Blood, sweat, tears & beers . . .

Actually, there's zero labor hours - it's all in the daggone parts. My buddy who welds for me is a farmer/mechanic who has a mig welder. His welds are not pretty, but they are free! I tell him, don't worry, I'm pretty handy with a grinder!

That bike is starting to look real good - keep at it - I think ya got a winner going. But don't get in a rush to get er done. With the weather ya got headed yer way it's gonna be a long time for ya git out and ride unless ya mount pontoons on it. :roflmao:

marinate that fish in milk overnight, then cook it, you'll be asking chucktx to bring ya on his next Toledo trip:roflmao:

Sounds fishy to me!

Several severe weather cells just passed us by and we were on the edge of the worst of it. Lot of people going to bed in shelters tonight. Many homes and businesses destroyed. Lots of tornadoes. Some people killed. We had our oil lamps out and a wind up radio ready to use but haven't lost power yet. About 60,000 just in the Raleigh area without electricity. Here in Hobgood we were blessed the worst of it went around us. At least so far.

BTW, my friends, earlier today I took my tranny, you know, the one that was supposedly rebuilt, to a friend who is a competent mechanic. I already knew the kicker shaft was wobbly, but he says it's too much, so he is going into it and replacing the bushings and seal. Then he tells me it won't shift except into neutral and the other gears click as he moves the sprocket around and tries shifting the thing. I say, well, at least it's an original 70's Harley tranny and he turns it over and it turns out it's an older replica case and then he looks at the throwout bearing and tells me it's a cheap, wornout piece of junk. I'm standing there watching all this going on, my stomach doing flip-flops. Besides all that, when I first got the tranny, the top cover was in such bad shape that I had to sand and scrape and grind until I could paint over what was left of the chrome on it. (See photo of tranny top cover as it looked when I recieved it). It gets better. He showed me where the drain plug was supposed to be and in it's place was, I kid you not, JB weld or a similar product, filling up the hole. It did have a hex wrench crudely imprinted in it. It's going to have to be drilled out and retapped, which means the thing is going to have to be taken apart. Finally when I told him I paid $1300 for the thing, he said, "Looks like you got f*%&^#, my friend. I coulda got you a new one for less than that." I can't believe this is happening. I e-mailed the guy who sold it to me and he said to send it back to him and he would make it right. It's gonna cost me $50 to send it as he made no offer to pay for the shipping. I'm gonna have my buddy work on it and get it right, then we are going to work on the rest of the build together. He says it's getting harder to find people you can trust. Needless to say, I don't trust the seller to "make it right." It should have been right to start with. I spent over $9000 at the seller's business and he treats me like this. Now, I don't know what problems I'm going to encounter with that motor I got from him. All I can do is pray is that it's all right. But I think the odds are stacked against me.

No bad words. There are many others who swear by this guy. I suppose it's even possible that it might be some employee or some one in his machine shop who did this. If he is consistantly treating others like this, it will find it's way around eventually. I'll get the skinny on the tranny internals tomorrow or Tuesday and let ya'll know what's up.

$1300 for a rebuilt tranny that has to be fixed and rebuilt,did I read that right??....I'd tell him I want my money back and personally deliver the tranny back to him,maybe give him 1 opportunity to "make it right",but find out how he planned to do it first. If a new one can be had for less than $1300, I would accept nothing less from him:angry:

I thought I was getting an original (but rebuilt) Harley ratchet 4-speed tranny to match the motor I got. I'll know more in a day or two.