Panhead Jim, Author at Harley Davidson Forums - Page 7 of 9

When looking at photographs of old Harley-Davidson motorcycles (I’m talking the teens or older), you’ve probably noticed that a lot of them have a cylinder mounted to the frame or handlebars, about the size of a kitchen fire extinguisher.  You may have even thought that this was a fire extinguisher, but it is actually just […] More »

While my engine was off being rebuilt, I directed my attention to building a three speed transmission.    Over their 7 year production run, the V-series used three different transmission cases as well as three different gearing configurations.  The cases are fairly easy to tell apart, the main difference being how the primary is mounted. […] More »

  If you look back to the beginning of Elvis’ career, you can follow his rise to stardom through the motorcycle he was riding at the time. At 20 years old, Elvis signed his first recording contract with Sun Records.  Although he wasn’t given much of an advance, he made enough money to purchase a […] More »

When the Batman TV series premiered in 1966, Batman and Robin were fighting crime from a 1965 Electra-Glide with attached sidecar.  It was basically a stock machine with customized windscreens added to give it the “right look”.  1965 was the last year of the Panhead engine and the first year that electric starters came stock […] More »

At first glance, I took this to be something built by the Russian military, but it turns out that this Harley-Davidson was exported to Chile as pictured.  It’s also not even for the military but instead for their motorized police brigade.  Must have been rough down in Chile during the 1940’s… The motorcycle was built […] More »

Once the engine cases were finished, I moved on to cleaning and repairing the internal engine parts.  Where possible, I chose to replace worn out parts with new replacements from Eastern Motorcycle Parts.  These included the pistons, crank pin, pinion shaft, sprocket shaft, valves, valves springs and a variety of nuts, shims and washers.  Still, […] More »

In the 1920’s, most service stations delivered automobiles back to their customers’ homes after they were repaired.  This was great for the customer, but meant that the service station had to devote two employees for deliveries, one to drive the repaired automobile and the second to drive an additional automobile to pick up the first. […] More »