MERY CHRISTMAS!

Happy Holidays to all you little rat finks out there keeping the faith of the greasy & the rusty! Keep those wrenches spinning' and those welders Hummin' Get out in the garage and build something! FRITZ

My Knuckle frame, the Saga starts!

SO, I thought I would just cut out the boxing plates that turned out to be a 1/2 inch thick per side, clean up the inner neck area and heat the neck to back bone area and just de-rake it back to the factory 30 deg's from the chopped 35'ish Deg's it was, I've done it before and I knew in my hart it was a 50/50 chance between success and cutting the whole shebang off and starting from scratch, well the neck forging did crack and I am in the process now of machining a new neck to take the old style neck bearing cups. Just a minor set back Gang, A mere bag of shells. in the interim of doing my Dad's soft tail frame and messing with the Knuckle frame I did buy a Hobart 165 TIG welding rig. turns out Miller welding equipment bought the hobart company and as I noticed everything inside my machine including the torch and pedal, etc. is all "miller" so for a few hundred less I got top of the line I guess, Merry Christmas to me! I'm gonna include a spy shot of Dad's Pan top / Cone bottom engine we are building for the soft tail as well, just to keep you up to speed on the goings on in Fritz-land Now get out in the garage and build something!

Dad's Softail frame & My knuckle head frame

I got Dad's frame TIG welded and done, I'm only a few bucks short on getting myself a new Miller TIG machine but in the mean time I had Dad's frame welded by a drag car chassis builder here in Kansas City. Pop wants to get cracking on a rolling moch up A.S.A.P. I'll wait till i get my new welder for my stuff. I had started working on this Knuckle frame a lot of years ago and haven't done anything with it since I moved from NY to KC. Since I had to do Dad's frame for him I figured I would make a new "DVD" on "how to fix motorcycle frame at home" and do my knuckle frame as well (I have some other frames in line also, might as well do them all and get it over with) The Knuckle frame was raked sometime in the early 70's. it was a solid job but I'd like to de-rake it back to the factory 30 degrees. I was hoping I could just cut the boxing plates out and save the factory casting but after finding out the boxing plates were 1/2 inch thick and were just not coming out no matter how hard i tried to convince them with a hammer & pry bar I just opted to fire up the blow torch and turn it all into liquid metal. I'll save as much of the original casting as I can and just make a new triangle filler plate and lower plate. keep checking back to see the progress! "Get out in the garage and build something" FRITZ

My Dad's Softail chopper project

My Dad was board after he moved next door to me here in Missouri so I gave him what was a distraction to me but a good project for him, a pile of Harley soft ail stuff that accumulated. Actually he drug home this frame from the bike shop he worked at in NY when we lived there, can you believe someone would scrap a Harley frame? no self respecting nike guy ever shit cans Harley stuff. Well long story short Dads been working on the engine which is a cone bottom with a Pan toped and Now I have to get my assign gear and glue this frame back together so he can mock it all up. I have been filming this as I have been working on it so look for a new DVD to be coming from me around Spring on this subject, I have a few frames I am just going to do all at once so they are done and I can put my welding / frame table back in the "FAB" room. in the DVD we'll build a new neck for this soft ail frame , I have a Knuckle frame that I need to "de-rake" and an Indian frame that will get a Harley hard tail rear section and a new neck as well, and if there is enough room on the disc's Ill build a frame from scratch for a triumph engine i have. and all in the old school way, no fancy room with 60K of tools in it, you guys that have bought my DVD's know I'm a real grass roots garage guy, so keep a weathered eye on the horizon for this new DVD. I machined the neck for this frame to tack the bearing races right into the neck with out the use of neck cups like the older bikes, Dad has an FXR fork he wants to use, the back bone & down tubes are DOM tube with a .125 wall, the tubes were all slugged and will be rosette welded also. I did some neat DIY tricks that anyone can do at home but you'll have to watch the dvd to find out, "Get out in the garage and build something" FRITZ