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There we were, enjoying the completed restoration of a 1948 61-inch Panhead when Jesse James said, “Why don’t you run these?” “Run what?” I asked. “These cobbled-together, dual-carbed heads,” he muttered, setting them on the bench. I looked at them with the intrigue of a man who can’t ever leave anything alone. They were 40 years old and looked every minute of it. The Panhead started first kick and rumbled around town like a dream machine. There’s that deep feeling of satisfaction knowing that a bike has no weak links. It’s tight and right and will run for God knows how long, so don’t fuck with it. On the other hand, those heads called to me. Imagine, I could have a bone stock Panhead (almost), but it would sport two carburetors sticking out the left side. I jammed into the Bikernet headquarters and made a couple calls. One was to Joe Minton, who knows carburetors like the back of his hand. He listened to my description, then said, “I know what you need.” “What’s that?” I asked. “Your fuckin’ head examined!” he said. “But if you must take a perfectly good motorcycle and turn it into a tuning nightmare, you need to run two 42 mm Mikunis.” We discussed various carbs from S&S to old Linkerts and kept coming back to the Mikunis. The Linkerts were too heavy and would stick out too far, but the Mikunis, with the variable venturi slide, would tend to balance themselves with the intake vacuum. I ordered two polished 42-mm jobs and made one other call, to Baisley’s Performance in Oregon. They are renowned racers and performance builders who four years ago were threatening to build dual-carbed Evo heads. I wanted a set bad, but I had these Panheads. Dan Baisley told me to send them in, and they went to work on them. I got the heads back six months later. The Baisleys had done everything to these puppies, including new valves and roller rockers (on a Pan?). They rebuilt the lifter blocks and rocker arms. They retooled the head bold inserts and faced the head to barrel surfaces. They even repaired the holes for securing the tins. Then the handmade ports were filled with a special epoxy, carved out and ported for flow. I kept the heads in my office on display as an example of quality workmanship and innovation. I talked about ’em constantly until Nancy put them in a box beside the back door and forced me to take them to my garage. Trouble was, in order to install them, the bike would need to be changed somewhat. The push throttle would have to go, along with the manual advance distributor. Since the bars would go, I decided to install 4-inch Custom Cycle Engineering risers with dogbones. I started collecting parts while still riding the rumbling beast. It ran so well that I wasn’t anxious to touch a bolt. I kept collecting — grips, bars (had ’em black powdercoated) and a top tree from Paughco. I picked up an old-style throttle and rubber grips from Custom Chrome and I thought I had the final elements. One day while under the influence of some strange numbing narcotic, Nuutboy and I decided to tear into the well-running Panhead. A tear ran down my cheek as I put my first wrench to her. At the time, there were two other running bikes in the Bikernet headquarters. We tore the tanks off the Pan, drained them and carefully laid them on clean towels. Then we pulled the heads, being careful not to disturb the exhaust system. Upon examining the slick walls of the cylinders, I noticed some scoring. The scoot only had 800 miles on her, but we pulled the cylinders.
The theory was that the walls were gas soaked, removing the lubricant and scoring the walls when the bike fired to life. Lee Clemens of Departure Bike Works always stands behind his engine work so he asked me to send the barrels and pistons back to him. As punishment for tearing into the ’48, both the Touring Chopper and the Excelsior-Henderson went down. Fuck! One day we have a headquarters housing three hard-running motorcycles, the next day they all quit. What a mess. We fixed the others while waiting for Pan parts to arrive. When they were dropped on the Bikernet porch, we finally set to work. You can check the riser installation in another tech, but that wasn’t a breeze. The tree that Ron at Paughco sent was straight and true and my stock springer tree/handlebar mount was off-set, a rarity from the late ’40s. We fucked with the straight one for hours to make it work, only to discover we made it face the wrong direction so the pinch bolts were on the wrong side. It was one of those things that make you want to throw the defective component through a window. Instead, we attacked the Bikernet iron pile to see who could curl the most weight to relieve the frustration, then went back to work. We modified the tree again, the tension abated. With the blacked-out handlebars in place, the barrels honed and new pistons in hand, we just needed to bolt the tins on the heads and start to re-install the top end. The tins didn’t fit. Could the problem have anything to do with the Baisley-installed red anodized valve spring collars? I looked at modifying the classic steel tins, but there’s not much to work with there. They’re basically just tin. I made some calls to knowledgeable folk who both wanted to know what was wrong with me. They said they didn’t fuck with Panheads anymore. “Dual carbs on a Pan? Are you out of your mind?” they wanted to know. Finally, someone told me that many of the new Pan lids don’t work. “New Pan lids are made from old ones in Taiwan,” said the big guy from Custom Chrome. “Sometimes they stamp them too small.” I was sent two more sets, but neither was any good. I reflected again on grinding the inside of the offending tins or just beating them senseless with a sledgehammer. Then it dawned on me that I had a set of old dinged tins hanging about the headquarters–they fit with room to spare. They were also aluminum and light, but somewhat dented and abused. The sealing lip on the base of the tin was uneven, but we went to work on them. We sanded and soaked them in solvent. We carefully hammered the lip against a flat surface until the lips were straight, and finally with a base of thick glass we faced the bottom surface for a proper gasket seal with 240-grit wet and dry sandpaper. With the tins cleaned and preened, we rattle-canned them with barbecue flat black then baked them in the Bikernet oven for an hour at 500 degrees. With the heads thoroughly cleaned, we primed each rocker with oil, placed the felt insulators on top of the rocker blocks and put the tins in place over patent Custom Chrome cork gaskets. Then we began the tedious job of buttoning the heads shut. Each fastener was run down until it touched the ring. Then a series of trips were made around each tin, gradually tightening the screws a quarter-turn each. Once they were comfortably snug, I criss-crossed my tightening procedure for a complete seal–I prayed. We sprayed the barrels with the same heat paint but no baking was necessary because of the curing effects running cylinders would generate. The barrels were ready to install in 20 minutes, but first the pistons had to be placed on the rods. These pistons had the old-style wrist pin and we went to the special tool drawer for the wrist-pin keeper tool. Hell, I had used it only 20 years ago. It was nowhere to be found, although one of JIMS spiro-lock tools was where it belonged. Unfortunately even after attempting to modify the tool, destroying it for its original purpose (don’t do that), it still wouldn’t work.
 As you can see from the photo, we carefully engineered another equally impressive tool and after only two hours of constant struggle mounted the wrist pins, slipped the barrels in place over Permatex glued gaskets and the cylinders were ready for the heads.
 If you want a Panhead to work properly and last, you must take your time with the exhaust sealing at the heads. A loose seal will kill performance and burn valves. I generally wrap the spigot with a strip of aluminum beer can, then work the pipe up over the flange and cinch it down.
 I’ve often cut additional cinch grooves in the header, and with channel-lock pliers pulled out each tab so that the header would slip over the exhaust flange. Be careful. If the fitment between the pipe and the spigot is loose enough, I use thick exhaust gasket material from an auto parts store. In this case, the spigots had been replaced by Baisley’s with heavy-duty aluminum tubing and carefully welded. Nuutboy cut the dead Coke can into 5/8-inch sheet strips of aluminum gasket and we slipped one around the front header. The rear was very tight and we were unable to work the can between the head and the tight pipe. I always use top-quality Custom Chrome stainless steel clamps to pull the pipes into place, but only after the head has been torqued down. We happened to have a set of Gardner-Wescott chromed allen head bolts and washers. I wouldn’t recommend using these unless you have some special, easy-to-use Allen tool. They’re a bitch to twist into place with standard Allen tools, even socket allens. Part Two We installed and adjusted the pushrods, then went to the fun side of the bike.
 We had the Mikunis and some S&S style flanges. We had scoured several auto parts stores to find hoses, but discovered the rubber flanges would work perfectly without any extension, if we could make a bracket that would hold the carbs to the top motormount. We also discovered that the push cable bracket was going to hit the tank. Nuutboy had the bright idea that if we could muster a shaft long enough to go through both throttle mechanisms, it would allow us to use one throttle cable and we could disconnect one of the throttle springs for an easier pull. Lee Chaffin from Mikuni recommended that we speak to Nigel Patrick of Patrick Racing for the shaft since Nigel has a manifold for dual Mikunis. After digging through the junk drawer for an hour, we had a formula. The flanges fit perfectly on the head spickets and are sealed with hose clamps, then the carbs fit in the other side of the compression fitting, which tucked the carb up against the heads as much as possible.
 It’s been years since I made one. My hand shook as I tried the intricate brass welding to weave the spokes into the wheel, but I finally rigged the contraption and it seemed to work. We sprayed it with gloss black Rustoleum, but we’re not sure we like it. It may need to be chromed. We dug through the boxes of old parts in the headquarters until we found an automatic advance distributor and replaced the manual one, then re-timed the engine.
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