After sitting in the my shop since the show'n shine, I finally got around to putting Egil's bike on the lift.
The first order of business was to fix the wonky rear stand. It was so bad that at the show'n shine we had to block up under one side of the stand so that the bike would not tip over. A bit of online research indicated that this was not a stock rear stand. The original Harley stand was bent from one piece of u-shaped steel bar with gussets riveted each side for stability.
I did investigate side-stands, which for pre-war Harleys were accessories. Harley called them 'Jiffy Stands' which nowadays for pre-war models, are rarer than rocking horse phoo.
As a first step I set about straightening the top lugs and bottom bar thinking that I'd install some gussets afterwards. The top forgings straightened out fine but when I moved to the bottom bar, it simply broke off. It turns out that in the past some numpty attempted a mickey mouse fix by welding over top of the brazed joints at each end (this does not work!, steel weld metal does not stick to braze metal). Also, the bottom bar is some sort of old steel tube, and really wimpy.
The old brazing metal was carefully drilled out of the ends of the vertical stanchions and the bottom bar was replaced with solid 1/2" modern steel round bar (modern steel has much better welding properties). 3/4" x 3/16" flatbar gussets were made up and screwed into the vertical stanchions and welded to the new bottom steel bar. The braze joints at the ends were redone and
no weld metal was laid over the braze joints.
The leaking home made copper oil pipes were replaced with new ones from Vintage Motorcycle Works. The replacements don't leak. Maybe it's better flares, maybe the tube thickness is more correct?.
The generator has been connected. The next step is to un-bum the carb issues. I'll set up a shop night for this purpose as I don't remember exactly what the issue was.
Olaf
