The latest project to roll into my shop is this heavily modified 1960 Harley-Davidson FLH, which I scored on the local Craigslist. Gotta love the CL, especially in bike-crazy Milwaukee! Not much of the "FLH" remains other than the crankcases, frame, swingarm, and a few other parts. But it does still have the one thing that really matters, a legit 1960 H-D title. Everything else is just bolt-ons. It's a typical 80s "custom," complete with an air-brushed castle floating in clouds on the rear fender, lots of Taiwan chrome, and a fringe seat and saddlebags. The best part of bringing a bike like this home is the first couple hours of de-customizing it--making it "your own." I have boxes of old chrome junk and doodads from previous project strip-downs like this.
After some basic dechroming, the next thing to do was to try to get it started. The bike hadn't run in about a year, and the wiring was a mess. Amazing how a guy can screw up a bike that only has six wires on it. Pulled the dash and started checking wires, reran a few, replaced some crimp connectors, and sorted that out in a couple hours to confirm it had power to the ignition and spark. Replaced the fuel line to the carb and started kicking. Nothing. Kicked some more. And some more. Checked the spark again. Pulled the plugs a few times. Gas, air, spark---it should run. Kicked some more, then heard a POP. Too bad it wasn't from the engine, it was my right calf muscle. Wow, that hurt for two weeks. Learned to kick with my left leg. Kept on kicking. Finally on day two of ownership, got some coughs and sputters. Kicked some more, and finally after about 500 or so kicks, it fired up into a perfect idle. Then died. Kicked some more, finally got it restarted and hopped on for a run around the block. Ran great and shifted through all the gears. Brakes even worked. Wow, this was a score!
I spent the next couple of weeks sorting out the timing, carb, controls and swapping on new tanks and fender. It was still a bitch to start and it took me a while to figure out what the deal was. Turns out there were a few issues. First, the battery wasn't holding a 12 volt charge, so it wasn't getting a good spark. Checked that and found it was almost completely out of acid. Topped it off, charged it up, and it's like new. The next problem was the timing. I screwed around with that a few times before realizing I should have left it the way I found it. But the big relevation was in the carb. It's got an S&S Super E, which I first cleaned, then took apart and cleaned again and reset all the base adjustments. Finally came to realize it needed a lot more accelerator pump travel to get enough gas for a good prime. Now that I have that sorted out, it starts on the first or second kick every time. No more breaking into a sweat kicking for 10 or 15 minutes in the morning!
The final thing I did was change the bars. The bike had a set of buckhorns on 4-inch risers that were kind of dorky looking and didn't really work with the FXWG front end. At some point they had been crudely converted to internal wiring, even though none of the control wiring was hooked up; must have come from a different bike. Well, the hole cut into the bars under the riser had formed a massive stress riser and one day while I was out riding I noticed a crack in in the riser clamp. Didn't think anything of it until a few days later when I was on another test run and pulled back on the bars and they almost folded back into my lap. Uh, that's a problem. The crack had worked its way almost completely through the handlebar and cracked the clamp in two. I limped it back home and swapped on a set of 14-inch apes I had laying around with some short risers. It looks much better and is really comfortable to ride.
So that's about it for stage one. Not sure where this project is going from here, but I'm starting to get attached to it.
