This Ironhead turned into a snowballed can of worms. Scott dropped it off in boxes and bins and the bike never ran while in his possession. He originally wanted a little bit of welding, wiring and get it running. As time went on we kept finding more stuff wrong with the bike. The biggest issue was after setting the bike up on the lift it just didn't look right in the rear. Sure enough, the hard tail was crooked. Plus it had a scary amount of welding and grinding done to it. We priced out replacement hard tails and even entirely new after market frames but Scott liked the look of this hard tail. With a little ingenuity we were able to salvage the frame and make it look even better than before. I'm not usually a fan of hard tailed Sportsters with short front ends because something always looks off. Too much stretch in the rear, and the front looks like it hit a wall. This bike totally changed that for me. I think we really nailed the lines of this bike. The photos below show what has progressed over the past few months.
Somethin just didn't look right...
It wasn't the axle plates that were tweaked, the whole right section of the frame was pulled downwards by 3/8" of an inch.
Danger! Danger! Will Robinson!
Out with the bad section.
We grafted on a section of another Sportster backbone to extend the frame all the way down to the cross member similar to a big twin frame.
Machined a pin to go in the old brake cross over to hold the new "seat post" in place.
Cleaned up the old mounts and filed smooth by hand.
Scott wanted to keep the original rear motor mount so it was an interesting challenge to graft everything together.
The bottom of the seat post was fish-mouthed, heated, hammered over, and welded.
We made a Frisco tank mount that's reminiscent of the dash/tank mounts on a big twin.
Welded up.
Smoothed out and textured to match the neck forging. I really was hoping to make it look like its one piece.
This was done a while ago hence the surface rust, but here's a close up of the seat post section fully welded and the "bolt on" bolts were replaced with steel pins welded on both sides.
Original breaker mounts reused and welded to the frame and nicely hidden under the seat.
The frame is finally finished.
Fender mods. This is the original fender with the skirts cut off and the section for the chain clearance raised.
Quick battery box by Ben.
That might be why the accelerator pump didn't work... and leaked. The dope tape on the screws was a nice try though. (I'll state for the record this is how Scott got the bike.)
All rebuilt and cleaned up.
Bird deflector made from the old horn cover.
This uses all the original horn hardware. A small stepped washer was machined to fill the large hole and hold the cover securely.
Fixing kicker issues.
PBR ad...
Checking primary chain slop.
It's on the ground! The seat is just for mock up.
I'd like to thank Scott for being such a good sport in this process, trusting us, and also allowing us to have some creative freedom.You won't be disappointed.
And now we yank the motor out for the last time. Paint, reassembly, wiring, and start up next....
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