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Hey Robert how have you been doing. I just wanted to let you
know how my 1949 "WL" was doing. I started out by fixing the speedometer,
and that pretty much got me going on really setting down and restoring
the bike. Once I started working on it I pretty much got abscessed
with it and well had a hard time stopping.
I have owned the bike just under one year and three months now,
and pretty much got every thing done. All but a few little details,
you know the little things like getting the right bolts to bolt
the buddy seat yoke to the springs and little thing like that
is pretty much all I have left to do.
I pretty much went through the hole bike, and when I say the
hole bike I mean the hole bike. I can honestly say, I know what
is original and not on this bike now. Let me tell you. I LEARNED
A LOT with this bike.
After I fixed the Speedo I started on the transmission. I totally
rebuilt the tranny, when I say totally, I mean every part in the
tranny is been replaced except the case and side cover that is.
After the trany was complete I took the engine out and well, totally
rebuilt it to. I don't really know if you new this or not but
someone broke a piston in the motor and all they did was take
the cylinders off and put new pistons in and did not even clean
the parts of the broken piston out of the motor.
Yes, as you could imagine it was not a pretty site. While taking
the motor apart I noticed it had one of the motor mounts broken
off. Luckily I have a good friend that is a really good heliarc
welder and he welded up the motor mount and the other case with
I guess got cracked by the fly wheel pushing pieces of the broken
piston around in side of the crank cases. I pretty much replaced
every thing in the motor all except for the cam's which luckily
where not damaged at all.
After the motor was all done I pretty much completely rebuilt
the front end. With all new bushing in the forks and all new bearing
in the front wheel. On the back wheel the roller bearing where
so wore out I had to UN lace the rear wheel and machine out the
star hub and make new stainless steel races to re store the hub
to original specs. Dam good thing I am a machinist! I all so fixed
all the broken bolts in the trany like the adjusting screw and
got the right adjusting bolt so now you can adjust the trany the
way you supposed to. Re tapped the timing hole. I could not believe
someone actually siliconed the timing plug in to the hole. Pretty
CRAZY wouldn't you say.
So sense the motor and trany and front end and wheels where off
of the bike I thought well what the hell. I might as well have
all of the part that are black, powder coated. So I boxed all
of the part that where painted black up and off I went to the
powder coaters.
Well, while doing all of this work on the bike I met a really
nice man that owns a business restoring Indians. The old original
ones. He has made a lot of new parts for these old bike like throttle
and timing cables that have Teflon tube inside of them with precision
ground wires that work like you would not believe, no sticking
at all and shims that take all of the play out of the twist grips.
After getting to know him he kept asking me what I was doing
with the bike and how I wanted to rebuild the bike. I kept telling
him that I wanted it just like it was on the show room floor in
1949. So he kept telling me to buy this book called. How to restore
your Harley Davidson. So wouldn't you know it I did, that is after
I had all of the black parts sand blasted and powder coated, right.
So I get the book in the mail with a lot of other parts I ordered
for the bike. And DAM wouldn't you know it.
Half of the part that I had powder coated should have been parkerized.
Well, shit. Well, back down to the powder coater to have the rocker
on the forks the floor boards with the straps that they bolt to
the brake rods, The brake arm actuators and all of the nuts and
bolts needed to be parkerized. Luckily my Indian restorer new
a guy that did this procedure and he did it really cheep. Well,
after the powder coating and parkerizeing it was like shit. I
might as well get all of the part that supposed to be cad plated
re cad plated, and so I did.
After all of that I figure well the paint is not really in that
good of shape so what the hell. I took the front fender to the
paint store and had the paint matched and bought a gallon of paint
a lot of sand paper and went home and started stripping and sanding
and bondoing. Well, FOUR MONTHS later the paint was all done and
well looking pretty good to my EYE'S. So I SLOWLY started to re
assemble the bike which I would say probably took me another two
months to put back together. It was tedious work. Trying not to
scratch the paint and all.
I was putting the rear wheel back on and had the rear fender
folded up while I was doing this and the thing slammed shut and
chipped the paint where the two parts came together. TALK ABOUT
BEING PISSED OFF. So now I have to touch that spot up which took
a couple of days to do with all of the polishing and all.
Finally on the eve of 12/31/01 I completed the bike. SON OF A
GUN WHAT A HAPPY NEW YEAR ! And on the 5 of Jan there was
a Easyrider Bike Show. Hay why not see what happens right.
Well, the bike took SECOND PLACE IN the best Antique Bike
category. I WAS PRETTY STOKED. And so was my brother. Right
then all of the HARD work and money was all worth it. I could
not believe it. Every one wanted to see the bike. And when they
did the where pretty much blown away. They did not believe that
I did all of the work on the bike paint and all my self. Here
is a picture of the bike. I still have to put the rear crash bar
on and the springs for the buddy seat.
Talk to you soon
Brian E
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