Zodiac: 1955 Swingarm Panhead Build

[beat]

ok, i told ya a couple pages back that i dig the fuck outta this bike, but i got a question for ya.
i know it's probably a looong shot and i'm just looking at the context clues, but...
did you also build that..and i'm gonna try to describe it now.....
swingarm cone shovel. 16s front & rear both drum brakes. earlier style round swingarm. wideglide w/o nacele but the cowbells.
bob tanks(5 gal or A/M 3.5) w/o a dash. open belt primary 1.5"
i could go on, but i wont.
if its yers you know by now.

[ericthebeard]

ok, i told ya a couple pages back that i dig the fuck outta this bike, but i got a question for ya.
i know it's probably a looong shot and i'm just looking at the context clues, but...
did you also build that..and i'm gonna try to describe it now.....
swingarm cone shovel. 16s front & rear both drum brakes. earlier style round swingarm. wideglide w/o nacele but the cowbells.
bob tanks(5 gal or A/M 3.5) w/o a dash. open belt primary 1.5"
i could go on, but i wont.
if its yers you know by now.

Hey thanks again for the complements. But no, that's not me. This is my first Harley "build".

[finnR90s]

How are you going to fit your OL on that fender ... Umm i liked it when you rolled it in ..

[ericthebeard]

No OL, OM, or OR are meant to fit.

Sorry for your loss.

[Flatheadsoup]

Love the detail

[Blackbetty]

You won't regret that mag man, the morris stuff is very reliable. It's easy to set them w out a buzzbox

Question on that overbearing - my friend bought one for his early case and it's much too deep - when the nut is installed it does not allow enough taper of the mainshaft for the clutch hub to fully seat up. He also had to cut down some of the woodruff key.

At the end of the day he returned it and ran a regular super nut.

It seems as if it would have only worked with a long mainshaft, which is the opposite of what this part is supposed to do....

Have you installed yours? Does it fit up ok?

[ericthebeard]

Love the detail

Thanks, that means a lot coming from a guy who build that crazy-amazing Pan! I'm looking fwd to watching your new build, though it's a shame you didn't keep it a swinger

[ericthebeard]

You won't regret that mag man, the morris stuff is very reliable. It's easy to set them w out a buzzbox

Question on that overbearing - my friend bought one for his early case and it's much too deep - when the nut is installed it does not allow enough taper of the mainshaft for the clutch hub to fully seat up. He also had to cut down some of the woodruff key.

At the end of the day he returned it and ran a regular super nut.

It seems as if it would have only worked with a long mainshaft, which is the opposite of what this part is supposed to do....

Have you installed yours? Does it fit up ok?

Good to know... seems mags are another one of those chopper items divided along relegious lines, and never the twain shall meet.

With the overbearing, I've only mocked it up on the main shaft without a key (waiting on figuring out my inner primary situation before putting on the clutch, etc)., so Ive not run into that. But the fit against the main shaft was real tight, like a light press fit. I couldn't get it on by hand but spun it on with a wrench... more like the resistance of nylocks. I figured that fit is necessary to actually get the support purported by the bearing. Nevertheless I remain hopeful it'll be all it claims.

[ericthebeard]

A little checklist (for my own sake) of updates I need to make:
-Leg shaving
-Fender saga
-Trans studs and FX mid control fab
-Wheel truing, axle spacers, and brake stay tab

Whelp, I've got a little more here. I don't know if I've said this explicitly or not, but I'm trying to update this thread when major portions of the project are done (ish). I am working here and there so much with little incremental progress I think the "narrative" (or, what narrative is there) would be way more scattered and not so fun. So... to the wheel.

Last we left the wheel was painted with the hoop laced in. Time to true and tension it. For that I decided to make my own rudimentary truing stand. Started with a little scrap angle and flat bar I had around and made a matching set of uprights.

IMG_1155 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

IMG_1156 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

And welded it together to some approximation of plumb and level:

IMG_1160 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

And used that to true up the wheel to the best that theoretical knowledge could hope for:

IMG_1436 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

[ericthebeard]

Then I got to my friend's place with a lathe and got the three spacers cut... left right and the bearing center spacer. This allowed me to fully/finally button up the hub and press in the left side bearing with the inner spacer.

Right side:
IMG_1433 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

Left side:
IMG_1432 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

Then to the brake stay. I had previously shaved the legs on the forks down, leaving just the lower bolt hole on the right leg (more on that later if people want to see my attempt at leg shaving sans lathe):

IMG_0919 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

I had a domed bung the right size as the brake stay bolt, and measured out the inner dimension between the bung on the fork and the top of the right side spacer, and arc'd that on a bit of plate and drilled out the diameters of the two ends (bung and axle spacer):
IMG_1449 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

Rough cut and mocked:
IMG_1447 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

Also note that lots of this mockup is done between the backing plate and the fork leg... kinda tight and not too photogenic. Bare with me...

Got it mocked in there parallel (ish) to the fork leg and tacked the two mounting points:
IMG_1495 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

Then hand fit the rough cut bit that does the actual interface with the stay tab. I wanted this to sit in the slot as deep as possible to keep everything well in place. It was just mocked with a bit of card stock but this was just fit in situ:
IMG_1487 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

IMG_1487 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

IMG_1487 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

Some finish welding on the bung end (wish they all looked this good, so this is the one I'll show ya'll):
IMG_1487 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

[ericthebeard]

Just the plating without the actual anchor tab:
IMG_1487 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

Did some shaping on the anchor tab bit:
IMG_1487 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

Then finished welding the whole blob with more bracing (and it seems plenty of dyechem):
IMG_1487 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

Fast forward a bit of welding, grinding, swearing, grinding, welding, and a little bondo experiment... we've got a brake stay!
IMG_1487 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

IMG_1487 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

IMG_1487 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

[ericthebeard]

Trying to keep this thread up-to-date with projects that have been "completed"

The first easy thing that was a while coming was getting my primary cover go-no-go figured out. I kept vacillating over running a cover or keep an open belt. Open belts are real clean and the simplest solution (no cover is the cheapest cover and easiest to install) but "unsafe". I am actually more concerned about just getting my boot sole ground down more than actually mangling my foot (though I know that's a risk... life is dangerous). Especially with the left side pipes I really didnt want to have to "work around" any more dangerous shit on that side, hot or mauling. And for some reason I like the idea of having the belt always visible and accessible for inspection, knowing its tracking, or changing it or whatever.

So, the PCP cast primary covers were, like, the most amazing solution but very pricey. But so good, and to me the least-worst thing to do style-wise if I was going to cover up the belt. At $1k a pop I'm sure they're worth every penny but $1k is $1k. That's when I looked around for other options, re-visiting Throwback Cycle Parts' site. They've been making a cast Al front pulley cover for alt motors for a while now, combining the alt cover with a shroud for the front pulley and front portion of the belt. BUT NOW they have a genny version. Perfect. So long story short I got one for the build

Man they are nice.

IMG_1756 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

IMG_1756 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

And fit up great:

IMG_1756 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

IMG_1802 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

IMG_1802 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

I also got the trans out of the bike to start a few projects on it:
- Get a new jockey lid fit
- Clean and inspect
- Get the Overbearing fit correctly

She sure was crusty

IMG_1861 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

IMG_1861 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

Decided to take the frame all the way down without the trans plate for a fuller cleaning, it was just caked with oil+dirt crust.

IMG_1870 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

(with the remote oil filter out):

IMG_1870 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

Ratchet lid off, looking clean:

IMG_1861 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

Giving the guts a once over:

IMG_1861 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

Fitting the new lid

IMG_1861 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

The lid is a Baker N1 jockey style. Found a great deal on it and decided to pull the trigger and get a N1 shift on the bike, which will tie in nicely with my shifter-linkage plans (more on that later). I was worried about timing the lid, but I popped it on there and it seems to shift through the gears just fine. It would be good to verify everything with the fork timing/alignment tool, but for now I can at least get the project continuing forward with it as-is.

Next up... Overbearing and BDL clutch basket fitting saga...

[ericthebeard]

Onto the Overbearing saga.

I had heard from a number of sources that their Overbearings (from Bare Knuckle Choppers) were not fitting right on their 4 speeds. They were too thick. I guess that is a good thing that I started to prep myself for this eventuality when getting the trans back together.


Overall the overbearing is a great idea, its supposed to give you the same support for your main shaft as e-start bearing supports do, all packed into the same (ish) space as your usual sprocket nut + oil slinger. But at least with the BDL clutch basket its too thick and the spline sleeve on the basket hits on the nut housing before it fully seats on the spline. Even if you stack the overbearing next to the stock oil slinger you already see it's ~1/16th thicker. I assume that the TWO non stock parts together make the problem (overbearing + BDL basket), and any one of them with the stock counterpart would not interfere.

So I ended up chucking the bits into a lathe and taking off about 0.030 from the bearing face and the hub spline collar. I dont have an exact number because I was doing a fitup test after the first few cuts...

IMG_1895 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

IMG_1895 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

IMG_1895 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

And also the hub:

IMG_1895 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

Removing material from the back face of the nut had the less-than-idea result of reducing the surface area for the socket. I did hear of people pressing in a thinner bearing into the Overbearing nut and taking down the other side... But I just did it this way and made sure to just give my homemade deep socket a facing on the lathe too to maximize its contact area.

IMG_1895 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

With that all fitting, the overbearing still slightly occluded the main shaft keyway, so I ground one side of the key to fit nice and flush:

IMG_1895 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

IMG_1895 by Eric Bott, on Flickr

Hopefully this will help other people with their overbearing choice or work... Its something I'd seen mentioned around but not really "documented" so here ya'll go.

[nuklhd]

eric, that cover looks good. great choice.