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1940 SS Knucklehead: People's Champ 5 Build"

118K views 327 replies 63 participants last post by  Rigidspeedtwin 
#1 · (Edited)
OK, I know a lot of you have seen my girder fork thread, so a bit of this is rehash, but I wanted to get some of this stuff on here chronologically. If you read the fork thread, you can probably read the beginning of post 1 and then jump to post 4. I posted this over on another (the other) forum that prefers angle grinders to machine tools (but I still love them). It's going to seem like a huge blast right off the bat, sorry about that. I'll update it as I go from now on. Maybe print it out in full color on your company's printer and go read it in the shitter, IDK.

So, a bit of backstory, everyone who knows me knows I talk about this thing all the time. I was trying to keep it on the DL online because I was trying to get invited to a "cool" event like born free or Brooklyn. I've since decided that I'm just a nobody and don't really deserve to be invited anywhere. Maybe sometime in the future. Also I am simply just not good at selling myself on social media, so here's where I'm at and I'll update this as I go.

Basically the whole project started like this, a titled basket 1940 EL motor.



By now I've accumulated basically all OEM (not year correct, though) external parts. I'm going to use S&S/Jims/Andrews internals. The motor will be mostly stock. I don't plan on making it anything other than clean, I want to leave all the "wear" marks in the parts that have accumulated over the last 75 years. Sort of like how I shined up this cam cover:



For the sake of the story, not much has happened with the motor, I've been too busy with other things to really dick with that. Also, for the sake of the story this is going to be a little out of order, but no one's probably reading any of this anyway.
I wanted to build a fork for this build, so here's the story of that:
Drew it in cad.







Got castings made from 3d printed wax off cad models. Material is 316L. This is not inexpensive, but I don't spend much money on things besides motorcycles, so it was within budget. All said and done I have into this what a nice condition early springer would cost.



Had to machine the castings. Fixturing these was often difficult and quite a learning experience for me.























 
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#311 ·
Fuck man. Of course you swept the course.

I think that transmission takes the cake alone... the front end being a close second. But theres something more impressive to me about something that radically reimagines and interfaces with an existing component vs a greenfield design (although impressive as hell).

Contrats nonetheless.
 
#313 ·
NO one had a chance....everyone knew they were jockeying for second place when you brought that mutha in.

Sad really.....Now you have to do something like make a flathead powered hover car or something crazy to top it. You only have yourself to blame Newman. Damn it!!!
 
#320 ·
I'm just amazed that something can look so smooth and cohesive, and yet nothing on it is "standard" in any way. Everywhere your eyes fall is another completely one-off detail, but they all flow together to create a deceptively simple appearing whole. Incredible job Newman. Don't try to top it, you'll just go insane. Hell, even maintaining this level of detail on future projects might push you over the edge, LOL.
 
#321 ·
...not my style but your work is Ten out of Ten; also as I mentioned before, all the parts look perfectly assembled, very cohesive and interacts great finishing with flow pleasant lines.

---my question if may I is: what happens with the bike after the exposure in BF9? I do not mean the reactions but the possibilities. You won something there? (you deserve that)
Did you sold the bike?
Etc.

Thanks
 
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