January Northwoods Motorcycling Fun!

[HarleyCreation]

While writing about Harley's trusty (but slow) 3-wheeler I got to wishing that I owned a Servi-Car.

Then I realized that I DO own a Servi-Car!

It's no show-stopper (far from it), but just your basic parts bike, er, trike, with a hammered together wooden box. I built it in the 1980s to be my winter motorcycle for riding the backroads and going on midnight cruises in the snow. That was after I needed money and sold my 50FL & sidecar to my brother. Plus I thought a Servi-Car would be superior in the snow and it kinda is.

After using the Servi-Car for years of fun winter riding, I abruptly stopped. Getting old maybe? Then this past December I got the bug again and rolled it out only to find that it needed some work to make it run after sitting so long. Now that I figured out how this digital camera operates and how to downsize photos, here's some shots of this old trike and January motorcycling in the northwoods. Let's see if this works.

1. Old Mr. Servi-Car just rolled out of the shed. Put in a charged ni-cad wet cell battery, fresh oil, gas, added kick, and NOTHING. Rusted plugged gastank and a gummy carb turned out to be the culprits.

[HarleyCreation]

2. Harley-Davidson's venerable 45-inch sidevalve engine. Introduced in 1929, it stayed in production until 1973, or was that 1974? This baby is a 1942 WLA army engine. Note the "cool" chopper pipes. The frame is also hacked of speedo mounts and notice the chopper seat mount just above the seat-tube. That stuff is NOT my doing.

[HarleyCreation]

3. Wet-cell nicad battery. Five 1.25 volt cells equals 6.25 volts. Close enough. These come from hospital x-ray machines, etc. If you can find good used ones they make nice motorcycle batteries. They can sit dead for YEARS and still hold a charge.

[HarleyCreation]

4. Who wired this thing anyway?

[HarleyCreation]

5. Draining the bad old gas. More like varnish and that's what it smelled like. Also TONS of rust in the tank. Had to stick a wire up thru the fitting to get the old gas to drain at all it was so badly plugged up. Good lesson not to let your machine sit without either draining the gas or using fuel stabilizer.

[HarleyCreation]

6. Gas tank off. Now we're getting serious. I didn't plan on doing this, but it became necessary. Poured nuts and BBs inside tank and did a lot of shaking wearing hearing protectors. Results weren't perfect, but the tank is useable again.

[cheifrider]

welllllllllllll.............after all that work goin through your pics i figured the end photo would show ya doin donuts in the snow! neat old bike though ,i have a 50 wl that aint pretty but it sure is a ton of fun cause you aint gotta worry about hurtin it.keep us posted on your progress

[Paquette]

Just wondering Herb--Can you actually do donuts in a Servicar?

[INLINE4NUT]

of course you can!! But they are double donuts!!!!!

[LouieMCman]

That's why the cops used them....double donuts!

Louie

[HarleyCreation]

Originally posted by cheifrider
welllllllllllll.............after all that work goin through your pics i figured the end photo would show ya doin donuts in the snow! neat old bike though ,i have a 50 wl that aint pretty but it sure is a ton of fun cause you aint gotta worry about hurtin it.keep us posted on your progress

I know what you mean about fun but not pretty....

Yeah, I got the donuts in the snow pix too. Just thought I'd post a few chronologically every few days as I got it up and running. Was hoping to put the tire chains back on it and go woods trail riding too, but the snow is kind of deep and crusty for that now.

[HarleyCreation]

Originally posted by Paquette
Just wondering Herb--Can you actually do donuts in a Servicar?

Oh yeah, very cool donuts. Another fun thing is coming down the road on snow and cranking the bars side to side which gets the rear end of the trike swinging back and forth, side to side which is a very cool sensation. It looks like you're totally out of control but you're really not. Unlike a car, Servi-Car is light and doesn't easily go out of control and you can recover really easy from slides.

[HarleyCreation]

7. Of course when you don't want to slide around but need good dig-in power you throw on your tire chains! You'll notice this Servi-Car has the old motorcycle wheels and tires that are not much better than slicks. You spend half your life with one wheel spinning as you try to get forward momentum going, but that's fun too. Chains become necessary when the snow gets more than a few inches deep. I find this type to be easy to put on and take off and they work well too. I wonder how the snow riding would be if you had the later car rims on back and put snow tires on them?

[HarleyCreation]

8. Speaking of slicks, this cracked ratty old Firestone(?) tire was on Servi-Car's wheel when I got it back in the 1980s and it's been on the machine ever since. Whatever inner tube is in this thing it almost seems immortal. Maybe one of those double-wall tubes mentioned on another thread?

[HarleyCreation]

9. Bowl off Servi-Car's Linkert M-51 carb. Didn't foresee doing this either, but it felt good to get my hands dirty on these familiar and loveable old parts again. Doesn't the old Linkert look big and strong? Good simple carb too. Who needs stinking fuel injection!