Wow, what an incredible report this will be. It covers final assembly and the road to Bonneville for the 2006 Bikernet Adventure. Talk about an exploit. Also, this build was fraught with abnormalities. At one point I wondered what the hell I was doing? At several other junctures I was like a kid in a candy store with a bag of quarters. In one case the V-Bike kit offered opportunities and solutions. Then I would blunder into another experience and felt like pounding myself with a crescent wrench. But I gotta say that this bike turned out to be an amazing quest, and that’s what it’s all about, right? I hope so, goddamnit.
Generally this John Reed designed frame makes working on a bike project a breeze. Everything fits and is accessible. Unlike a lot of bikes, I could reach the battery, all sides of the engine, the brakes, wiring and the gas tank slips off without a chore. I actually discovered that I could work on the bike, remove the engine, reach all the wiring without taking the tank off. I could leave the cross-over line in place, undo one bolt at the rear of the tank, jack it up to clear everything and leave the feed line to the carb in place.
Let’s see if I can capture the time scenerio. I returned from Sturgis on the 12th of August. The Paint by Jim Murillo and Yvonne Mecialis was completed the next week, the 19th. The following week the Engine arrived from Accurate Engineering, the 23th, after being lost in Yellow Freight's cave of desire . Talk about a scramble, like eggs in a frying pan on run morning. Toss in the salsa, grab a cup of joe and go. She’s damn hot looking engine and tough, but she didn’t drop into place. I had less than a week to mount her, tune the bitch, build another set of Salt Flats exhaust, break in the bitch and hit the street for a 600 mile run to Bonneville.
We planned to pull out on Wednesday the 31st. Racing was scheduled to start on the 3rd and run to the 7th, right smack in the middle of the Labor Day rush. That’s always a heavy consideration for LA residents.
I went to work. I discovered my case vent oil fitting smacked the return fitting on the transmission based oil bag. Whatta drag. The vent fitting had to be removed. I re-tapped the 1/8 pipe threads in the tranny oil bag case and re-installed the fitting, but it still didn’t clear the case. A portion of the STD cast aluminum needed to be ground away.
Next I removed the fitting and put the engine back in the frame. The oil line fitting still rubbed against the case, but the case still needed to vent. You can imagine the jangled nerves anytime you’re working on a completed engine and there’s a possibility of slipping a metal shaving into an oil line. I plugged the case vent hole with a rubber cap, like the one above, over the fitting.
I checked with the boss of Accurate, Berry and with Wil Phillips, of True-Track, also a master machinist. Then I went to work, grinding the case, drilling and taping a new hole for another breather fitting under the case.
I needed the fitting to be deep enough in the threads to allow me to grind 3/16-inch off the case material away, install a new plug and have room for the new breather fitting. I measured it over and over, ground the precious case material away, then drilled my first guide hole.
Burning through my last weekend I installed the engine, loose and used the BDL inner primary plate to pull the engine and trans into alignment. With Gard Hollinger’s, LA County ChopRods machining I had a semi-mid controls shifter mechanism in place.
I was getting damn close to a running motorcycle. I double checked my fork installation and modified a Progressive Suspension shock spanner wrench to fit the Paioli neck fasteners. I stamped it, so I could find the bastard in the future.
I damaged my ISR high/low beam switch, and found a replacement at a local electronics store. Not quite the same size, it turned into hours of fucking with it to make it fit.
The throttle cables were part of the V-Bike kit, but I ordered a separate throttle housing and the cable ends were designed for late model housings. I couldn’t find the right housing, so I modified this cheap one, greased the Rolling Sixes grip and oiled the cables. Remember, build everything as if it will run forever.
For some reason, wait, I know, the tranny vent stuck straight into the air and needed a formed oil line to aim down so it wouldn’t collect water or debri. I dug around, but couldn’t find one. We scrambled through boxes of fittings and junk and came up with the above solution. Works fine. It’s an old car hydraulic brake hose.
With one more fastener in place on the dash for extra support, it was time to see if she would fly. Nyla’s son and Dr. Hamster loaded the Salt Shaker with fuel and we were ready to rock. We thought. She wouldn’t fire, but kicked back. We shut down Sunday afternoon so I could investigate.
On Monday the 28th of August, Glenn and Kerry Priddle arrived from Australia. That’s when we started to get shit done. Glenn was tremendous help all through the Bonneville process. While Nyla headed to the airport, I scrambled to make the Shaker start.
I’m going to back up for a second and tell you about all my wild fuck-ups and how each one had a positive ending. Unbelievable, right? Some of these are a tad embarrassing, but what the fuck. Hopefully they will help other builders and brothers in the future.
Berry set up the engine to be a dual-fire, dual-plug-per-cylinder system with a Mallory electronic ignition distributor. I used “Bandit’s Common Sense” through the wiring process. I had the coils wired in parallel, but she wouldn’t fire. In fact she kicked back so hard she broke teeth off the BDL clutch ring gear. Berry Wardlaw was out of town, so I investigated through other sources.
One source was convinced my wiring was correct, but the timing was out. I made a narrow felt pen mark on the Mallory distributor/base and rotated the distributor clockwise ¼ turn to retard the timing. Then I attempted to return the positive battery cable to the starter. I couldn’t readily find the stainless nut for the copper stud on the solenoid, so I grabbed a fresh nut, although I suspected the stud had metric threads. The coarse thread lock nut went right on until the nut fully concealed the stud, then it bound. With the next throw of the wrench, the shaft pivoted and something arced in the chrome solenoid. The puppy fried, just as I was about to start the engine—I thought.
As soon as Glenn set his bag on the floor, we jammed out to Spyke’s new location, since I thought the starter was a Spyke unit. It wasn’t, but Bill McCahill saved my ass. Then I had to find another Odessy gell battery. I smoked the brand new one. We found one at a local Long Beach speed shop and returned to the Bikernet Headquarters. Scan
That morning Berry arrived in Alabama and e-mailed me a detailed wiring diagram for the coils and told me to return the distributor to the original timing setting. “It’s timed perfectly,” he said over the phone. His wiring diagram showed the coils wired in series. We hooked it up and immediately the motor fired to life. In a sense I was glad the starter failed when it did. I could have damaged other components.
Next, before we fired this 120-inch Accurate baby to life, we pulled the plugs and turned it over to insure lubrication throughout the engine. I did so with an oil line yanked from the Harley-Davidson Oil cooler and watched for fresh oil to bubbling out. It did and I felt confident the oil lines were fastened appropriately. I called several partners to confirm touring model, oil line placement (with the oil tank under the Baker transmission). Again, I was about to hook them up using “Bandit’s Law”. Most guys didn’t mess with touring trannys. I checked my 2003 Road King Manual, but it was a twin-cam—different deal. I finally received a response. Bandit’s Law was off-base. I thought for sure the bottom, tranny oil fitting was the feed, center-return and the top, the vent. My source (names are removed to protect the guilty), called for the bottom being the return and the center, the feed. The starter drill confirmed the oil circulation, and I was good to go, I thought.
I fired it and ran it, but the oil indicator light didn’t work on the Wire Plus dash. We immediately replaced the new oil sender switch. The light still didn’t go out. I pulled the line off the oil filter and oil pumped out. I thought I faced a wiring problem, then the light went out for a quick second, then returned.
Talk about perplexed. I was going out of my mind. I took if for her first test ride around the block, but she wouldn’t shift into second—a small linkage adjustment. I returned after one block. She would shift into neutral, but not second. The oil light was still lit. Then the Devil called from Houston as we adjusted the shift linkage. I asked him, since he recently performed a major custom job on a Road King, but it also was a twin-cam.
”Hey,” Kent said, “pull the bottom line off the oil bag. If it spews oil, it’s the feed.”
“Damn,” I thought. “Why didn’t I think of that?” I yanked it and it puked oil onto our lift. I pulled the center-line and it was bone dry. That confirmed it, but it didn’t jive with the oil coming out of the oil cooler. Berry runs all his motors, so I could only ascertain that the engine was shipped full of oil and it was picking it up from the crankcase. We rerouted the lines and the oil light went out immediately. I took it for another ride. She was beginning to hum, but my speedo didn’t work, nor did the tach.
Again we thought for sure the wiring was cool. I picked up the supplied paper work and the bold faced, underlined copy hit me in the mug. “This device will not run straight off the coil (even with an adapter). If you are installing this device on a stock bike with a tach wire, be sure that the wire provided does not run to the negative side of the coil. Check for wire color and continuity at both locations (tach and coil) to determine if the tach wire is connected to the coil. Improper connection of this wire will burn out the tach input and void your warranty.”
The wire was connected to the coil. I was fucked. The only gray element was the statement about the negative side of the coil. So, of course, I moved it to the other side of the coil, since it didn’t seem to have a positive or negative marking.
Since Bonneville, a number of alternative recommendations surfaced including a speedo that runs off a satellite. I like this puppy so I’m sending it back to the factory for fixing or replacement. They are now making a unit that will run off the cable. I’ve also since found out that if the transmission sensor is not within .060 of the transmission trigger, if won’t read the signal. Since I’m not running a Rev Tech Transmission, but a Baker, I may need to check that connection. I’ll check everything, goddamnit.
So there you have the glitches in this seemingly perfect custom motorcycle scenario. We we’re burnin’ daylight. Our plan was to ride out to Bonneville on Wednesday, then we moved it to Thursday and ultimately Friday. I’ll toss in the Wink Eller’s Bonneville run Formula. Wink, from BDL, has been one of my most helpful mentors during this process.
“I’m always running late or waiting for a part,” Wink told me. “I can’t get out of town early, so I make it to State Line and spend the night. Then we get up early, blast through Vegas and roll to the Flats.” That made a lot of sense, so we didn’t press ourselves to rise at the crack of dawn and hit the road.
State line from LA is 250 miles, then it’s another 400 to Bonneville. But we hadn’t even pulled out yet. We had a couple more days and we still needed to align the bike with the help of Wil Phillips. He was manufacturing a custom steering stabilizer system for the Salt Shaker and needed to mount it. We had to build short struts and another set of exhaust designed for the salt. We burned through another day, and got up at the crack of dawn.
The next night I rode the bike to Gard Hollinger’s LA ChopRods and he pointed to my front fender brackets. “You don’t have much travel with them mounted to the lower legs like that,” Gard said. “See if you can turn them over.” I made a feeble mental note.
Berry conferred with Dave Rash of D&D Exhaust in Texas. Dave has a Bonneville V-Bike and tests exhaust systems constantly. “We don’t sell anything that doesn’t perform,” Dave said.
Dave and the D&D crew shipped me a box full of exhaust pieces and Berry sent me another set of exhaust flanges and gaskets. Glenn and I went to work to make a set of two-into-two, 39-inch exhaust pipes that started with the following percentages:
1-3/4 inch for 25 percent
1-7/8-inch for 34 percent
2-inch for 41 percent
Or
1-3/4-inch 9.75 inches
1-7/8-inch for 13.26 inches
And 2-inch for 15.99 inches
Okay, we still needed some 2-inch pipe and a chunk of 2.25-inch for additional tuning. We hit San Pedro Muffler and West Coast Choppers for some scrap materials and returned to the Headquarters to jam. Wil Phillips showed up that night and started to install the steering damper. Every night since Glenn arrived we worked until 2:00 a.m.
Wil is an engineer of the highest order and I’m a hack, rat-bike builder. From time to time he wandered past and sneered over his glasses. “What the hell do you think you’re doing,” Wil asked?
I was filling gaps in the pipes and smoothing welds with my torch and a length of hanger.
You can’t use hanger,” Wil spat. “Check with any welder web site. Hanger is made out of shit and pot metal.”
“But goddamnit,” I said, “My pappy used hanger forever.” I’ve been burning hanger for 35 years. Sure, it pops and smokes. Sometimes it helps if I sand the paint off it. Okay, so I learned something.
“Are you going to test those pipes,” Will said as we were getting close to finishing them and Glenn soaked the Lone Star exhaust wrap?
I looked up like a lost puppy. I needed more information. How was I going to pressurize these chunks of pipe? Water was the answer and Glenn filled each pipe with water and sure-as-shit found leaks. I welded them and we proceeded to wrap the pipes with that scratchy shit.
Rodan, an SCTA official, and Bonneville racer for 30 years, stopped by and gave me the rundown to meet the safety requirements. I needed a steel chain guard. I needed to safety-wire the front axle. Plus we needed a primary belt guard. Glenn and I hit a performance joint and bought the safety wire and twister tool. He went to work on the front end and I made the chain guard
So we used the safety wire instead of hose clamps to attach the heat wrap to the pipes. We carefully slipped the pipes aside and out of Wil’s view. Then turned to assist the master of the True-Track with the stabilizer install.
Wil oversaw the entire suspension system on the V-Bike, and if you’re building or restoring a FXR or touring rubbermounted system, you might take notes. If there are no adjustable slots in the frame for the front motormount, it’s not a bad notion to run a 3/8 bolt through the front motormount into the front rubbermounting bisquit for some side-to-side adjustment. We eliminated the goofy rubber insulated bushings in the swingarm and replaced them with oil bronze swingarm bushings with the taper to the inside. We used rear rubber biscuits from a late-model Buell.
“They won’t work on stock frames,” Wil warned. He used them on his rubbertail frames and they’ll work on aftermarked frames with some trimming. That night we aligned the bike vertically, then the engine in the frame. Then we made sure the driveline was aligned with the frame. Then we confirmed that the rear wheel was adjust correctly with a measurement from the swingarm axle to the rear axle on both sides. Then it got tricky with measuring to make sure the front wheel was aligned with the rear.
On top of the bike work, Nyla and Kerry were chasing down 5-Ball Racing uniforms, and planning the packing side of the trip. We took pop-ups, chairs, and On-Sites to catch any mess, coolers, clothes and a Bandit’s Bedroll full of tools and spare parts. The Chop and Grind gang scheduled to haul their entire shop, so I thought tools were covered and they were and more. The clock was ticking.
I attempted to ride the bike every night, but we still needed to build the primary chain guard, flop the front fender brackets and make a rough fuse safety kill switch. We ran to Phillips steel for a chunk of stainless and to a truck parts joint in Wilmington for a fuse. Get this. I bought two tether handlebar kill switches, one for the 45 Flathead, and I needed another for the Salt Shaker. The first trick was finding one for 1-inch American bars. I monkeyed around with one, then took the unit off the 45 and installed it on the Shaker with a duct tape spacer. Getting close I started to wire the sucker and discovered that this bastard made a connection, didn’t sever the connection from the coil. It was meant to ground a magneto. That’s when I made the call to Rodan, “Help.”
Get this, we wired a simple glass 30-amp fuse between the Hot wire to the coil and the coil. I attached the sprung plastic tether line from the fuse with a tie-wrap and we were golden. If Val left the bike the tether would pull the fuse and kill the engine. Crude, but it worked.
I taught Glenn how to use Japanese Jay’s plasma cutter. After he carefully made a pattern for the primary guard, he went to work, diligently designing then fabricating the cover. We burned through another long night. After several tests I rode the bike again and we prepared for our run for the salt. The bike was running fine. The 120-Pan started like a dream. The first set of pipes we made didn’t rattle windows around the neighborhood. I was ready to rock—I thought.
Friday morning we packed, took our time and readied to roll at 11:00, ducking out of town, before the Labor Day rush kicked our asses. Glenn and I made a quick gas run to top-off and the bike was a kick to ride, except I noted a knocking sound. When we returned, we pulled Glenn’s primary guard and checked the engine and transmission pulleys. Good thing, they were loose. For some reason using the impact gun didn’t tighten them completely. We used a long ratched to snug them down once driven on with the air gun. I fired her up and she was good to go, no knockin’.
It felt extremely light and easy to handle. I was dying to nail the throttle, but Berry gave me very specific break-in instructions and I held to the Commanders requests as we rolled down Anaheim Boulevard toward West Coast Choppers.
A block before the neon Iron Cross we slipped onto the Long Beach freeway and motored north. The Salt Shaker dipped into traffic and breezed from lane to lane darting in and out of a sea of 18-wheelers and commuters. I spotted our first transition, 1.5 miles ahead, the 105 freeway leading us across Long Beach South toward the 605 freeway. Just about to signal a lane change, with Glenn along side me, on the blacked out Bikernet King, and the Shaker sputtered and quit. I was in number 2 lane surrounded by industrial traffic.
I signaled, pulled in the clutch and dipped toward the emergency lane. Talk about a roll of the dice. I don’t know how many times I’ve broken down in the center of traffic and prayed for a hole in the confusion, to escape to the right, over four lanes onto the nut, bolt and broken glass scattered emergency strip of asphalt. Once more I survived along with Glen.
We bumped off the freeway and tried to check out various solutions, but it wasn’t barking anymore. A brother from a warehouse, below the freeway, blasted up and offered help, but there wasn’t anything I could do. I discovered that the distributor had rotated 40 degrees on its own. My mark had mysteriously moved. We pulled the distributor cap and discovered that the 3-cent doomed Allen screw holding the rotor in place had vibrated out of its location and jumped around in the distributor housing. It jammed the distributor. I called Berry from freeway and he ordered another Mallory unit.
Then it dawned on me. I had a spare distributor cap. I grabbed it out of the bedroll while trucks thundered past us by the hundreds. I replaced the cap and adjusted the timing. It didn’t start. We hadn’t plugged in the cap connector. We were sure she would fire. I plugged it in and nothing. We were dead in the water and a 3-cent part was responsible. We loaded the bike in the truck, with the help of the girls, and headed toward State Line.
If I could fix the bike at State Line I could still ride with Glenn to the flats. We buzzed out of town passed Barstow into the desert. When the traffic thickened we set Glen on his own, to split lanes out of town. State Line is located in Prim, Nevada, just over the border from California. All the land is owned by Mr. Primm. It’s a bizarre, minny, Las Vegas across the border from California, housing three major Hotel/Casinos, a sprawling outlet mall, a Starbucks and a Shell gas station.
Wink didn’t recommend one facility, over another so we tried Buffalo Bills, with their western motif and goddamn rolly coaster encompassing the massive tin barn looking structure. It was cool except for staff training. No one wanted to help. Many of the staff were Russian exchange students, but their homeland had nothing to do with employee demeanor. Must be the boss. We tried to park the truck in a safe place, impossible. We tried to park the King with the truck, impossible. We tried to collect a package on Saturday, impossible. I’ll never stay at Buffalo Bills again. On the way back we stayed at Whiskey Pete’s. Night-and-day difference. Everyone helped and the restaurant was fine. No problem.
UPDATE ON PRIMM VALLEY PROPERTIES–Because of Bandit's complaints while at Buffalo Bills, we were contacted and reimbursed for our stay, which we were very thankful for.
On a whim weekend get away with my kids a few months later, I stayed at the Primm Valley Casino to do some back-to-school shopping at the attached outlet. My kids shuttled over to Buffalo Bills to spend the afternoon on the rides and play at the arcade. The Primm Valley is much nicer than Buffalo Bills, however it just depends on how much you want to spend.
We were very happy this time around and would recommend any of the hotels. Any of the hotels, Whiskey Pets, Buffalo Bills or Primm Valley are really are perfect for taking a break in the drive from Southern California to Bonneville. After preparing for for weeks and then getting on the road, it was nice to drive for about five hours then stop for the night, gamble a little and have a nice dinner. We will be staying with them again on our way to BUB's for 2007.
Nyla
After we dealt with the bullshit valet service, we sat in the back of the truck and started a timing procedure. Glenn pulled the timing plug off the engine case on the left side and turned the engine over until we were roaming into the front cylinder compression stroke. Nyla crawled in the truck and eye-balled the flywheels through the timing hole while Glen turned over the engine. She placed the front timing mark dead in the center of the hole. I checked the distributor position then prepared to button it up, but something bothered me.
We double checked it. Then, just as I was about to bolt the distributor back together I asked Glenn to turn the engine once more. With a large breaker-bar on the engine pulley nut, he turned it and I watched the distributor. It didn’t move.
Teeth were sheared off the drive gear. I started to pull the cam cover to inspect for more damage as the sun went down, and I had no light. We cut a dusty trail toward the bar and ice-cold Coronas. The distributor was shipped to the hotel, overnight, priority, for a.m. delivery.
The next morning we traced the package. It arrived in Vegas at 6:00 a.m. The ETA was 11:00—11:30 a.m. We paced the deck. I started to tear into the engine. I still wanted to ride. The girls shopped, but when they checked in I asked if they’d drive around the hotel and look for a UPS truck. They did and spotted the driver getting out with a foot long box, about the size of a Mallory distributor. It was 11:45. We immediately hit the reception desk. No luck.
I caught a female executive in the hall and jammed her. “UPS doesn’t deliver on Saturday,” she had the balls to say, followed by, “and our receiving department is closed for the holiday.”
Bob Tronolone called me from the flats. “Don’t work on it there,” he said. “You’ve got to get moving. It’s another 400 miles, and we have all the tools you’ll need.”
Nyla returned to the reception area. It was almost 1:00 and she spotted the box on a file cabinent. “No ma’am,” the clerk said. “We haven’t heard anything. You might call downstairs.”
”It’s right there, goddamnit,” Nyla said pointing at the box. We threw our shit in the truck and hit the road. We blazed through Vegas and caught 93, straight north through Nevada. You can run along the 15 direct into Salt Lake then back pedal into Wendover. Or you can take a more direct route and stay in Nevada. Highway 93 peels north through vast valleys, Sheep range, past the Delamar Mountains, then you can save 43 additional miles by shifting onto highway 318. When we hit Ely, we shifted back onto 93 through Steptoe Valley, over White Horse Pass, at 6,045 feet, then dropping into Wendover another Casino strewn berg on the state line. The borderline runs right through town.
Bikernet Sidebar: The gods of wrenches weren’t inline with our mission, but we kept pushing. Our Australian couple kept us in stitches with their terminology. Glenn told me, “I saw a couple of stacks on our way to the airport.” A “Stack” in Australia is a car accident. A “Torch” is a flashlight and a “spanner” is a wrench. We also discussed the code of the West. I was forced to point out that the words “cute”, “pretty” or even “petite” were banned from the biker vocabulary. He had to replace them with “cool”, “hot” or “bitchin”.
