Blood, sweat, tears & beers . . .

That is a beautiful peice of work you've got going there. Can't wait to see the finished product on here!

Thanks, guys. I'm gonna go with it. Everything is solid mounted everywhere like HRK says. Far as the lower legs go, I band sawed all the lugs off as close as I dared, then carefully ground them on a bench grinder to within about a 32", then mounted them in a padded vice and used half sheets of sand or emory paper starting with 80, then 120, 220, 340, 400 & 600, using them like shoe shine rags. It was exhausting! I could have gone even smoother but I figured they were good enough.

Just got back from Lowe's with some bolts & bushings to mock up my oil tank and I got the wrong size bolts! Supposed to be 5/16th's and got 3/8th's - too big to go thru holes in frame oil tank mount. But they do go thru all the other holes. Can't drill em out either; too close to the down tube. It's a 32 mile drive to get more. Grrr! Here's a little tip if you want to dress up a common bolt head to look like chrome ones. I do a lot of that. Just grind off the top of the bolt head until it's flat, then go to a disc sander and sand until smoother (around 80 grit), then lay some emory or sand paper on your bench and start with 100 or so to 220 to 400, then polish with a dremel buffing wheel and jewelers rouge or polishing compound. Looks like chrome every time and only takes a few minutes per bolt! A lot of the bolts & nuts on my machine were fairly ugly until I shined 'em up a little with my dremel buffing wheel & polishing compound and they really add a nice little sparkle here and there.

Well, I got the bolt mess straightened out. Problem for a while was my oil tank wouldn't clear the primary. After some grinding, I got it to fit very nicely with around 3/16ths clearance between the primary and close to an 1/8th between the top of the tank and the frame. Of course, I had to grind off part of the seam welds on the tank and they will have to be rewelded. Fabricated a brace that I will have welded to the back of the oil tank so I can bolt it to my fender, thus having 4 connection points. I have been trying for days now to get my pictures to import into my computer but we can't seem to get the thing to work. Must be some little thing I'm doing wrong. Once they're in my computer I'll have no trouble downsizing and getting them on this post.

Keep workin on it -
:worthless:

Here goes . . . O.k., these are the "before" pics showing how the oil tank won't fit. My "after" pics still will not %^&$@!# upload into my ^&$%#%@ piece of %&$^ computer. I am going to delete some of my older pics and see if maybe it will "free up" some extra room on the hard drive (Mac the Wife's suggestion.)

What is wrong with how it fits???

The primary has to fit under the tank. The oil tank I have was probably intended to go with a panhead primary, which doesn't have the electric start hump at the top toward the rear of the primary.

pretty big difference huh?

Yeah, there was a lot of metal in the way. In the first picture you can see that I now have enough clearance, about 3/16". The next shot shows the bracket I had to fabricate to support the rear of the oil tank and attach it to the fender. The cross bar with the holes drilled in it is where my spring seat bungs were. They were the type you screwed in from the bottom, but the bottom parts no longer fit. I am going to have just the top part of the bungs welded in, as in photo. Next to last picture shows the spacers I made to raise the tank up 27/32" in the front. There's actually a spacer inside another spacer so the bolt would be nice and snug. Doesn't look like much, but it took 3 days to do all this stuff and get it right.

I can't seem to get any more text on #30 above. I inserted one last pic showing how the oil tank actually looked before I worked on it. This pic clearly shows the bracket that hangs down on the bottom of it. I suppose it might have been used for a chain guard mounting place, I don't really know.

Everything looks very sanitary Joshbob. There looks like quite a bit of space between the oil tank and the top frame tube. Could the tank have been raised higher on it's mount(to clear the primary), and would that have been easier than all the grinding?

No. The picture you're looking at is before I raised it up. There's actually only about 1/16" or so clearance left at the top after raising it. First I raised it as much as I could (with the 16th of an inch clearance), and I still had to grind a bunch off the bottom of the tank for it to clear the 3/16". I had to grind down past the welds to get enough material off. The seams in the tank where I took the material off have to be rewelded shut, but will only add a little. The welder tells me I will end up with about 1/8th of an inch clearance after he welds it up.

When you were polishing, did you use air or electric tools?

Polishing what? When I first got the air cleaner, it had a lot of letters and numbers on it that meant nothing to me and it was a fairly rough casting (Chopper Dave item). I ground it as flat as possible, then used a bench mounted belt/disc sander and sanded that baby flat, carefully re-rounding the edges. Then, as I usually do, I went to hand work, having no air tools or compressor. I worked it from 80 down to 600 grit and polished it with a 6" buffing wheel mounted on a bench grinder. It matches the motor perfectly. The motor came like it is in the avatar pic. Naturally, I hand polished it with "blue magic" maybe a dozen times. A lot of the polishing I do on smaller pieces is with the dremel, like on the carb, for example.
Everybody has their own way of doing things. I prefer to do things with a little restraint and a lot of elbow grease. Not really into flash, either, but I like it on other people's bikes if done tastefully. A little flash goes a long way!

The motor looks like a piece of artwork that should be on a display stand.

I got the motor from Rob's Used Harley Parts in Weston, Va. He has a machine shop and told me that the guys who do the rebuilding of these old motors are "artists". He was right! They also have flat side shovels, panheads & knuckelheads for sale. I paid $6500 for the rebuilt motor, the rebuilt 4-speed ratchet tranny & the primary with most of the parts included. All the components are mid 70's Harley Davidson.

For that exhaust, is that a style that has to be clamped on?