Friend of the industry Marc Frantz has all reasons to be excited. He just got an immaculate 1946 Harley-Davidson Knucklehead. This 74” is a low compression “Model F” (only 418 were produced) and it was fully restored from the ground up by the renovation masters at Milestone Restoration in British Columbia (these guys restore bikes for the Chandler, Guggenheim & Barber Motorsports museums). Has all original sheet metal, correct plastic kick pedal and hand grips, etc. Looks gorgeous in Dove Grey & Black. Milestone Motorcycle Restoration.
This is nice.
Right on Marc what a beauty!
congrats on your rare find.
Mmmmm, that’s a nice looking machine… a rare find indeed.
RE:
“…only 418 were produced…”
Now that makes it one exclusive ride.
Ride-em if ya got-em……. 🙂
-nicker-
Restoration of an OEM machine is relatively easy.
All of the OEM parts in this machine were hand fit together by someone else (the Harley factory most likely), sometime during their life. It makes the re-fitting of the parts a matter of stripping, painting or re-plating and then simply bolting together.
Try building something that looks like this, totally out of re-pop parts. Yea……it’ll set you on a curb crying like a baby. 🙂
Restoration is like ……cheating.
Actually restoring can be quite the opposite. In some cases we’re looking for hidden problems and overcoming factory defects and experience certainly counts. There have been many Indians in my shop and still continue to be shipped in that have been restored elsewhere that we have to straighten out. For us it is like an archeological dig which can be quite taxing even to the best of the experts.
“In some cases we’re looking for hidden problems and overcoming factory defects and experience certainly counts.”
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Yea, same thing with repop. Daily.
No doubt about it Kirk, you are 100% correct. Either way it’s not a walk in the park if it’s going to be done properly. And just like modern bike building in general, there are builders and there are builders.
Hats off to Milestone Restorations and to you, Kiwi Mike, for putting many fine Historical bikes on the road for us to see.
Thanks,
Howard
“Either way it’s not a walk in the park.”
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Actually, my comments were misleading. I’m a bitter person.
The repop OHV manufacturing is getting awesomely professional in their presentation of Chinese hydraulic and solid lifters, tappet blocks and nobody’s quacked to much over the last 5 yrs about 74″ cylinders or pistons.
The Frame Factory has the rigid Pan frames meeting up with Dennis Corso’s rigid frame 4-piece exhaust. And we’ve yet to see the new 3.5 tanks unveiled, but we will.
If the repop parts situation weren’t getting bettter, by the year, I would have bailed to another hobby.
I think the manufacturers of Indian repop parts pay closer attention to getting them made right, from the start. There seems to be less “Non-Indian” people involved in making the parts, than Knuckle & Pan Harley. The non-Knuckle & Pan people that are allowed to be involved in the decision making screw everything up.
“Design by Committee” doesn’t work with early OHV Big Twin motorcycles or clothing concepts either.
Yes, they did a nice restoration job on this one museum piece. Keep the motor history alive, with a live example of what was correct for 1946.
If Bill Harley would have invented the vacuum recirculating OHV motor in earlier times, he would have been burned at the stake as a sorcerer. Imagine his gall in 1936, cutting some fin area off the top of a set of flatheads, pounding valve guides through a sandwich of tin cans and asbestos washers, then as a documented after-thought, when faced with bathing the rider in a never ending spray of top end oil; he sits over the drafting table and figures out (1937-38) how the vacuum created in his revolving breather gear can pull collected oil out of his tin cans…..if he only can add some 1/8″ oil lines and poke some holes in different areas of the hardened rocker arms. Yea right, get out your electric drill. 🙂
Oh, the dis-similar metal of it all……and the humanity of different expansion rates…..it’s the work of the devil……. (thinks!)…. BURN HIM!!!!!!!!! BUURRRRRRRRRRRRRN HIM! 🙂
Resto or Repop…….
RE:
“… not a walk in the park …”
But then if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.
But they aint……. 🙂
-nicker-
I have a license to preach from the Universal Life Church (paid 100 bucks for it way back). I would gladly volunteer as the arch pope, and found the “1936-1958 OHV Big Twin Church”. No dues – Just volunteers to sue the state and federal government, to let us build one emissions exempt kit bike in California and anywhere else anyone wanted to build one. We’ll make concessions. Only one kit bike per family member (unless they live 200 miles away). We’ll enlist the help of http://ancestry.com/ and provide a print-out of our family tree at the DMV, to prove residence(s).
• We’ll make sure than they all have “Mello-Tone” mufflers, so they sound good. We’ll create OEM (cigar) replica glass-pacs. Nice back-pressured old Big Twins. Makes everybody within hearing distance smile.
• If you don’t help us fight for our kit-build rights, they will lump us in with cars and trucks. Some of those “polluting trucks” are going to get a pass. WE WANT A PASS. We can get one. We need a state (C.A.R.B) and federal injunction to wake them us.
• They will take the ’36-58 motors away from us. But they won’t if we become a religion and hire a (contingency) attorney.
• We already have a website at http://hydra-glide.com/ We can knock a wall out for a “shop” to post info. There’s plenty of room over there. It’s run by insomniacs.
Kirk,
You are an absolute ass. I would punch you in the face if I could meet you.
Great job on the bike Eldon.
Zombe