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Continued from page 1…… I was about to reach for the phone book one morning, on an ass-saving spring hunt, when the mail arrived with an invitation to the Harley-Davidson new-model announcement. At that point I was spending every extra moment in the garage and interruptions were a problem. But the factory has always been supportive and I couldn’t miss the new bike review so I signed on for the event. It took place in Pasadena and all the moto-journalists from the Southern California region were on hand. Occasionally during the presentation I would peer at the list in my pocket and go to the dingy corner where the heads were to make a call about chrome or parts, or I’d call headquarters to check in with the crew. Some years the Harley announcements indicate business as usual at the factory with only minor changes. This year was a vast contrast to the status quo. It was immediately evident the company was making strides to capture a larger segment of the aftermarket with its accessory production pace and the focus on custom parts. The models radiated custom touches. They had finally truly lowered a bike, the new Lowrider Dyna. Road Glides were getting much more engineering attention. Performance was advancing quickly with a Holley Carb introduction and big-inch motor kits. Some of the new paint schemes reached deeply into the custom culture for colors and designs.
Then they came to the new narrower, lighter, police model for 2001. Cop bikes didn’t mean a hill of beans to me, but I scanned the more agile machine that is now available for individual sales and they’re cheap. Dan Ackroyd should get a new one. I noticed springs under the solo cop saddle and immediately jumped to my feet. Two representatives from the factory rushed to my side. “Can we help you answer any questions about the new police model?” one of the engineers asked. I started babbling about this stretched rigid I was going to ride to Sturgis and the two contemporary thinkers backed away as if my radical concept might rub off on them. I ordered a set later that day. They proved to be … well you’ll see. The frame was sent to the powdercoater, the chrome went out and the sheet metal was shipped to Harold’s. The waiting game began while I chased any missing parts. By the time the sun was blazing in the single window of our tiny headquarters, the frame was back in the garage and up on a towel-covered lift. The chromer made me wait another day. I was in the midst of a bolting-together orgy when the dark-haired one appeared in the doorway of the Bikernet den, peeling out of her threads.
Her alabaster skin looked like cream flowing into a hot cup of coffee. The satin shaved surface was too delicate to touch. What the hell is a biker to do when heaven is standing nude in the doorway? The crew was looking at 34 days until departure. I was looking at green eyes, a sensitive smile and … priorities men, priorities. It was a factor of hours and parts availability, plus watching for problems. Everything was seriously locktite drenched, tightened and tightened again. I notice a weak link immediately in the wheel spacing. This was an odd, uncalled-for operation. You buy wheels, they come with spacers. You install them and it’s a done deal. You go for a ride. So what was the problem? The tubes had been cut and collars added to assist with holding the grease near the bearings, and to hold the spacer centered when the axle was removed. They weren’t shabby. The dilemma made me second-guess my installation. I checked and rechecked the life-threatening problem. If I left them alone, I would certainly be a candidate for a high-speed wobble. If I set them up too tight, I could burn up the bearings in the desert and be left alongside the road to fry in the sun. Something had to be done to correct the wheels or find out where I went astray. With spacers the correct length, the wheels and brakes could be installed for the last time and anything that could reach final assembly made me smile and saved time. We were frustrated. I centered the wheel and began to space the P.M. Calipers. Something wasn’t right. There was .020 slop in the center spacer that pre-loads the Timken bearings. I was blown away and stayed up until 2 a.m. with a sheet of glass and wet and dry sand paper trimming the spacer down while insuring the flat parallel surface to the bearing race as left intact. I finished uncertain of the tolerances. Later I found that the tolerance prescribed by the factory is .004 to .014. It is recommended that with aluminum hubs you should lead your figure to the .004 side. There was another weak link and Harold mentioned it as soon as he received the mounted Sportster Tank. “That tab system is a little shaky, Bandit.” What could I do? I had two 1/8-inch-thick straps that ran the entire length of the tank and out both ends by three inches. At the last minute I eliminated one because I felt it would be too difficult to bondo. The tank was now in Harold’s hands and time was running out. If I had sent the bare frame to Harold, he would have mounted the gas tank by his proven method. The decision had been made and I would be forced to live with it. We kept moving. Ah, but there was another adjustment that lurked in the back of my mind, although Giggie from Compu-fire checked my installation and gave it a thumbs up. I was sketchy about the primary drive adjustment. I had slipped the original inner-primary O-ring between the engine cases and the motor plate for vibration relief. Bad move. The BDL belt was too tight.
There was no slack in the belt and I wanted some. I had to loosen the transmission, unbolt the motor-plate from the engine and move the tranny forward as much as possible. It worked out perfectly, but just in case, I ordered a spare belt (I broke a primary belt in ’97 outside Denver). Giggie from Compu-fire helped kick off the wiring with the installation and timing of the Compu-fire single fire ignition. With it in place sans the Voes switch (this is a chopper, right?). About that time, a tall Asian in a flowered bikini and a black towel strolled past the headquarters on her way to secluded Cabrillo Beach. The entire crew was distracted. It wouldn’t be the last time Sin Wu captured my concentration. She became our lunch time mascot, dropping in from time to time to check the progress and tantalize us. The rear wheel had yet to be spaced properly. It suffered from the same malady as the front wheel and the last thing I wanted storming through my brain at 5 a.m. on a highway in the middle of nowhere was my wheel spacers. We were forced to remove the rear wheel again. I had built in a stud for the hydraulic brake switch behind an exhaust pipe as part of the exhaust bracket. The notion was to hide that ugly bastard yet make it accessible if need be. As it turned out, Joker Machine builds a micro brake switch into their forward controls. Ultimately a dice was drilled and tapped to conceal the stud. Just as I finished the wiring, the paint was delivered. Harold and I discussed the paint scheme at length. The first problem was the frame paint. We were limited to a bright metallic blue. I sent Harold a chunk of square tubing painted the same color to match. He studied it and went to work. We discussed white pearl or cream colored flames and he decided to add a silver accent. We couldn’t decided what color to pinstripe with. We discussed red, pink (no way), even green, but nothing jumped out at us. When Harold called and said he’d pinstriped it gray, I choked. It sounded drab, lifeless. A week later, after clear coating and drying, the paint was shipped. I had become best of pals with the UPS guy, who showed up daily. When he showed up with a small package he’d be greeted with a long face from a disappointed crew member. “We need bigger boxes and more of ’em,” Wrench told him one morning. We did. We were biting our nails, watching the clock and the calendar. The plan called for a running motorcycle two weeks before the takeoff date. The first stretch of road to Phoenix was 450 miles of blistering desert and I was riding alone. I needed a break-in period. Most years we had little or no break-in time. Last year the Excelsior-Henderson had no miles on it after High Tech Custom Cycles customized the rowdy 85-inch monster. I had it for two days before leaving. The first day the front brake kept locking up and we discovered chrome chips in the front master cylinder. With that fixed, I thought I was good to go until the starter motor blew up in my face the night before takeoff. We made arrangements with Bert’s Cycle Mall in Azusa to fix it. I hired a guy to drive my truck, my bike and me to Bert’s, where we sat for half the afternoon while they replaced the starter and some fried bushings, then retuned the bike with a new computer program. Dr. Hamster and I sat in their waiting room with our gear and waited patiently for the verdict. It finally came with a road test by the main mechanic. He rolled out of the parking lot without making eye contact with either of us.
The year before that, it was the street stalker built essentially by Bartels’ Harley-Davidson. Before that, it was the touring chopper built by Jesse James. All of the above are professionals who are constantly building bikes, have mechanics and extensive tools and supplies. I’m not, and my guys all work on old Panheads. So when we took on these projects as non-professional, skirt-chasing, beer-drinking geeks, we wanted more time to correct all the bullshit mistakes we would make. As it turned out, we didn’t make any more mistakes than the pros had in the past. Plus the feeble, leaning Bikernet headquarters held nearly every tool we needed to keep the operation going. As the sheet metal arrived, Sin Wu and I slipped into the basement of the vast Bikernet headquarters to un-box, un-peanut, un-bubble wrap and un-cellophane the paint. The gray pinstripe was perfect, the finish clean and classic. We made love in the basement in celebration and as a tribute to the notion that this underground slab of concrete would soon become the international Bikernet shipping and receiving department. Fuck, life can be exciting. Sin went home and the brothers began to install the tank and sheet metal.
We were moving fast. Time was running out and days seemed to disappear. At one point, we had the grandiose notion that the bike would be ready for the Exceptional Childrens’ Beach Ride in Ventura, California. We couldn’t make it. Then the Calendar Girl Show loomed. What was once the Mikuni Bike Show at the Santa Monica Airport had transcended into the Calendar Girl/White Bros. Show in a small park near the looming bow of the Queen Mary. Cool location, but could we have the bike up in time? Wiring went easy with the internal tubing installed in the frame by Daytec. Tubes ran from the back of the seat post to the top motormount and down the seat tube to the oil pump. I quickly discovered that I could run two switches in the top motormount and Giggie suggested a polished aluminum plate to conceal the switch backs and the single circuit breaker. Giggie emphasized that we use mil spec (military specification) or Marine switches. I had purchased plastic Marine switches but wasn’t confident in them. I wanted to head over to Neptunes Electronics for some heavy duty mil spec metal units, but it never happened. The wiring continued with two switches to control all the electronics on the bike. An on/off switch turned on the ignition and the brake and tail lights and energized the high/low beam switch. The on-off-on switch controlled the headlight and that was all. For the starter switch we used Custom Cycle Engineering’s new mechanical push button, which mounts directly to the starter solenoid of the Compu-Fire starter. It’s the cleanest switch in the world and works like a champ, but if your pipes come anywhere close to the switch, watch out. It’s easy to burn your mitt when the bike is hot. Plus the switch is bolted to the right side of the bike and down low. If that’s going to be a problem with the carb and reaching the throttle, you need to consider those obstacles. It worked like a champ on this rigid with the pipes we chose. For our pipes, we picked a set of Samson 2 1/8-inch drag pipes for a Dyna Glide because they don’t make pipes for rigid frames. From a performance standpoint, I wanted the 98-inch S&S stroker motor to run as effortlessly as possible. I had discovered by mounting a Compu-Fire single-fire ignition system on the touring chopper that it calmed that stroker motor, so I did the same on this one. I wanted to even the exhaust system for firing balance. One pipe was 12 inches longer than the other and hung down too far, which would hamper ground clearance. We took two inches out of the down stroke. Wrench gas-welded it back together with a coat hanger. Then we cut the pipe to even the lengths to 27 inches. That seemed precariously short for the diameter of the exhaust, so we took two Samson exhaust muffler baffles, cut them in half and installed them. Finally, for styling purposes, we asked James Famigatti to scallop the ends of the pipes to contour the shape of the Milwaukee Iron fenders. We called Mikuni America and asked about the carburetor. Lee, the man responsible for every Mikuni carburetor that flies into the states for motorcycles, asked, “For your bike?” “Yep,” I said. “You’re going to install it?” “Yep,” I said. “Forget it,” he said, “Bring the bike to me. We’ll make sure the intake is correct and the cables match, and that the bike runs.” I didn’t know what to make of it, but I did as I was told and delivered the bike to the Mikuni factory. With the swift action of Barnett cables, S&S and American Iron Horse, the correct intake was procured for the tall barrel S&S stroker engine that tucked the polished 42-mm slide carburetor in close to the engine. They fired and tuned the bike for the first time. The technician, Bryan, warned us to back out the air mixture screw half a turn when I reached the altitudes of Denver. They also installed a large tear-drop, exposed K&N air cleaner that would afford the engine all the air it wished to gulp. Time was running out. We still needed miles on the bike but we had no speedometer and no idea where to put it. The cable was in the garage and the drive unit had been installed on the front wheel, but the actual speedometer was nowhere to be found. Then it dawned on me that the ’84 Shovelhead in Dallas had just the speedometer we needed, but planned not to use. I called and asked the crew at Dallas Easyriders to ship the unit quick and it was on its way.
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