Ramona's build time

[thecarfarmer]

I'm really feeling how that girder narrows down above the lower set of arms.

Looks dead sexy.

[ElvisQuanbeck]

Soooo, it's been a whiiiiiiiiiile... But I've gotten a lot done. I thought I was going to have it done around last July but then I overtorqued a couple nuts. Specifically the clutch hub nut, twice... I tried re-threading the mainshaft a couple times but I just couldn't get enough bite with any of the dies that I bought and wound up having to disassemble my engine at that point at take it to the local Harley shop so they could press in a new one. A hydraulic press is about the only thing that I don't have access to and so waiting on them took an extra 6 weeks because they first ordered a wrong part that was on back order. Nice fucking job guys!

That shit took so long that I kind of lost a little steam, and I let a few things get in the way. But I'm back to update on the progress and show that I'm getting this project fucking done, 1 way or a-fucking-nother!

[ElvisQuanbeck]

The little area behind the neck of my sporty, where the backbone meets it, is pretty fucking ugly. Harley decided to leave it open and show a couple cross joints.


Eventually I'm gonna rip all that junk off and throw a couple gussets, a cross member for a motor mount, and just make it look a whole lot sexxxier. For now I just cut out some sheet metal and covered up the whole


But for now it's looking a lot better.

[ElvisQuanbeck]

Around last March I got my frame all welded up. Took me a good amount of time, I'm sure I fucked up somewhere along the line, but overall I'm pretty confident these welds are going to hold up just fine.


My Tig welds definitely aren't the prettiest but I could see them getting a little better each time. I took the grinder to them afterwards just to smoothe everything out because of that.

[ElvisQuanbeck]

It was pretty cold when I was first trying to put my engine together so I brought everything inside and put it in my empty spare room.



I threw together a wooden engine stand to help me, I'm able to set it on its side and not have the shaft hit the floor. I put the cases together and started torquing down all the bolts. My downfall though was when I decided to use the same bolts that were in when I took it apart. That being said, a couple bolt heads got wrenched off in this process.



So I lugged the case back out to my garage, took my time extracting the bolts, and tried putting the cases back together again. I had something distract me and I fucked up another bolt. I had to take the cases apart again and extract another bolt. That being said, I'm getting really good at extracting bolts. I got kind of in my own head about the cases so I left them alone for a bit and worked on some other shit for the chopper. I did eventually get the cases put back together with all the gears rolling just fiiiiine!

[ElvisQuanbeck]

I get to keep my stock rear brake caliper using this hardtail, I just had to shave parts of it off that used to bolt to the frame. The TCbros kit came with the instructions of where to shave it and the equipment necessary to connect it to the bike.

[TheCoot]

Sick build man, I have an 04 as well and haven't cut the frame yet. Wasn't really affordable until recently when TC and Lowbrow(I think) made a hard tail kit for the rubber mount engines.

Any idea what handle bar setup you're leaning towards?

[farmall]

[QUOTE}
If anyone happens to have an old operators manual laying around for this machine I'd greatly appreciate taking it off your hands.[/QUOTE]

https://www.practicalmachinist.com/forum/threads/ridgid-lr-16012-bandsaw.283429/

You may need to make parts but seems from the linked PM post that's a shot at upgrading. Ridgid as show sold the same saw so their tech support may have a manual.
----

As for the girder if no joy it would be an easy swapout and resale. Traffic congestion and speeds today are different than they were in ancient times so whatever ya run should be able to stop at least as well as what it replaced.
----
Harbor Freight car engine stands are easy to mod into a stand for any HD engine and being able to rotate 360 degrees really beats wrasslin' engines on benches. If something falls where it should not go rotating the engine is drastically more convenient.

A few hunks of scrap gets an adapter that lifts engine along with engine stand head while clearing the top end completely whatever ya use to handle the engine. Patient lifts are fucking wonderful.

While the thread is for is a soldmount Sporty setup making two mounting ears and turning a couple of mount biscuits would be easy along with tilt stops (top can get a plastic pad to no scratchee the cases) so you can grab the rear engine mount only and have the rest of the engine out in space like solidmount Sporties. I don't have any rubbermounts or cases or I'd fab one just to add to the collection.

https://forum.chopcult.com/forum/nbsp/how-to-tech/48661-patient-lifts-and-why-you-want-one-for-mosickle-engines-plus-oxygen-cylinder-fun

Here's a slick Shane Conley stand (he's a sharp instructor and mulitbrand mechanic including Harley) for ideas though this vid could have gone into more detail. I gotta run so I didn't look for a followup:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=lqtuWzdT4uc