Hello,

I am having a major issue with a magneto, installing on a 61' panhead.

Background, I bought this motor assembled in 2004, ( by a guy who owned the harley Dealership in Helena Montana for 20 + years), so I am assuming he knows his stuff.

The motor was a Pan-Shovel , fully intact, then I decided, I would be smart and make it a Panhead again, (in retrospect this was dumb, it was really expensive and the panhead refurbishing was a nightmare, took forever and cost a lot, FYI - if you have a nice pan-shovel , leave it alone).

When I bought the motor, it a had a nice magneto installed, and I took it out when I removed the cylinders and heads, and set it aside for over a two years.

Now the problem! I am reassembling, the PAN motor, and have solved the pushrod length issue, and now have a real problem with the magneto. I can put the front pushrod in, WITHOUT the tube, but there is no room at all for the tube. The position of the mag now is pointing to 3:00 with the front wheel at 12:00, and there is zero room. And yes, I can turn the mag to face 12:00, But, it will hit the relay mounting block, which I can grind away, but I will not do this, as the motor is to nice, I will take the mag out, and put in a distributor if I have to. The pushrod , without the tube is really tight to the mag cover, no way it will fit, now way!

The question is, when I bought this, the magneto was in the block, but i have no idea what the orientation was, as I did not have any problems then. When it was a pan-shovel , it must have fit with the pushrod tubes on the pushrods, as the motor had complete tubes in place. So, what has changed? Why so little room now, Are the shovelheads jugs a different angle, or taller, or what?

I have heard that i can grind out the mag cover, a little, not much, for a little room, but I would prefer to do it correctly, and I think i would have to grind to much material, I feel I would be all the way through the cover, to make it work.

I have tried two different caps, the one that came with the mag, and a clear one I had, same problem.

I see in magazines, like the HORSE, pans with mags, but I think they are grinding the relay pad mounting pad down to do this, as for sure the mag will hit this pad if turned to 12:00

so, how can I make this work, with out grindin the relay mounting area, or the mag cover, and why would it be different?

Or, should I just buy a distributor, and use the mag on a later project?

Thanks for any and all help...

MontanaPanFan

 

I would go with a stock distrib/circuit breaker Tedd's V-Twin has them P/N 32-0038 or go fancy Mallory electronic distrib P/N 32-0174 I have both these systems on my knuck and pan /shovel OR if you really want to spend the $'s Rivera Primo offers a Morris Mag that eliminates grinding the relay mount Their part number is RE-G5 only $1200 thank you very much! Go with the old style very simple If you have problems timing let me know

 

Which mag is it?

 

That's why so many older Pans have the circuit breaker boss ground off- to clear a magneto! Get rid of that thing and get an auto advance. Stockers are hard to come by, plenty of aftermarket variations out there. If you decide to go manual advance look at the cam thoroughly, usually the reason they're for sale is the cam is worn and you can't gap the points properly. Also if you want the advance to work as intended you'll need to get the left side twist handle grip thing fixed up. Hard to find those parts. Lot of folks use a spring to hold it in one position while running and unhook it and back off the advance to get it started.

You've never had a kicker bike kick back at you until a magneto kicker has.

 

To get it in there right,(nice and tucked in)you will have to grind off the cut out mount.
As far as hard starting, and kicking back, meh, I have had a mag on mine for over 25 years (after getting stranded in death valley with a broken generator armature) I will never go back, it's never giving me any problems, I have never had to do anything other than change the gasket. damn thing always starts, and when my charging system goes down, it gives me an excuse to spend the night.