Barn Find Harley

I pulled & opened up the motor last night....The good news is the lower end looks fine, rolls smoothly. A few little rust goobers on the flywheels, but nothing that can't be cleaned up. The cam case looks good, although 3 of the lifters are stuck in their bores. The front cylinder slid off just fine, but the rear....

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This is after I cleaned out a tablespoons worth of rust debris. It is definately 'rust welded'. I have it soaking with some super-duper penetrating oil I got at an industrial supply house, "Pro One XPL-101", which according to them kicks PBB's ass. I'll let it soak for a while, then try some heat on the barrel and see if it will break loose. If not, perhaps I'll take a sawzall to the wrist pin.
But I am as pleased as one could be that the crankcase is not full of rust & water. There is hope!

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Jack, yeah I remember when 80" was a stroker hotrod and 84" (by offset machining the UL wheels to accept the larger diameter FL crankpin) was a bigass stroker.....
Getting to work on this bike was prompted by the recent death of one of the very few remaining old timer bike shop men here, he was the man I was planning to deal with for parts & help. Crusty old fart, he'd just tell you to go to hell if you walked in and asked for a Kuriakin air cleaner. But when it came to shovels, pans, knucks & flatties, he knew his stuff and had tons of parts. He was building a Buick nailhead V8 powered bike (or is it an Olds Rocket engine? I forget). It's up to rolling chassis as it sits now.
Anyway, his shop is being sold off, all those parts are going to be scattered around who knows where, so I thought I'd better jump on this while I had a chance to get some stuff I will need.

Marvin will be missed....There are fewer & fewer of them left.....
 
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Couple of trips with a 400 grit hone and that cylinder will be good as new! Glad to hear the lower end is semi-OK too.

And crusty old farts are some of the best sources of information! IT's a shame they all go away.
 
I'd rather be doing what you're doing. I'm setting in a hotel room in Atlanta watching TV and VetteMod.:hi::crap:
 
TimAT said:
I'd rather be doing what you're doing. I'm setting in a hotel room in Atlanta watching TV and VetteMod.:hi::crap:
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Same here, cant even get close to the garage these days, I'm on the road a lot
it's snowing, slippery crap.

I'd rather play in the garage than slip slide with the big truck.
 
I don't think that piston's coming loose....

Over 2 months soaking in PBB & ATF while on the bike, then 2 weeks while engine apart with constant soaking with PBB & periodic heat & smacking.....Tonight's efforts yielded this result:

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OK, I think I'll take a sawzall to the wrist pin from below (it's at about BDC so it's closer there than going in through the top of the piston), through the piston meat to try to save the con rod. (Seal up the crankcase of course).

Any thoughts? Anybody ever tried that? I never tried to saw a wrist pin before--how hard are they?
 
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I'm pretty sure wrist pins are the hardest stuff in the world [almost] I recall reading that they are made of 'tool steel'. Pretty hard stuff. Do you have a pin laying around that you can try? Better yet go to a HD dealer and see if they can give you an old pin to experiment on. If that dosn't fly, I still have my old shovel slugs around somewhere from when I went to .010 over wiseco's. If you really want me to I could dig one out and try and draw a hacksaw across the surface of the pin. Pretty sure it won't even mark it. Now if you could fit a grinder wheel in there......
 
Shit that's what I was afraid of.....I was hoping they were only surface hardened...I dunno, the cylinder is probably junk anyway, maybe I should cut it off & then cut the piston off....The lower end feels good so I'm trying not to have to split the wheels....
(I'm being Turtlehog with this bike :D)
 
Have you tried beating around the outside of the cylinder with brass/soft hammer? Just thinking out loud but keep it soaking, put as much heat as you can to the outside and start beating as hard as you dare around the outside where the rings are. Something else that worked for me years ago of all things is parafin wax. Old time machine shops use it to remove pipe plugs in engine blocks. I had a 1/4 pipe plug stuck in a block that there was no way I could get out. Talked to an old guy at a machine shop. He told me about the wax. It came out right away. I almost was sceptical how quickly it came out, like had previously loosened it. It's worth a try I guess. Just melt it in and in and in.
Frank
 
Last one I broke free was in a TR Bonneville, my wood did the same as yours. So I used a solid of square aluminum rod, like 1" by 1", screwed the piston top all to hell. Slowly broke it free. Man was a good feeling it was.
 
:yahoo: Woo Hoo! I got the cylinder off! About 3 weeks ago I made a puller from an HD clutch hub puller & a couple scraps of bedframe angle iron and torqued it tight. I kept it soaked in PB Blaster & gave it a twist each day, with heat & smacking the cylinder base every few days. (Did you know PB Blaster turns to jelly when you heat it? But add some more & stir it and you have liquid again--more viscous, but liquid.)
Anyway, last week I gave it a crank and it moved a little! I started working it: Smack around the cylinder base, crank the puller, repeat. 1/16" at a time, took 45 minutes, but I got it apart!:bounce:
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You think I can just clean up this piston & the jug & run them?:D
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The rest of the engine has come apart very nicely, the lifters came out of their bores just fine, even the valves came out of the guides smoothly--I think I'm past the worst of the tear-down. Now it's on to the clean & reassemble.
I got a lot of bearings, seals, etc. & other misc parts for very little money from Marv's place, so that helps a lot. Still many things to purchase, but I can take my time.
The cases are in the solvent tank, washing some of the 'mud' out before I split them. My hot rod buddies just got a new hot-jet washer for their shop---oh yeah! That will help a lot with this old crusted crap.
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Any broken lands? Bead blast that puppy, re-ring it, and jam it back in. You can't kill those things, just like a hit-n-miss one lunger.
 
I got rid of it....

about a month ago.

Every time I looked at it I saw more cobbled up, fucked up stuff. Stripped or crossthreaded nuts & bolts & parts, JB weld & silicone sealer & baling wire, virtually every piece on the bike was rusted busted bent wasted corroded & editededitededitededitededitededited-rigged. (It brought me almost to tears on more than one occasion, thinking 'How could somebody do this to an innocent machine?') It would have cost twice as much to make it run as would be to just buy a running bike. Plus, it has no title & a mismatched frame.
It's just a collection of mostly fucked up parts, many now unusable.
Fuck it.
It was too depressing to keep walking around it in my shop, teasing me--especially since I'm in a mode of getting rid of possesions & crap, removing clutter, simplifying my life right now. I got other more important stuff to be concentrating on at this time.
So I sold it to a local guy who builds old bikes. One of those guys to whom 'late model' means 12 volt electrics. Got $1500 for it: a fair price after coming to see what condition it truly was in. Gave $500 of it to my favorite charity the next day.

It's gone. I miss it, but I feel more relief than regret.

John
 
Some times a guys just gotta do it. We're kids anymore tho sometimes we think we are and drag home projects like that. H-D, H-unert D-ollars every time ya turn around. Gotta be more than $1500 worth of parts on the old girl tho. Oh well, she'll live again someday......:drink:
 
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