My old 45 comes home to roost, after 35 years
Well, I just reinherited my old 42WLA back after my Dad used it for 30-something years in the meantime as a vintage club rally bike with a sidecar. Mom is moving to a retirement village so I had to get some of my junk shipped up here, this one among it.
Me with it as it arrived three weeks ago:
Me with it on my 16th birthday when I was turned loose on the public streets on it.
Me with it as it was a year earlier before the old man and I "restored" it to civilian spec. It was still in original Royal Australian Air Force MP colors. Tilbrook twin-adult sidecar was massive, so we sold that off. We bought the bike cheap ($200 and sold the sidecar for $80) because it had sheared the woodruff keys off the gearbox sprocket lugging that sidecar and the PO thought the gearbox was totally blown.
I just spent three weeks changing the handlebars back to the original Speedster/Military bars as the buckhorns Dad had fitted for sidecar work did not suit my build at all. And I put the solo gearing engine sprocket back on. I still have this damn post-viral Chronic Fatigue Syndrome so can tinker gently on it about an hour every two days if I am lucky. I have sit on a cut down plastic lawnchair while I tinker. And that still left me too stuffed to ride it around the block so far.
Here is the new bars fitted.
Versus the old ones (and those would be the mirrors I peeled off my 1975 Triumph Trident the day I bought it home from the dealers. The old man lived on bikes and parts my brothers and I discarded for years. He built a whole military spec 42WLA from leftovers from my brother's choppers.)
And it came with 30 years of backed on oil and grease. The old man believed in keeping all the old original parts working instead of replacing them, including gaskets I think.
And what is all this subtle wiring running up the frame?? (Next to the one of the two 6v car coils custom mounted on the military air cleaner bracket)
Why, it goes to the battery that is wrapped in protective rags inside the original leather saddle bag. It is a 6v commercial fire alarm battery the old man scavenged from a scrap metal yard and ran for at least 15 years!!
And somehow it got back the original military oil bath air cleaner. I did have a four-rivet round chrome Panhead filter on there, but that somehow has ended up on my brother's bike while I was overseas for a few years.
By luck, I just recently picked up a scratched and dented round filter with the genuine HD logo on it at the local swap meet for $5 so I reckon it will fit right and fit in with the rest of the bike.
So my plan is to leave the bike pretty much as is cosmetically and tidy it up mechanically, once I get back on my feet and can put the time into it. It took more than 35 years of hard work to get that patina so I think a full resto would ruin it, make it just like all the others you see.
I'm just jacked to have my old bike back, pretty much the way it was the day I got my driver's license on it in 1973, parked right there by my old Ironhead.
Hmm, wonder where I can ride this one to on my next vacation?