Automatic Knucklehead Glory

I finished a bike, can you believe it?

The Magdraulic front brake looks better than it works but comes in handy as a solid parking brake and since the bike now has a suicide type clutch that's real nice when you ride it on the steep city streets of Stockholm. The motor is still a 74" but has got a .480" Leineweber special grind cam, higher compression and modified Oldsmobile V8 valves, single fire magneto and a few other minor adjustments.

 

The Vard fork is inline and makes the bike sit about 1.5" higher up front than the standard offset Springer, it handles like a freight train on the freeway - I mean that in a good way, acctually I mean that in a great way. And even though it does make the bike a bit harder to turn at low speed, all in all it's definitely an upgrade in handling and over all riding comfort compared to a Springer.

The Speed-E-Shift prototype from 1951 works like a dream and features a roller bearing for the pedal which is integrated in the frame and not a separate part like on the Speed-E-Shifter that came in production. Anyway, smoothest shifting I ever had on any bike.

At first it's hard to not confuse the Speed-E's handlever (that reverse the mechanism) for a hand clutch but after a few hours it's so much fun...

Automatic Knucklehead Glory.