Friday, November 15, 2013

A Sort-Of-Special 80

Whoa man, this is a far out Flathead! My good friend Leo let me borrow his Big Bike from July 1970 with this pink 43 ULH chopper on the cover. I had saw the cover shot of the bike floating around on the web for sometime. Then I saw it awhile back on Freedom Machine & Accessories blog, Harpoon was diggin' on it I believe.  This is probably a way too far out path for myself and the UL to go down, but who knows? I ran 4 over tubes on my Cone Nose, early super glide front end. I dug just riding down over curbs and carvin corners. Now I'm running early sportster tubes which I think are 1" under the stock super glide ones and I love the nimbeness of it, responds better? maybe.

and last but certainly not least, my Cone Nose habit as it sits, on a sunnier day a few weeks ago.







Thursday, November 7, 2013

A Flatheaded Run Hog -Choppers magazine 1973

I first saw this bike when Irish Rich shared it online and I kept an eye out for the magazine. The bike looked the business and I wanted to know it's story.  From the first line of the article I was not disappointed...


And this last shot is from Irish Rich's Applied machete blog. It's after the Choppers article because the K-model he spoke of has been built is in the background. Looks like the only difference is the blacked out pipes. Normally I'm not an 8 over with a little bit of rake kinda guy but this chopper just looks ready to roll the miles. Which is exactly what it sounds like it did. So much inspiration in reading about that being done with these early motors and Flat headed ones at that!


Sunday, November 3, 2013

The Resurrection Begins on the 38UL

The previous owner of my 38 motor decided to fill in the pock marks on the cases with some kind of aluminum filler. It looked like shit, no two ways about it. Some kind of putty that supposedly would polish out to look like aluminum. But it looked like shit. My buddy has access to a nice blasting cabinet at work and he said I could use it today so I took him up on it. They cleaned up nicely but Crater Face would be a fitting nickname for these case halves. It looks as if this motor sat buried in the dirt. I'm confident that all can be fixed with the almighty TIG. Here are some shots of the 75 year old cases all washed up after blasting.


The flywheel assembly was supposedly trued but it didn't appear to be, seemed way too loose. I took it up to Stevensons in Wayne, MI and they said that everything appears new but that it was just assembled, not trued. So they're torquing and truing and I just have to get these cases ready for the crank.

Friday, November 1, 2013

"Flat Cat" 40' UL Chopper from Iron Horse #91

This 40' UL chopper is bad man, Iron Horse issue #91. In the article it says he is waiting on dual plugged aluminum heads for this beast!!! Wonder what happend to this bike??





This was in 1990, a New York Flathead. A little stretch in the painted Jammer frame and a chrome Harley springer, the bars are working for me and the stance is tuff. Hand shift rules!!!