WHEELS
OF RAGE
Chapter Twelve |
Chopping A Harley:
By Mike Brown, as Told to Kurt Saxon
Scooter enthusiasts had started building a way of life even
before the Chopper had become popular. The more serious ones began tailoring
their machines to their own special needs while the weekend riders stuck
to trash wagons and foreign garbage.
It's like people who started out as early as 1925 with
a touring car modified for living in. Of course, this was just for vacations
and the like, but out of that came people who lived in them year round
and they were a special breed.
What is important is that, like us, they wanted to live
largely independent of the establishment. A modern mobile home type looks
like most people but he's got tricks you would not believe. And he is closer
to us than guys you see tooling around on a Yamaha.
You got a Yamaha, you not only depend on the establishment,
you depend on the establishment in goddamn Japan, for parts. But a Harley
is American, red, white and blue. In any service station you got the bolts
and nuts that fix it and the tools of the rack to take it apart for general
maintenance. The fact that it often takes a little physical culture to
make garage people loan tools is beside the point.
What's important is that you can jerry-rig a Harley Chopper
with parts from a dime store. But you can be in some little town with,
say, a Honda and lose one lousy nut and you've blown your whole show.
So screw those foreign machines. They just put Americans
out of work; that's all they do. And they're tinny, man. They have a buzz
that makes them sound like toys. The Harley has a deep throated American
roar. You know it's around, baby.
The main reason the Harley-Davidson got to be the number
one hard assed bike was due to the Second World War. Guys came back restless
and wanting action, like after any war.
The Harley was a thrill in itself and it was the cheapest,
often war surplus. So the ballsiest characters used them for racing and
general tearing around.
As the machines got older, the wiring and parts broke
down and the Chopper evolved. The original reason for chopping was to make
them easier to repair and to work on. Along with this came a desire for
an all-round sleek machine.
A full dress Harley, once it becomes old and ratty, is
almost impossible to work on. You have to pull off the gas tank to get
at the carburetor and the wiring must have been designed by a mad Russian.
I don't think there is anybody who can wire a stock Harley,
properly, unless it's a guy who's been trained in the factory. It's about
the most complicated gobbledy- gook I've ever seen.
When you go to chop a Harley with all the original junk
on it, called a dresser, you can go one of two ways. If the bike is real
clean and in good condition but you want to chop it anyway, your best bet
is to do it a little at a time. But if it's a real mess to start with,
you just tear it all apart and redo it completely at the beginning.
For a dresser, one week you throw in a set of slugs, or
pistons, in the front forks to make them longer. On a stock bike this raises
the center of gravity, which gives you a better feel of the road, adds
comfort and makes it easier to lean into a turn.
Of course, if you have fairy forks, those extended way
out front, you have something that might look great on a showroom floor
but isn't very roadworthy. The long, dainty forks demand a wider radius
to turn in and therefore are almost impossible in traffic. Aside from less
maneuverability, the juncture at the fork and the frame has a lot more
pressure on it and if weak will cause the bike to break in half. That can
be unnerving at eighty miles an hour. You also lose a lot of the advantage
of the springers due to the angle of the forks.
The forks can make or break your bike as far as maneuverability
and safety are concerned. Along with the choice of forks is the choice
of frames.
There are two kinds of frames. One is the swinging arm
rear wheel suspension which has two arms attached to the frame and then
to the rear wheel. These have hydraulics which give more comfort and bounce.
The other is the rigid frame to which the rear wheel is attached without
any hydraulics.
Harley springers are very popular because when chromed
they look prettier than glides. Glides are kind of dumpy looking and they
are aluminum so they can't be chromed easily.
A lot of chopper magazines say people run springers because
they look prettier and they choose rigid frames because they can put upswept
pipes on them. Well, they do look better but the main reason the rigid
frames and springer forks are so popular is they give the bike a lot better
control.
When you have a bike that weighs around five hundred pounds
and there's a lot of hydraulics between you and the road like shock absorbers
over both wheels, you lose a lot of feel of the road, especially on curves.
On a Harley with a rigid frame and springers, if you go
through a mud puddle or an oil slick and your rear wheel starts to lose
its grip, you'll be able to feel it, like right now, and you can correct.
On the other hand, a friend of mine was running a Harley with glides on
the front and more hydraulics on the rear. Anyway, his rear wheel started
skidding and, riding that featherbed, he couldn't feel the skid in time
to correct it. Naturally, his bike went down and he rolled about fifty
feet.
Even so, he would have been alright if he had just tucked
in. When you fall off a scooter the thing to do is just tuck your chin
in and curl yourself into a ball and hope you don't fetch up against anything
solid.
He was doing alright, flopping along the pavement, until
nearly the end of his roll. Then he put his hands out to stop himself because
he thought he was going off this pier into the ocean. That got him a broken
wrist but he still considered himself lucky not to have been killed.
After that he put a springer front end on his bike and
he took the shock absorbers off. Then he welded struts where the shock
absorbers were so he'd have a rigid frame.
Anyhow, the rigid frame and springers are super popular
with the chopper set. So popular that we are now manufacturing springers
in a garage.
We use 1020 steel, which is what Harley uses. Nearly all
the manufacturers of springers besides us and one other firm use 4130 chrome
Moly. This is aircraft tubing and has been around since the early thirties.
It's designed to be extremely light. It's really not all
that functional on a motorcycle. Anyway, unless you preheat and post-heat
it, you set up stresses in the metal and the welds have a tendency to crack.
Several of the larger firms that have been manufacturing
these springer front ends have gotten a lot of complaints. I've talked
to people who have come back in Louisiana and said they'd never buy another
product from so-and-so, because these people got into the business when
it started booming and they didn't know what they were doing.
They didn't bother to road test anything like most of
your car manufacturers do. Consequently, there's a lot of parts floating
around the country, especially custom parts, that are extremely dangerous.
Now, these springers we're making are selling for ninety-seven
dollars and fifty cents. The price of springers from the old Army 45 cubic
inch motorcycles is seventy-five bucks all through the South. That's when
they can be found.
That model isn't very well known. Harley made the little
750 CC, called a 45 cubic inch, for the Army. They also made springers
for it and they put them out until about the middle fifties.
The trouble with these 45's is that the stem going up
through the neck of the frame that attaches the springers to the frame
on the 45 is fifteen-sixteenths of an inch. On a Harley 74, there's a full
inch opening. That sixteenth of an inch difference makes it extremely loose
and it wobbles and is very dangerous.
To overcome this you have to change the race cups which
are the parts on the bottom and top of the frame neck. That's an involved
operation. So our springers are a lot less hassle and cheaper in the long
run.
Going back to general chopping, say you've got a dresser
with springers and a rigid frame. You'll first put on a custom seat, then
the week after that you'll put on a small fender. The next week a sissy
bar goes on and like that. Before you know it, you'll have your Chopper.
Now, my bike was the original reason for chopping. The
engine was almost destroyed and coated with rust. The third gear in the
transmission was all pitted and fouled. When you let a transmission sit
for any length of time, especially in a cold climate like back East, you
get condensation and the gears pit after awhile. If a bike is to be stored,
you can stop pitting by either filling the transmission completely with
oil or draining it completely.
When taking a Harley apart to chop it, be sure to save
everything, even the stuff you don't intend to put back on. There might
be a nut or a bolt there that you can use.
When you've got the bike all apart, you first examine
your engine. You remove the cylinder heads and cylinders and examine the
valves and pistons and rings to see how badly beaten up they are. If they
are in pretty good shape, you have saved a lot of money right there.
Next, you should check the lower end bearing for play.
They're on the bottom of the connecting rods. Then take out the transmission,
the clutch assembly and the primary chain and its inner and outer covers.
If you have a horse shoe shaped oil tank, you save that.
But a lot of these later model Harleys have an oil tank that looks like
the Statler-Hilton. It's a great big piece of garbage and it's practically
useless on a Chopper.
You save the rear wheel and brake assembly and the brake
linkage. All you'll usually have to do to a wheel is to respoke it and
chrome it. If you exchange a wheel at most Chopper shops, it'll bankrupt
you. They want like fifty bucks on an exchange.
A sizable club usually has it's own wheel respoking and
truing equipment. Such equipment isn't all that expensive and with a lot
of guys using it, it saves a lot of beer and gas money.
A club should also have a small welding set plus a lot
of special Harley tools. A small lathe will prove indispensable in time.
Big clubs that have all this stuff don't have all the
financial problems that the poor slob out in central Los Angeles has who
can't afford it. Or maybe he's a rumpkin and nobody wants him. Consequently,
he pays premium prices for everything.
Getting back to the subject; you save the front forks
even though they're usually pretty roachy. You have to take off the shields,
or coverings, on them and the Harley-Davidson head light. It doesn't look
like a head light. It' more like a big old plane spotter so it has to go.
If you've waded through this, let's say you finally have
all the parts off and are down to the rigid frame. To start building it
back up, you first fit a peanut tank and a rear fender on it. Rear fenders
are pretty cheap. You can buy one of them from a Chopper shop for about
nine dollars.
A new peanut tank costs thirty dollars. You can get a
used one for fifteen dollars. Sometimes you can scrounge one from a little
Mustang or other old bike for maybe five dollars.
You usually have to drill a hole in the frame to bolt
the rear end of the tank down. Several holes have to be drilled in the
rear fender. The rear fender not only bolts onto the frame but also to
the oil tank.
Then, if you're going to have a buddy pad in back of the
operator's seat, instead of just one long seat, you'll have to drill about
four more holes in the fender for that. You also drill a hole in the fender
for your sissy bar.
Once you get all this set up to where you know where your
tank and fender go, then you do any molding off of sharp corners and get
down to the painting.
What really sets the righteous Choppers off from the rumpkins
is the paint job. I've seem paint jobs done with spray cans that looked
like they'd been done with a brush in the hands of a child. A lot of them
look awful.
If you get a compressor, and most sizable clubs have them,
you are set up to do professional paint jobs. Before painting, however,
take the frame, tank and fender to a sandblaster. They are in the phone
book and are the only ones who can give you the surface you want to paint
on.
After you've applied from eight to fifteen coats of paint,
for long life, you wax your surfaces.
While you're putting on your layers of paint, you check
out all your engine parts to make sure they are reasonably free from wear.
You'll find yourself replacing a lot of parts even before you get the machine
back together. But it's better you do it now than when you're on the road.
When the engine is ready, you go over the transmission.
Take off the lid and side plates and examine the gears. If they look alright,
just throw the whole thing back together. Harley transmissions practically
never wear out.
If it's a pretty old bike, the oil and gas tanks are likely
to be pitted due to condensation. This is especially true of the oil tank.
After a while tiny holes will appear in the top of the oil tank and when
it is full, it will dribble oil all over the place. These pinholes in both
tanks can be repaired with a welder.
Before you put your rear end back together, you should
check your rear tire. To put up to a thousand dollars work into a bike
and then have it go down to destruction because of a bald, ten dollar tire
is frustrating.
When all that is taken care of, you check the clutch assembly.
Examine the clutch plates to make sure the rivets are still tight. Make
sure there's not too much oil on them because a lot of times a guy will
build a chopper and put on an extended front end but doesn't lengthen the
kick stand, so the bike leans way over to the left.
In this case, and it's pretty frequent when buying a used
Chopper, you have clutch trouble. If you've got a bad oil seal in the transmission,
it will dribble oil all over your clutch and you'll wonder why your clutch
keeps slipping.
When you get all this taken care of, you look to your
exhaust system. Your exhaust system should always be fitted on at a muffler
shop because if you buy a set of pipes from a Harley shop, the odds are
that the pipes you put on aren't going to fit.
The reason for this trouble is that the Harley head projections
that your exhaust pipes fit on wear down after about twenty years. So,
no two Harleys are going to have the same size exhaust port to put your
header pipe on.
You're going to have a lot of air being sucked back into
the exhaust system. You'll then get a lot of backfiring and consequently
you'll burn your valves up and they'll warp. But if you have it done by
a muffler shop, they'll fit nice and tight.
Besides, muffler shops don't charge any more and they
usually do a better job.
The handlebars on the old model Harleys were like a broomstick
stuck straight across the front end and were uncomfortable to ride. From
there they went to these high "ape hangers." They just bent the bars and
added the needed comfort.
When you rework the front end, if you've got springers,
all you do is take a pair of radius rods from a junk 1940 auto and weld
them onto the fork stock to replace the main, or back, fork. You then take
one inch stock steel for the front legs, or spring fork, and you make them
about one inch longer than the back legs. All this will be your front fork
assembly.
If you do this part yourself, it costs you about ten dollars
for materials and about fifteen to get the welding done. Altogether, about
twenty-five bucks. The Chopper shops charge a hundred and thirty.
A lot of people, especially in California, don't run front
fenders but you should. It looks a lot better without a front fender but
your front wheel has a tendency to throw rocks and small birds in your
face. It's also embarrassing if you go through a puddle and get a big brown
streak up the front of your shirt.
When you get to the wiring, you learn to appreciate a
Chopper. The wiring on a dresser is hopeless. It can get so old and funky
it would cost as much as the machine is worth to have it rewired in the
old way.
The original wiring is activated by a triple switch. When
it is switched one notch to the right, the ignition is on. Two notches
and the lights are on. Then all the way back to the left turns the main
lights and ignition off and the parking lights on.
This makes for a lot of complicated wiring which goes
through junction boxes in a useless maze, probably to discourage repairs
by the owner. That's why bikers devised the system of Chopper wiring, which
is about as simple as it can get.
The Chopper wiring has only two simple circuits controlled
by two separate switches. One handles all front and tail lights and the
other handles the ignition.
This is basically how a Chopper is put together. It is
much easier to work on and much better looking this way.
Of course, if you don't have an old, beat up model to
chop and insist on a Chopper, you can get a dresser, as mentioned before,
and start taking things off.
Old Harleys are becoming so hard to find nowadays that
some people even resort to buying a brand new trash wagon off the showroom
floor. It isn't showing a lot of class to chop one of these but if that's
all you got, that's all you can do.
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