Chapter 11. That’s Harley the Point

A friend of mine, a pub-going friend not biking, often says he can’t see the point in what I do, as in “I can’t see the point in having six motorbikes”. In some ways I see where he’s coming from but keep an open mind about most things in life, and when it comes to motorbikes the choice of what style, period, performance, reliability – and cost – is almost infinite, so one bike cannot be enough. I therefore regard my current tally of six as quite reasonable. I’ve known at least two bikers who’ve had around 30 machines each and both of them had at least one Harley Davidson. I say this because I also know for that for many bikers Harleys at best create antipathy and at worst hostility. This week I am going to talk a little bit about my own customised 1974 1000 XLCH Harley Davidson Sportster, as pictured a couple of weeks ago with a wonderful backdrop at the top of Stable Lane near Shere, where they run the hillclimb.

Progress with my BSA B31-2 is steady but not spectacular at the moment as I’m still painting and trying to source the remaining parts I’ll need to complete. I spent a whole day trying to resolve the sizing of the petrol tank caps and if anyone can help I would be very obliged. The tank openings are a nominal 2” diameter, with an internally screwed neck. By by making a couple of test caps from alloy bar have determined they are 16 t.p.i. That said, cutting a 16 t.p.i. thread into 2” bar diameter is too loose a fit and I will have to go up to 2.050 – 2.100” at least – any ideas? I also discovered, only yesterday actually, that one of the openings is for a separate oil tank, inside the main tank. Its obvious really and I should have checked before. As this particular engine has the oil tank integral with the crankcases this feature is redundant and I’m wondering what to do, again any suggestions – auxiliary oil feed to rockers or reserve petrol?

I’m sure you don’t want to see photos of paint drying so here a couple of other jobs I’ve completed this last week. The first was turning up a kick-start shaft cover. As you recall part of the mechanism is broken, but I need to retain the shaft as it houses the layshaft bush. I have a policy of not damaging any original parts so I’ve not cut the redundant shaft extension off, and this cover also serves to stop the shaft and the quadrant spinning round.  I also sourced some damper friction discs from Mopedland but needed to make up some inserts to suit the modified home-made forks.

 

Back in 1995, my job took me and my family out to the USA for a couple of years. We went to one of our manufacturing plants in Tulsa, Oklahoma – cue the Gene Pitney song. It seems an odd place to go but really it is at the heart of the oil and gas business in the states – more oil wells than Texas. Also, the alternative option for my assignment was Saudi Arabia – so yes, Tulsa was a great choice. I had just finished a total rebuild of the Norton but trying to take it with me proved a bureaucratic nightmare. I think it would have been possible for a short trip, but not on the basis of a longer-term stay. So it stayed behind, chained to the wall of my garage and I just took my riding gear.

I had never had a problem with Harleys and in fact Jane and I occasionally used to go to a gathering at Fred Warr’s place in Fulham Road, where a friend of hers who had an Indian went. We took the Norton, there were quite a few non-Harleys and it was a very convivial gathering. I took quite a liking to the make and as we headed off to Tulsa we had in the back of our minds that possibly I could pick one up as they would be cheap and plentiful. Our time out there went very quick but a friend from work let me ride his Softail one day and I found it a great ride. Jane and the kids went out in his wife’s Mustang convertible by the way. What surprised me though that although there were loads of Harleys the prices were about the same as in the UK, so as we got to the end of our stay we still had not bought one.

My next assignment was running a project for India and although I agreed I would relocate back to the UK for that, when I asked when I was starting the reply was “Monday”. Things happened very quickly – I went off for two or three months commuting between my home in Tulsa and various manufacturing plants in the USA and Europe. Jane in the meantime apart from closing up our home, selling our car and making all the arrangements for our return, also found me an affordable Harley in the small ads. It was the aforementioned XLCH Sportster, but it looked good in the postage stamp sized photo she faxed me, so on one of my rare trips back I brought a load of dollars in a belt wallet, we drove straight to the guy’s house on the way back from the airport, gave it a quick look over, had a blast up and down the road, paid the guy and it was mine. He said he loved the bike but he owed his mother-in-law some money he’d borrowed to buy a pick-up truck and if he didn’t pay her back she would shoot him. In that part of town he probably wasn’t kidding.

We shipped the bike back and it got delivered to our house shortly after our other belongings – but only once I had paid import duty and VAT – a big hit. If I’d owned for 6 months out there I would have avoided the latter. Registering it in the UK was a nightmare, four separate trips the DVLA office in Wimbledon, each time asking for a form that they hadn’t required the last time. If you buy a bike from the US get someone else to import it. The Harley started first time and went extremely well. It was very fast – surprisingly so - but had high bars, a rather naff seat and tank and most significantly vibrated a lot. Anyone you talk to says they all vibrate, but mine seemed to be too much – so much so that parts fell off. The gearlever came off somewhere between Guildford and Esher – fun when I went to change down for a bend, and worst the front brake lever flew off and hit my helmet – I managed to find all the parts from that incident down the road. After quite a few years riding it less and less it was time to sort out the problem.

My first idea was to rebuild the engine and make an Egli style frame. This would essentially just keep the engine which without so much vibration could make a great performance bike. I designed the frame and bought my TIG welder at that point but could not get the large diameter top tube. I spoke with a guy who was selling a couple of Egli replicas at Kempton and even Patrick Godin in France, but certainly at that time it was an issue. If you crunch the numbers, going for a smaller diameter thicker wall tube doesn’t work – so that design was one that stayed on the drawing board.

Plan B was to build a sprint bike – the engine has an amazing amount of torque and can easily spin the back wheel on a slightly damp road. I looked at frame designs and realised I could buy a hard tail conversion from the USA which be a start. I’d been getting spare parts from Riverside Motorcycles in Putney and Geoff who runs the place (now relocated to the Old Forge at Abinger) got me a Santee frame kit.

First pic is the original bike and then then with the back end surgically removed with my favourite tool at the time – a hand-held grinder – and the hardtail frame in place.

Something about the look at this point appealed to me and Plan C evolved to make the bike into a custom hardtail, try it out and if I didn’t use it nothing was lost reverting to Plan B, the sprinter. The welding went very well – the quality of the steel plays a big part and Harley’s are made from thick tubing. Again, I lined everything up with string, spirit levels and tape measure, good within 1mm. Pic below is the frame tack welded before an intermediate check.

Over the years I had come to the conclusion the vibration was probably the crank being out of alignment, i.e. twisted on the crank-pin. It was unlikely that even if it had been rebuilt in the past the weight of the reciprocating parts would have changed that much. The Harley manual describes how to correct the alignment, but as with all their procedures they sound easy enough but in practice require special tools that cost more than the price of a dealer carrying out the work. I’m sure this is part of their philosophy – the dealer takes a hit on the initial sale but then makes his money on parts and service. Look at their fork oil for example; there is no specification on the container, so you have to buy from the dealer. I talked to Geoff about doing the crank alignment and balancing but he charges a healthy hourly rate and could only say it would take as long as it takes.

I really enjoyed doing the engine build myself, using my pillar drill and a TDI for the crank alignment and a couple of “knife edges” for the balancing. On dismantling the flywheel runout was in fact 0.008” when the limit should be about 0.002”. I validated my method and accuracy by setting up and taking down the crank and TDI several times ensuring the results were repeatable. The crank had been apart before which resulted in the tapers being worn and the best I could get to was 0.003 – 0.0035” runout. Otherwise the only option was a new oversize crank pin and mainshafts and to machine the flywheel tapers. The hardest part was torqueing up the crank pin. You have to get it to 175 lbs-ft, and it stayed aligned to 150, then on the last tweak moved. Eventually I set up some clamps and ties bars to hold it steady and get that final tension. 

 

The balance factor for a Harley is typically 60%, i.e. the bob-weight fitted to the crank pin before balancing the assembly is 60% of the reciprocating mass – however its not really that simple as that as you take 1/3 the weight for the connecting rod for the little end (reciprocating) and 2/3 the weight of the big end (rotating), etc….  I found a great procedure on You-tube where an obviously experienced engineer in an old Harley shop, put both rods on the crank, one of the pistons, complete with wrist pin and circlips AND the circlips from the other piston. I did a check and with his method the “bobweight” would have come to 2145.6 grams and the “full blown” method 2146, i.e. no difference – that’s where years of experience comes in. It also had the advantage that I could leave the aligned crank assembled. You read a lot about measuring the component weight to within fractions of a gram, then people discuss along the lines “…..in my opinion the balance factor should be somewhere between 50% and 70% - doesn’t really matter much….”. Do the calculation and you’ll find that a few grams either way makes hardly any difference to the balance ratio in % terms. This is of course for a single, or in the case of the Harley a V-twin with “knife and fork” conrods. Twins and multis are more susceptible to unbalanced rods, pistons. etc. So I used the kitchen scales for measuring the weights – don’t worry, Jane saw the photo eventually and I’ve been reprimanded accordingly. It’s very easy once the “knife edges” are set up to check the balance – just adding or removing those circlips (5 grams) were enough to get the crank to rotate, and yes it came in at exactly 60% so no adjustment was required to the flywheels.

 

I really enjoyed working on the rebuild – Harley never skimped on weight so all the castings and fasteners are very substantial, the fits were good and once I’d got into the swing of making or improvising the special tools all went well. As I said in a previous chapter, it started on the first nudge of the starter button – and it doesn’t vibrate too much.

 

The rest of the rebuild was completed with some chrome plating – ouch – that was expensive! And a great paint job by Bernie’s Custom Studio near Stalbridge in Dorset – a real find – he’s done several jobs for my brother and me now, including my BMW. I was pleased with the overall look and incorporated some detail touches on the way: The wiring runs through the handlebars which was complicated as I shortened the risers – which were solid and had to be cut down, drilled, welded back together and chrome plated. I also made up a neat little plate so that the brake rod “by-passes” the rear seat stay frame tube. Look at some pictures of other hardtail conversions and you’ll see the mess some builders get into trying to sort this problem out.

 

Its been a fun bike to ride, although an outing to Brighton with the Pioneer Run and back was a little wearisome, with those short seat springs. An added bonus though was when I came along to Brooklands for the first time I was asked if I could build an oil tank. What Perry had in mind for his T80 was more or less exactly what I’d fabricated for the Harley, so I brought the XLCH along one day – and as they say the rest is history.

More parts for Marge are arriving by the hour and the painting is nearly finished so perhaps in a week or two I’ll be back to the main plot.

Stay safe and well

Gareth