Click on images Cylinders Masked and starting to apply paint Flip it over and get the undersides of the cooling fins Trick here is to get the paint into the spaces between the fins.

January 4, 2006

I honed the cylinders for the Shovelhead, then masked them for painting and used the engine paint I had on the shelf.

Nothing is ever as easy as it sounds. On the first pass with the cylinder hone I over stretched myself and let the hone out of the bottom of the cylinder. It didn't come apart, but it did chew up the stones pretty good. Not having the funds to replace them it became time to improvise. I have another set of stones but one of the three is broken, no problem. I used two new ones and one of the old ones.

I set up the honing process in the cleaning tank, lots of cleaning fluid flowing over the stones as they turned and I oscillated the hone up and down. Flo thought I was doing a version of the "pee pee" dance.

Once the cylinders were finished, clean and dry, I began the process of masking them off. Normally this isn't too much work if the masking tape is new. The roll I have has been hanging around for at least two winters; and every time you pull tape off it rips diagonally across the face of the roll. Very frustrating but somehow I managed to get the tape where it needed to be. I used coffee can lids to seal up the bores and it worked pretty well.

I fired up the heater and let the cylinders warm up along with the paint. Rattle cans or aerosol cans, are usually easy to operate; you just point and spray. Not in my world; I must have a Midas finger because it seems I have some kind of a problem with keeping the little spray buttons on the cans. If I don't lose the buttons, they just spit instead of spray. After switching several spray buttons around I finally found one that would spray; now I have several cans of paint without spray buttons.

I like the PJ1 Fast Black engine paint, it goes on easy and is tolerant of over spray, levels well and dries pretty fast. When it's dry; it still looks wet. But they do need to put better spray buttons on the cans. I have three black fingers thanks to the leaking buttons.

A sneak peek of the engine, the cases will be painted too, but the gear case cover and the heads will be highly polished

Cleaned up and a little less congested

My work station, or at least one of them...

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January 18, 2006

Saturday afternoon, after a trip to Hop's Place (they specialize in automotive machine work and engine repair - one of the best in the area) in wet downtown Hampton to drop off the Shovel's heads for repair; we spent the rest of the afternoon ciphering out the wiring diagram for the old Shovelhead. It was raining anyway and this task will sooner or later have to be done. After unpacking the new retro wire harness, and diligently checking their length and colors we routed about 60% of the bikes wiring. They're lots of tags on the ends of the wires to indicate what they will eventually be attached to.

All of this electrical wire routing brought to mind the some of the other things we will be looking for. Voltage regulators today are all electronic, this old girl has a electrical mechanical regulator made by Delco Remy, looks like it came off an old Chevy. That gave me an idea to check the auto parts stores and see if we can't find one similar to it that will work and save a couple of bucks. The starter relay is another item we are going to have to search out too. Of course a new dash is on order also, we used the old dash mounting plate for a guide.

Good news, after blowing out the dead bugs from the old bikes horn and after hooking it up to a live battery it honked loud and long in the garage. Estle said it never worked before but it does now. Miracles never cease.

Being Monday was a holiday and I was off; Estle and I ran all over getting some things taken care of. We called Hop's and got some good news they will be able to repair the heads and it should be about a week or so and we will get them back. We also went to Williamsburg to visit with Art at Peninsular Custom Coaters and drop off some more parts for powder coating. Then we ran over to Tidewater Motorcycle to get the tires mounted on the rims.

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February 2, 2006

Saturday we did a little painting; some of the small parts to complete the triple trees and then when hunting for light bulbs and a press. We went looking for a Hydraulic press at Northern, the only one they had that would do the job we wanted was almost 400 bucks. Estle and I figured we could build what we needed for a lot less. Now the light bulbs that was a different matter; I had installed these nifty little turn signals (spelled AFTERMARKET) on my CBR and they use a very non standard light bulb. I visited several shops only to leave empty handed.

Estle and I stopped by Hampton Roads Harley Davidson in the quest for light bulbs. Estle has been having a very hard time deciding what color to paint the Shovelhead. It didn't get easier as he looked over all the bikes on the showroom floor. I think we are looking at an electric metallic blue, Harley Davidson calls it Cobalt. We left but not before finding out they were out of stock in the special hard to find light bulbs.

A short ride up the road to Redline Motorsports, after a minute or five of gazing at some fine Italian machinery (Ducati's on the showroom floor) and the young man behind the counter materialized from the back room with four of my hard to find light bulbs. Happily I paid for them and we were off and headed to the house.

When we got back, the parts I painted before leaving were dry enough to go back on the bike, we decided to remove a broken bolt from the front fender mounts on the one of the fork sliders first. Removing broken bolts is a tricky thing at best, steel bolts in aluminum seem to have their own peculiarities. If your lucky the bolt will have broke off leaving a nice flat surface to work with, but that is seldom the case. If it breaks off and leaves some of it standing above the hole in most cases a pair of pliers will remove the bolt if it hasn't been tighten down to the bottom of the hole or been there so long it's become rust welded in place.

Our bolt was nice and flat, but about two threads below the surface of the fender boss. With great skill and an excellent eye (and bifocals) I center-punched the bolt, then with a very small drill below a 1/8 ", we attempted to drill through the center of the bolts body. If the drill was a tad sharper it might have worked, but it ran off to the side under pressure. I went for another drill a little larger and sharper.

Now we were making a hole but unfortunately it was off center. We attempted to use an easy out to remove the old bolt, but it refused to move. Now we decided to drill hole out a bit larger trying to remove as much of the bolt as possible; this required drilling in at an angle to move our hole into the center of the bolt body. A 5/16 bolt doesn't leave you much room to work in. Our next drill was 17/64" and it was sharp. It was one of the drills sharpened on Estle's Drill Doctor. The screw gods were smiling down on us because the hole went to the center and I must have been holding my mouth just right as I straighten out the drill to go through right down the bolts center.

Chips and shavings were flying out of the hole at an unbelievable rate when all of sudden smack pow; we were covered in plastic. My thirty year old Craftsman drill exploded into plastic fragments when its bearing went. I switched to an even older drill, one without the variable speed or reversing modes, you know the same kind your grandfather or in my case my dad owned.

We finished up the hole, inserted a tap and began to clean out the debris. Tapping holes is an art I have mastered in the shipyard, and by the time we finished up we had a very nice clean tapped hole which other than some marks at the very bottom of the bolt hole, it looked factory fresh. Sometimes it pays to be more lucky than skilled….

February 15, 2006

Saturday, Estle and I went over and picked up more parts from Art at Peninsula Custom Coaters in Williamsburg. I am always amazed at how the stuff turns out. Art can literally make silk from a sow's ear…. Some of the parts we have brought him where showing a lot of age and rust and each time they come back looking a lot better than we thought they would.

We also made a stop at Hampton Roads Harley Davidson, taking Estle into the showroom is like watching a little kid with a sweet tooth in a candy shop, he just loves looking and thinking about all the chrome goodies and admiring the bikes on the floor. We picked up some rubber mounts for the oil tank and battery box and made our way home in the rain.

Now with the front brake drum and the axel spacer in hand; the last parts we needed to finish the rolling chassis were added. I told Estle if it wasn't raining we would be taking turns rolling the chassis up and down the driveway just for fun. Yeah, it's just a frame and wheels but it represents over 840 hours of cleaning, polishing and paint work. I'm not sure of the cost in dollars and cents but my estimate would be somewhere in the 2 to 3K dollar range if you include our time energy.

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