Mid America Auctions Online Catalog posted... hubba hubba...

[c.o.]

Had to sell my '72 FLH... it was too damn reliable!! Seriously though... I wouldn't have thought twice about it getting me across the country and back again.
Here's another one for you Phil.. when my '48 FL was going through it's teething pains, a loyal Indian rider friend started calling it a "Painhead"...

[diesel55]

Hello ..I got blasted for my 2 cents on the tranny issue, Now it went from a stated letter of being the real deal, to i know a guy that knows a guy . Maybe its in Al Capones safe.

[silentgreyfello]

RichO, documentation please! You stated it, now back it up!!!

[fillibuster]

Had to sell my '72 FLH... it was too damn reliable!! Seriously though... I wouldn't have thought twice about it getting me across the country and back again.
Here's another one for you Phil.. when my '48 FL was going through it's teething pains, a loyal Indian rider friend started calling it a "Painhead"...

Be sporting, you trouble-headed pain-heads!! ...... thx C.O., tha's good

a little disclosure: A good friend who did a lot of high-performance wrenching on those shovels, had a young daughter back then who would repeat after him, "shubble head, .. chubble-head, .. " and soon it was "trouble-head". It stuck. Thing is, twisting the throttle will take its toll on anything, and yes, the shovel took a lot, but it was abused horribly. So it wasn't uncommon to see your favorite wrench up to his ears in shovel work. A lot of the work was repeat. Is that trouble?

[Tom Lovejoy]

I had an 81 Shovel head - Sturgis, got 100,000 miles out of it. It was a great machine, made me an HD fan.

[PRG]

Howdy Tom,

81 Sturgis eh? Love em, still have mine here as well as my old 77 FLH, The Fatster. No motor captures the spirit of the original OHV like one of these though I'll admit by the late 70's a 74 was at the end of its rope hauling around an FLH. Living down south brought out this weakness pretty quickly which, oddly, was partially rectified by installing a cam with huge overlap to bleed off compression at low rpm where it was developing a lot of heat with little air flow over the motor.

Definitely like the lazy effortless torque of the 80 and the no-maintenance of electronic ignition though I'd advise anyone to get rid of that early Magnavox control unit with its seemingly two bit processor and install the blockhead era retrofit. They run flawlessly after that.

Though early rocker boxes were crudely finished, by 83 they looked like a Rolex, really liked the look of my 83 FXR, just could never cotten to the frame layout.

[c.o.]

For the folks wondering about the '40 Knuck... videos are starting to accumulate on YouTube.... go there and type "Hunting Harleys, 1940 OP "Greenie" makes it home".

[sirhrmechanic]

For those whose search skills are rusty...

Interesting video. "Todd" has a rather unique style of presenting. Grating, yet there are more than a few grains of truth in his talk! Thanks for posting C.O.!!!

Cheers,

Sirhr

[sirhrmechanic]

So I have a question not addressed by "Todd" in his fustian oration...

The extra chrome bits, especially on the front fender. Does he imply that the chevron and trim pieces are factory? I have no doubt they are period, maybe even dealer-added or put on when the bike was brand new. But would such things ever have been put on special order at the factory or were all dealer- or owner-installed?

It was an interesting video. I'd not have spent that for "Greenie" but I can see how it excites passions. I'm happy simply to have ANY Knuck to ride. The Original Paint and top-tier machines are best left to others who lust after them. I wonder if the new owner will ride Greenie? Or whether it will be parked under a spotlight?

Cheers,

Sirhr

PS: Started watching another of his videos and he lost me when he claimed "an employee sabotaged my gas." Ok... is this guy nuttier than squirrel poo? Who "Is" Todd and is he really banned from AMCA?

[c.o.]

It seems to me that some of his points are valid. How do any of us really know for sure and certain how things were done back then? Catalogs, sales receipts, what the experts say.... has it all been covered? I sorta doubt it. Tail end bikes getting random stuff thrown on them to finish a run seems plausible. If it is in fact the bike that started the "OP" craze, then I suppose it is sort of significant. 165 000 significant? Obviously to Todd and the other bidder that got it there, I guess it was.

[RichO]

Sirhr, The chevron and front and back fender strips (top) are original to 1940 only. Just like 1939 had the long strips over the fenders.

[BoschZEV]

I watched the video. Other than the guy who bought the bike saying it is completely original, never touched, never been apart, etc., has anyone posted any documentation about it?

It's interesting that he says he examined the bike at the auction site under "high power magnification" and was able to determine from doing so that the paint is original. I have four different types of specialized optical microscopes with magnification to ~1000x (which are certainly too heavy and big to carry to an auction), and scanning and transmission electron microscopes (SEM and TEM) in my lab with magnifications to ~1Mx, so I am quite familiar with studying the properties of materials under high magnification. While crazing in paint might let me infer that a particular paint probablyis old, there is no way even with these microscopes I could determine if a paint sample had been originally applied 74 years ago in 1940, or had been stripped and re-sprayed 64 years ago in 1950.

Even assuming I had a reference sample from a documented original-paint machine to compare it with, the best I could do using a portable infrared spectrophotometer is determine with reasonable certainty whether or not the paint was of the same brand as used by H-D on other machines of that period. But, aging effects on the chemicals in the paint depend on environmental conditions as well as age, so inferring age from chemical changes only could be roughly done.

[diesel55]

1940

:Hello... Upon further review, as much as I love old motorcycles, re-runs of the Kardashian's look good right now!

[PRG]

Howdy chaps,

I started the thread on Caimag (you've been forewarned, much silliness) on this machine that then morphed into essentially a rugby scrum, especially when the new owner materialized on about page 10 and things really got amped up. It was mercifully shut down by admin moments ago. But, there more videos and pix links of his other OP machines so it's (almost) worthwhile to wade through the last 25 pages or so.

Do believe that super duper magnifying spectrometer, or some such, turned out to be a magnifying glass if I recall(?)

[sirhrmechanic]

The net of it is that 'Todd' is a happy camper. We are having fun talking about him and the Green Goddess... I learned something (about chevrons and trim). And we've killed a snowy cold January day doing what we love. Talking old bikes. So much win in this thread...

Cheers,

Sirhr