Open (Beef) Heart Surgery

Electricity safe as milk; 6 Volts, Briggs & Stratton ignition switch and Kilos per Hour Speedo, and hey, Dig the tall knurl Eaton gas caps! Don Glen Vliet (RIP) was only 6 years old 1947. Boing, Pong, Hocus Pocus, Avion! Have an enormous weekend people.

The International Odds Are Even

Here’s a Swedish magazine feature on my UL from a while back, thinking retrospectively I really think I could have picked a better place for the sidecar hopping stunt, since I almost wrapped the bike around one of those trees more than a few times.

I wrote the article in Swedish so it might be hard to comprehend for people that don’t speak Swedish, for Swedish people on the other hand it’s most likely entirely incomprehensible so at least the international odds are even.

The Two Hour Assassination Of God

At 4am she entered the brain of God

And stumbled blindly through its convoluted swamps

Until reaching a clearing

In which was reflected the image of everything that had ever happened

To anyone, anywhere

In time

And in space

We all got it right so long ago

In that there’s no final answer

Or prior scheme of things

But only a wild and unknown frenzy in which not even the anarchist treads water

At 5am she piled her clothes

Into a heap and made a fire upon God’s grey mass

Which lit up the universe with a fierce bonfire

And rained ashes

Over planet

And over star

Few of us had figured that Buddah got in the way of Buddhism

That Gods were better never thought up

That every king, leader, guru, chief

Was just another stone prison slab

At 6am she clearly and directly saw a myriad living things manifest

In joy and liberation upon the surface

Of a world that didn’t really change

Except some skins and scales just dropped away.

Magnesium 12 Spokes

Arteries of light forming synchronous patterns in a fragile world unitized by jagged glissandos. Chaotic onslaughts of filthy religious sodomy and impulse public perversion. Parapet pigs on the outskirts of Stockholm are growling, slaughter by the seashore.

It’s easier to modify a plethora of philosophies from performances, than it is to change a plethora of performances from philosophies. It’s easier to recreate yourself into a new kind of thinking, than it is to rethink yourself into a new kind of creature.

As the living strive to preserve what the dead lost, an embassy’s raging through the shadows searching for its kingdom with the silhouette of a young girl dancing upon the beach at night. Sit back and swallow the horror watch the burning fireflies weightless quiver.

Eternal night penetrated by sadistic present, violet green lightening-bug vein filling heat. Play with the perverted puzzles; just remember to put the bits back in place.

One hundred pints of Guinness and one hundred borrowed tools and Beach Boys records played backwards before inspiration finally twirled itself into consistence.

Is knowledge a constant substance, is my mind expanding or is the world around it shrinking?

Is deconstruction the only way to construct? Is Ronnie Van Zant really from Florida?

S&S L Series Carbs For Jerry's Knuckle

S&S L Series carburetor remains one of my all time favourite carbs, right up there with the magical bronze spawns of Adolf Linkert and the wonderful aluminium offsprings of George Riley.

Now they’re completely rebuilt with new throttle discs, shafts and bushings, I cooked up all new idle tubes and installed new main jets. I also relieved the top idle tube passage for the low speed circuits since this is a dual carb set-up I thought that could be a positive thing.

Soldering the floats in place and then tweaking the little lever to make the floats float at just the right level is a time consuming process to say the least, it’s good fun though, at least at this point, redoing this on a hot engine during a hot day with a hot temper getting drenched in gas is not quite as fun.

Anyone who’s worked on some of those carbs know how bad the floats usually are. These original floats were a bit banged up but nothing too serious, but I still troubled my tiny little mind with them for a bit straightening them out and making sure they don’t leak.

Observe the carved horizontal line at the top of the float bowl, that’s the line you use to measure from down to the top of the float, in the GBL manual you can get the right measurements, where it’s suppose to open and where it’s supposed to close. But if you study the lines and shape of the floats this is kinda far from an exact science.

Now, since this is a dual carburetor set-up I kept the float levels just a tad on the lean side to save Jerry’s Knuckle from getting soaked in gas.

I just love the look of these... Pretty much like two Linkert DC's on steroids.

Or maybe a bit more like two Linkert DC’s on mushrooms..?

1947 Knucklehead Tanks

This Chevy is short of a Chase. But chasing threads on these tanks sometimes might require quite a bit of concentration, something that I'm not always too good at.

"Now we've all had this problem"...

...Rusty boogered up threads sure are more of a rule than an exception when it comes to the handshift gas tanks. Since this is an honest uncut 1947 Knucklehead tank I found it even more important to restore the original thread and not cut them out and replace them. Cutting out and replacing the threads is a process that takes like 15 minutes - if you’re LeBeef that is ...if you’re me it takes like a week.

So to start out with I got a super solid, Made In Sweden, fuel shut-off valve alignment tool from Paulie Paul, the high priest of Magneto Zoo. This is the perfect thing to use when properly setting up your gas valve, well - if you’re not into gas leaks...

But as usual I just couldn't prevent myself so here's how I did it. The thread in the early Harley gas tanks is 3/4-18 NS, and those taps are all kinda hard to get, high priced special orders, so milling slits seemed like a sober idea.

If you don’t have a milling machine you could always use a file to make slits in the side of the threads to create a perfect thread chaser.

Now this thread is brought right back up to perfect Griswold Status.
And if you don’t own a fuel shut-off valve alignment tool you can just locate an old gas valve to mill or file slits in.

Now the original thread ain't a Chevy short of a Chase no more.
And thanx to the Mag Zoo alignment tool the gas valve sits just as straight as Ian MacKaye on a Saturday night. I only wish I could understand or remember why I’m restoring an original Knucklehead tank all of a sudden..?

And The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull (REVISITED)

Animals was invented by plants to spread their seeds in an effort to ensure their survival, but the plants never knew that the animals would later morph into humans.

Humans that later invented religions, 12 Spoke Mag Wheels etcetera in an effort to ensure their glory of existence. Religion leads to death, just as life itself, only faster. 12 Spokes on the other hand will take you straight into the very divine vineyard of life.

But a vineyard can be a dangerous place for a man that’s supposed to stay away from grapes, go ask Samson. Samson is a Bible character, one of the Judges from the Old Testament, he’s kind of the Incredible Hulk of the Bible.

Samson walked from Israel to the Philistines and on his way he was attacked by a vicious lion in the middle of a great vineyard, but he managed to get up on the lions back and tore its jaws completely apart cracking open the cranium.

When Samson later returned he saw the lions carcass resting in the vineyard and there now was a great bees nest in the open cranium, the honey bees were getting busy making honey in it.

He reached down in the lions skull and carved out a piece of the honey. It tasted very sweet, so sweet that he brought some for his parents, girlfriend and all of his friends - but he never revealed where it came from.

Anyway, when they asked from where the divine honey came he replied “Out of the eater came something to eat - Out of the strong came something sweet” A riddle that was referring to himself and by doing so he also committed at least one deadly sin.

God was pissed and a lot of people died, Samson later slayed an entire village with a bone from a donkeys ass. But let’s leave the Old Testament for a while shall we...

A beginning is a dangerous thing since it will lead you to the end. I have no idea what time is but there sure is no eternity with a temporal existence, not even the kind of temporal existence about which one may say, "It always existed" It simply does not have temporal duration of any kind or else it could never be an eternity.

My obsession for ancient American Racing Magnesium however may seem eternal and I’ve been hoarding the 12 Spokes shamelessly for quite some time, American did them in 15”, 17” and 18”. 15” are the most common by far, then we have the 18” and finally the most obscure 17”.

If you’re setting them up with a drum brake you need to find the very latest casting they did or they won’t have enough material around the hub to drill and tap to fit the drum.

Then we have the wonderful Performance Machine / E.M.E / Dick Allen wheels that came in 15" and 18" only and was poured in aluminum (the wheel above)

The early castings are all too thin to machine for a disc or drum. The 15”s are offset and the 17”s and 18”s are not, however the edge of the hub sticks out a couple of millimetres more on the “outside” of the hub on the 17” / 18” but the spokes on left and right hand sides are at the same angle so the wheel is perfectly centered over the hub. All these wheels came in two different types; to fit Anglia front spindles or Ford front spindles...

If you need tips on how to adapt a set of these wheels to your bike I did a little step-by-step:

Mag Wheel Part #1

Mag Wheel Part #2

The Chrome Moly Mustache

I'm not sure if there's a crack in infinity but there's definitely a bend...

When narrowing a Springer this way we found out it's exceptionally significant to use OEM parts only, not because it pisses off the 'period coquette bobber mob' but because reproduction steel could never handle radical bends like these without cracking.

So you have to choose, crack your fork or crack your conscience, well that’s an easy choice right? ...Since you can’t really crack something that’s already cracked.

LOVE

Tremendously stoked to be invited as part of this magnificent event; the Love Cycles III Year Anniversary Bike Show.

Don't miss out on this one folks, it'll be something extraordinary.
And keep checking Love Cycles for updates.