FixingShit

One of the many joys of relying on a 35 year old motorcycle to get you to, and from, where ever you may need to go is having to fix things that break.  When you ride a motorcycle the way that I do, things break a lot.

I was hummin' on down the highway at about 75-80 (which old Harleys love, by the way) on my way school Tuesday and the 'ole girl started gettin' a little snotty.  It started with an occasional miss, the "carb farts," to we sophisticated types, that just so happened to coincide with a dwindling fuel level.  That kind of miss is a symptom of a lean condition (not enough fuel going into the combustion chamber), so flip the petcock lever to "Reserve," and hit the next gas station, right?

I filled 'er up and got back to gettin'.  It wasn't long, though, until I was getting stumbling and surging, a lot of popping from the carb and exhaust; a general sense that shit weren't goin' right.  The usual suspect in this case would be an air leak through the intake manifold seals, so I looked down to make sure my carburetor support bracket hadn't worked it's way loose.  That's when I was treated to the sight of sparks, smoke, and just enough flame for it to be a little bad-ass coming from in between the rear cylinder head and jug (Harley's have big jugs, heh heh).  Head gasket it is, then.  I'm good about taking hints from my girls like that.

I limped it the remaining 2 miles to school, got some rad parts I'm getting to build in the awesome fabrication lab designed, and ordered up a tow truck (road side assistance on issuance policies rules).

Got to work pulling it apart, and I'll say right now, pre-Evo head mounting is bullshit.

I present the culprit:

Ok, that gasket is old as hell.  Excusable malfunction.  And hot holy shit, those pistons are scummy.  Heads had some crust to 'em, too.

With that, I was done for the night.  The next morning Wayne and I took a ride out to see Eric at Toxic Choppers.  He's always got Shovel stuff on the shelf.  We bullshitted motors for a little bit, like we always do, got some fresh Seal-'em-ups, and split for the weed (gotta love Colorado) and hardware stores to grab the rest of the needed supplies.

I spent some time getting everything cleaned up on the piston faces and in the combustion chambers, and gasket surfaces.

I checked the gasket surfaces with a straight edge and a feeler gauge, and we got to work getting it all buttoned up.  Of course, this is where I stopped taking pictures 'cuz I was just wanting that sumbitch done.

I jammed around town last night, and the bike feels WAY better than it did before.  Back to flogging it on the daily.

I can ride my bike with new handlebars

After getting some real miles in on the Shovelhead over the last month, I came to the conclusion that the drag bar on 8" risers wasn't gonna be enough to get the riding position that I wanted.  

Right around the same time, I noticed that the bars that were on my chopper when I crashed last year weren't so much bent as twisted.  As long as I cut the bar in half and put it back together, it would be perfectly re-usable.  Add to that my affinity for sleeved bars and risers, and the concept began to take form.  After figuring out how I wanted everything to be situated, I got to cutting up some metal.  The riser posts are 1" .120 wall tube, the sleeves are all 1.25" .120 wall tube.  I used some 1/2"-13 flange nuts that were cut down on the lathe enough to slide into the 1" tube for bolting the whole mess down, too.

I didn't want any welds showing on the finished bars, so I decided to plug weld all of the pieces together (with the exception of where the risers meet the handlebar).  I drilled out and de-burred all of the sleeve pieces to prepare them for welding.

Then came the easy part.  I slid everything together and burned in some big 'ole plugs.  In retrospect, the welds were too big and I made too many.  I erred on the side of overkill for this set, but I'll probably go a little lighter on the next set.

After the riser posts were welded, it was time to fish-mouth (or cope, or notch, or whatever).  I have a notch and whole saw set, but the "chop-saw method" on the band saw was much quicker and more precise.  Definitely gonna be doing it this way from now on.

Once the risers were cut and cleaned up, I went ahead and ground down the welds and mill scale before bolting them to my welding table to set the handlebar at the proper angle.  The final angle ended up being perpendicular to the risers so that I would have the right amount of turn-down at the ends when installed on the bike. 

I got lazy on the picture taking around that point, but some welding, grinding, dremel-ing, filing, and painting took place.  The paint looks like shit, but I'm gonna run it for a little while until I'm either ready to send out a bunch of stuff for powder coating, or get set up to do it at home.  More likely the latter.

I've ridden around with them for a few days now, and am proud to say that I nailed it on the height and width.  These bars have made quite obvious, though, how terrible the riser bushings in my top tree are.  Anyway, that's how I built my new handlebars.

Black Sheep

 The Black Sheep is one of my favorite places to catch a show.  It's a concrete fucking shoe box with about 8,000 pieces of gum stuck to the mismatched linoleum floor and Dude on the sound board that couldn't be troubled to give one single fuck less about your eardrums.  Last night local Colorado Springs metal bands Render Them Useless, Yresim, Pain Machine, and A Fatal Feeling took to stage.  Render them Useless tore it up when they weren't letting their bassist cry into his mic, and Yresim was the band that I really wanted Crucial Taunt to be.  Pain Machine and A Fatal Feeling?  Pure.  Fucking.  Thrash. 

  

Got Away

This here's a story of a chopper that got away before I had a chance to fully do my thing.  I picked up an '74 XLH 1000 from my buddy Rob D, Ironhead hoarder extraordinaire.  That damn thing was rough; just a crusty motor and a frame with the hard tail half-way welded on rolling a rear wheel that didn't fit the axle and a front end that had been empty for so long that the springs were completely rusted.

"BRO!  I got the thing from a shop that closed down in Texas.  But bro, hit that kicker real quick...  Nice, smooth... Great compression, huh?"

Sure as shit was.  We worked out our little trade deal, loaded her up, and brought yet another Ironhead back to the shop.  I started pulling some parts off of the shelf, playing a little bit of "chopper-dress-up,"and tried to get an idea of where I was gonna go with this one.  Since I was having to get some hustle together at the time to cover a few past transgressions with The Man, I called a friend that had been asking me to find a Harley for him.  Miles was into it, so we got going on the build.

I got the foundation laid pretty quickly.  Bent up the sissy bar, mounted the fender and oil tank, got the tank mounts welded in, and made a battery box.  Then, because we weren't on a "Get it done now," budget, the bike just kinda got moved out of the way for other projects.

Fast-forward a bit; I'm slammed with my own builds (or, more appropriately, rebuilds) and Miles has got the dirt bike bug pretty bad.  Not long after, a ripper of a motocross bike got offered up and the deal was done.  

Wherever it got off to, and whatever direction it ended up being taken, I'll never know.  All for the better, though.  Ironheads are no damn fun after that stage, anyway.

New Shit

Alright, so here's the deal: I'm gonna be handling content management here at ChopperShit.  We're gonna stick to all-original posts and try to keep up with some regularity.  If you would like to submit anything, please email me at tjdoylev@gmail.com.  

-TJ