Replica Early Harleys

[c.o.]

I don't know.....the original tank is awfully square.........

[silentgreyfello]

Silentgreyfello.
I get the impression that you don’t like this Bike?
Pete Reeves 860

Not too much. I guess it is the color.

I'm eating crow for commenting on the shape of the tank! Sorry Mr. Gagen! Part of my angst is the club money that was spent on the museum by our board. Now a member of the board is drawing a salary for running the museum. Hmmmmm. If that is not correct, I'll eat some more crow I guess. It's not too bad.

[exeric]

I sure agree with you about the color. That's LSD green, not Excelsior green.

[William McClean]

LSD

Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds ?

[exeric]

Seriously though, where did that color come from. Looking at the old photos of the Bob Perry OHV, it looks like it was painted the standard Excelsior Khaki green. Personally, I think the OHV EX is one of the most interesting racing bikes in American motorcycle racing history. A lot of that fascination is due to the tragedy of it's debute and the romantic story of Schwinn taking a hammer to it's stable mates. I have no doubt that it would have been a formidable racer if it had been run more but by 1919, the racing scene was getting much calmer and H-D had pretty much proved it's dominance. Somewhere I have an article that mentions one of the OHV motors being used in a hill climber in the mid 30's.

[c.o.]

It is sort of to bad that the Big Valve X didn't get a chance to take off. The scan on Pete's replica (posted above) paints the "story" as most know it. It seems to me that there were about half a dozen of these bikes built with a spare engine for each machine. Now we are told that Mr. Schwinn smashed some of the spare engines with a sledge hammer. There is no note that I have read that indicates he pulverized any complete machines. That leaves me to wonder if somehow something possibly survived. Nothing has surfaced as of late but at least one machine was saved for sure that day by the hands of one Waldo Korn. He raced the bike privately a couple years after the Perry incident. I wonder if that's the motor that ended up in the hillclimber? Does anyone have any other info on this matter? I'd be interested in hearing what the story is on the hillclimber. That's if you stumble across it Eric. I don't expect you to dig for it... I know what it's like digging for that one little tidbit of info. I've spent hours scouring books and magazines just to find something that was nagging in the back of my head.........

[exeric]

You are so right about that Cory. For me, it's a fool's errand because I am cursed to never find anything I really need. I also have old literature that explains what made a KL Henderson different than a KJ. Cam profiles, etc. I read that years ago and have not come across it since. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just daffy and imagine these things.

[Perry Ruiter]

Seriously though, where did that color come from. Looking at the old photos of the Bob Perry OHV, it looks like it was painted the standard Excelsior Khaki green. Personally, I think the OHV EX is one of the most interesting racing bikes in American motorcycle racing history. A lot of that fascination is due to the tragedy of it's debute and the romantic story of Schwinn taking a hammer to it's stable mates. I have no doubt that it would have been a formidable racer if it had been run more but by 1919, the racing scene was getting much calmer and H-D had pretty much proved it's dominance. Somewhere I have an article that mentions one of the OHV motors being used in a hill climber in the mid 30's.

I know you know this Eric, but that bike is not merely an OHV but overhead cam as well. There was a batch of OHV Super X's built in the late 20s as hillclimbers. If your 30's article only mentions OHV then it's probably one of those Supers rather than an overhead cam bike ... Perry

[exeric]

I meant to say OHC.