The wheel adjuster threads had stripped on the frame. Luckily you can tap it out to 3/8" and use a larger Knucklehead bolt.
Sold to the man at the back
6th Jan there are two serious motorcycle auctions in Las Vegas. Countless boardtrackers, Vincents and Von Dutch paintjobs. If I had won the lottery a couple of months ago when it was £113,000,000 (I actually spent £6 on tickets and won £7 so who's laughing now) I would buy these...
1934 Harley Davidson CAC, one of their first factory racers, extremely rare and could well be one of the most expensive HDs to be sold at auction. It's all business.
Excelsior Speedway bike. Just because it would look great sitting next to the CAC.
WR Daytona
New bike on the farm, a 1950 WR. It's the TT version with the long distance gas tanks and aloominuminum oil tank, amongst other tweaks.
New pictures will be added to a separate page, picture link on the right.
Bombsite venturi in the Linkert.
Only had to rebuild the carb and then got it running. The tools in the red box are Tony's Linkert cleaning rods, the lot on the left are a NOS unused set. Mmmm...
Hill Climbing
Really want to do this next year - Red Marley hill climb.
Class 1: pre-1950 rigid
Just need a sprocket like this one!
Vee must increese efficienzy to 110%
Learning to weld
Parcel from Jeff @ Riverside, clutch & brake pedal assemblies with a couple of Aussie rags thrown in (thanks Jeff). The vast majority of 45 chops and WR racers disposed of the straps and front rod building a pedal setup around the rear support rod but I'm going to use stock controls for now, see if they don't look too stupid without the foot-boards.
Tony helped re-build the gearbox (again).
Putting the engine in!
Rise of the bicycle
Bicycles have been trendy for a while now but only recently have prices got to silly levels. Here's one that just ended on eBay:
I bought my first track bike on eBay for £50 including postage from Newcastle. I could probably sell one its pedals for that now. Instead I'll just keep it until it corrodes away or until the hipsters are riding penny-farthings and nobody wants it. I'm smart like that.
A-loo-mi-num-i-num
If you're featured in a magazine you're meant to slag it off but when you live in the middle of the English countryside with no old guys' stashes and no Davenport swap meets, you sometimes thank God for eBay.
Flathead by name, flathead by nature.
It always annoyed me that flatheads weren't flat. Recently I read someone moaning that they should be called 'under-head valves' which I liked. Anyway I took mine down to Barry at precision engineering and played with his mill.
Barry, the master.
Before & After
The heads are both similar number 5's but one had a lot more flaws in the casting. The aluminium was also thinner where the bolt passes through: 30.5mm compared with 34.5mm on the better head which meant the bolts stuck out at different heights, another thing to fix. I later found that one of the bolt holes on this cursed casting didn't even line up with the cylinder hole, about 1mm out. Odd as they looked like a perfectly matching pair.
It also annoys me how the alloy heads are bigger than the cylinders. The top profile of the cylinder has these beautiful curves and scalloped sides but the alloy heads have straight sides so they overlap and look like an oversized mushroom head. The iron-heads are curved to match the cylinder.
So, getting a bit carried away, we cut some scallops out of the sides to give a more curved profile.
Filed the corners a bit.
Polished the cut edge with a flap disc. Parkarised head bolts.
Much happier.
Pornarello
Reading an Italian bicycle blog I found a post about my very own bicycle! The picture is when the last owner had it, he's a Hungarian racer and sent me that very pic when we were e-mailing.
It's an Italian Pinarello Prologo (Lo-Pro in English) track frame. The smaller front wheel design is for time trials and gives better aerodynamics. The curved tubing is for sex-appeal. Speaking of which, donne nude..
How to fuck up a front end:
1. Buy some Mullins 35mm trees and ebay some forks. Add to frame and congratulate yourself on having great taste when it comes to narrow front-ends.
2. Apply ruler between forks. Accompany ruler round swapmeets, scrouge ebay, wrangle advice until realisation that the only drum your ruler vaguely approves of is from a cub 50 scooter which has an axle diameter of about 6.734 mm.
3. Decide: brakes or suspension. Or machine your own hub but by that time you've already laced a Kempton found drum to the Borrani rim even though you knew it wouldn't fit but it was a twin leading shoe and you got carried away. Brakes over suspension it is.
Chop (all important word) the fork tubes.
This is actually the first part I ever made on a lathe.
Milling in the lathe.
Taper practicing.
Taper turning.
At this point I drilled and reamed a hole. Actually I snapped the pilot drill half way but seeing as it took me like two days making this part and working out how to use the lathe, I alternated. Plunged an end-mill in about 2mm (the snapped drill bit rising into the hole in the end-mill), oxy-acetylened it, hammered protruding drill bit flat, plunged the end-mill another 2mm, repeat 10 times until mad with the world then enlarge messy hole to correct size.
Make a little axle.
Trim the fork tube caps.
OPTIONAL: Advise all comfort cynics that you spent everyday for the last four years riding a completely rigid bicycle with 19mm cross-section tubular tyres at 180psi around crappy, pot-holed, English roads and you only had to see the doctor about an embarrassing lump on your anus once. This should distract them from knowing best about vibration damage, cornering-grip, and other borings.
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