugs, so in the week before i ordered some...
and jups.. they weren't delivered. crap! they are hard to find and i didn't want to ride long distances with a half fouled plug without spares..
so Daddy Cool went into the garage and the trusty XJ could become the packmule.

 ah well... some rain, some sun a lot of riding...
a good weekend!

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..

Sportster Babes!

they say a Sportster is a girls bike..
that's true, they attract very nice girls!

nuff said!

8 cams of fury!

dragrace sporties are always sweet..
but drag race sporties with 2 ironhead motors..
well.. they are the bomb!

drag speed sportsters

smoking machines, build for the strip..
i like it!

this first picture was taken by KustomJeff. here's what he had to say about it:
The top pic is Shannon Graham and his son back when the Alabama Thunder team was together. That was one bad ass ironhead until a $5 axle adjuster broke and let the chain wrap around the front sprocket and break the cases. Not having a sponsor at the time killed the team. I took this picture at a school fair/carnival we attended to help raise awareness and find a sponsor. This was around 1995 I think.

Thanks or the reply KustomJeff! it is always nice to hear the story behind a picture!

XLCR replica stage 1.

Ben van Helden has been on a divine mission to make a XLCR replica.
his approach to the build was in an angle not much used. when most people who build replica's would settle for replica parts, Ben's idea was to use as many original parts as possible (and affordable) for the replica.
the best canvas to start an XLCR replica is offcourse a '79 IronHead. this is basically the same frame and engine as the XLCR. (for those who don't believe me, i still have my '79 frame hanging on the wall and the part number  for the frame is the same as an XLCR frame but with one character more)

here's what he started with:

a butt ugly '79 XLCH with good frame and engine.


here's the finished product with all the trademark parts like seat, exhaust headers, headlight mount and fairing and lots of more parts being real (not replica!!) XLCR parts.

now why is it called "Stage one" you might ask? "it looks like the real deal right?
well.. ben is somewhat of a purist, but sometimes in a little rush to get a bike on the road.
the bike is now fully functional, but lacks a few details which he will attend to do to get to "Stage 2" like making the engine wrinckle black, put on the rear controls (which he already found! very very rare part) 18" rear wheel and some more little things..

but the 79 engine has a "normal" 1 down, the rest up shift pattern, and a XLCR has it backwards (1 up, the rest down) because of the rear controls. these shifter cams are rare and expensive, so it was out of the option.
but after some brainstorming sessions on the SON Forum, the answer was found, since it is a Harley, parts should be recyclable and reusable in a simple way.

an XLCR shifter cam:

and a stock IronHead shifter cam:

if you would look closely you see some differences and if you look a lot better you see that the differences are actually similarities!
so Ben took the stock ironhead shifter cam and removed the cam axle and turned the cam and re-lined the axle.

(XLCH stock) axle and cam apart:

cam and axle in new position:

and there you go! one reversed XLCR type shifter cam!

if you want to see more (and i know you want to see more!!) about this sweet build and more bike goodness by Ben check out these links:

the XLCR replica build.

Bens Bikes.

Both links are in Dutch though, but if you can't read Dutch there are still plenty of nice pictures to drool over.