Maintenance Log

Borrowed the maintenance log idea from a buddy in Arizona.  He also runs a Pan.  Check his site out here.  Craig and I are like minded when it comes to the early iron.  As with Craig's log, I have no real reason for putting this one up other than someone might find it interesting.

A little history here - I bought my Panhead when I was 17.  She has been a basket case for about 20 years.  I swore I would never rebuild her until I could do it right.  I finally arrived at that point in my life when I could do just that.  The only part of this bike I didn't do myself is the motor.  I had Bonnie Truett build the 86 inch stroker.  Shortly I will post a link to her complete history and build.

July/August 05 ö

Kicker gears blew up while attempting to light the ole girl off for the first time.  Getting my Pan to start was important to me as I wanted to take my dad for his last ride, he passed in Feb of 05, on the bike he helped me get and that started it all 25 years ago.  She wasn't going to run with a blown kicker so I ordered the parts and had them shipped to Wyoming.  I also loaded the ole girl in my trailer, something I hate doing, and took her to Wyoming.  I rebuilt the kicker and lit her off once I got to Wyoming.  THEN the lights wouldnât work.  Now this really had me stumped as there are only FIVE wires on the entire bike!  After fighting that for a couple of days I finally pulled the generator and just cause I am a curious kinda fella I pulled it apart too.  I shook my brushes out in about a dozen pieces.  Mystery solved.  Ordered another genny, one with a built in solid-state regulator and that problem was cured.  Iâll rebuild the other generator later. 

After some initial tuning and that all-important "feeling" that she was ready I decided to run into town and show off.  Town was 22 miles away and there is almost nothing between it and me.  Of course the ole girl had different ideas and promptly dropped her oil tank drain plug and dumped all of her oil.  This occurred about five miles from the barn and 17 miles from town, great.  Fortunately I spotted the drop in pressure and shut her down.  After getting some "slick stuff" she wouldn't fire again so I went to being mad and she went to sulking and I trailered the attitude giving POS back to the barn.

After we got through being mad at each other and my bro Bob called and said he was only about a hundred miles away, I fixed the oil bag and change the ãslick stuffä out and put some 20W50 back in.  Now my bro Bob lives in Arizona so when he called I was floored.  He just decided to ride on up to Wyoming and see me just cause.  So I was on a frantic ãfix itä mission to get the ole girl up and running.  While doing that I noticed an insane oil leak from my oil filter tubing.  Turns out it had already cracked out.  Soooooooo·new genny, rubber hosed the filter, and a new oil bag plug.  She fired right up.

Sept 05 -

Only rode about thirty miles in Wyoming before I had to return to So Cal. 

After getting back home I started riding the ole girl as much as I dared allowing for the fact that this was a brand new ground up rebuild and Mr. Murphy is bound to show up.  I have a 36 mile round trip to work and back so after a couple of runs to work it was time for the all important 50 mile oil change and flush.

I am sold on changing the oil on a new motor at 50 miles.  Here is how I do it:

At 50 miles let the bike warm up completely.
Kill it and drain the oil.
LEAVE the filter on.
Refill the oil tank with ATF (I use Dextron III).
Fire the bike and let it idle 3-5 minutes.  This ensures at least one complete ãrotationä of the oil.
Kill the bike and drain.
Change filter and refill with Dino break in oil.

I swear by this process for ANY motor and usually do it FOR my customers that way I know it is done.

I also replaced the nasty rubber hoses with some braided steel and decided to swap the seat.  The original spring seat caused me to sit to far forward on the bike and I felt like the ape hangers were in my ears.  I shaped a seat pan that sat on the frame and took it to one of the local upholstery shops and had them foam it up and cover it with basic black leather.  Seat looks great.  Seat rides like hell.  Lesson here is that you need to come up to the belt line or higher on the back of the seat pan so your butt has something to ride against other than the fender.  I also put the correct original style oil filler cap on my oil bag and opened up the lower end vent tube to the primary side.  Originally I had 5/16th copper tubing in there but that just wasnât allowing enough of a vent for this stroker motor.  I replaced the tubing by brazing a 3/8th inch hose end into the vent bolt and just plumbed a rubber hose down and back past the clutch.  I left it black cause it is going to get all grimy anyway.  I also noticed that my fuel tank had developed a leak (CRAP).

The gas tank leak was at the very back of the tank and I attribute it to a couple of things.  1) When I built the tank mounts they were VERY tight.  Once the molding was done I suspect that it put a bind on the tanks.  2) I hard mounted the tank.  The bind combined with the vibrations caused the tank to crack.  Mind you the TANK cracked not my welds or mounts.  So I cut off about two inches from the rear of the tank and started again.  Of course this meant removing the Kream from the inside and doing a new paint job.  After several hours of fabrication, re-Kreaming, and painting the tank was done.  I reused the original mounts but I inserted some rubber disks to cushion the tank.

7 Oct 05 ö Riding home from work today I noticed that after a sustained power run (10 miles at about 50-60 MPH) my front cylinder is smoking·BAD!  It only smokes when I blip the throttle so I am suspecting a blocked oil gallery on the front cylinder.

8-9 Oct 05 ö Tried a couple of things here first to try and clear up the front cylinder before I pull the head.

1.  Re-jetted the carburetor.  Dropped a jet size on both the main and the secondary.

From:  72 Main and .0295 Secondary.
To:      70 Main and .028 Secondary.

2.  Reworked the Magneto lock down.  While diagnosing the smoke problem I noticed that just using a spring (what I used with the old manual distributor) still allowed the Mag to advance and retard.  Built a temporary solid lock down to see if this helps.

27 Oct 05 ö Took Ole girl out onto the freeway for the first time.  Ran her between 60-70MPH for about 20 miles.  She runs strong but the front cylinder smoking issue is still there albeit not at bad as before.  Mulling this over in my head, listening to the bike, and talking to a couple of people I am thinking of a couple more changes to hopefully cure this problem before I pull the motor apart.

I have 300 ö 500 miles on her so she is due for a front to rear top to bottom check up and oil change of both motor and tranny.  I have been running Redline Heavy Duty Shockproof in the tranny and Dino 20W50 in the motor.  The HDSP in the tranny is the schiznitz and I just want to swap out the ãbreak inä oil there.  The motor will be flushed again like I did on the 50 mile with the ATF and I am now going to switch to Redline 20W60 in the mill.  This will be my winter oil.  This summer I will switch to Redline Racing 60Wt.  I am also becoming convinced that the front cylinder smoking is a combination of things.  1) The upsweep pipes donât have anything in them.  I am going to do the old school ãventuriä black pipe baffles and see if some back pressure will help out.  2) I am changing from 20W50 to 20W60.  I have noticed that the rocker noise is excessive at the same time the cylinder starts to smoke.

So Ole Girl will be on the stand for a few days.

30 Oct 05 ö  Gave the Ole Girl her ãpre-maintenanceä bath and blew most of the oil and road grime off.  Put her up on the lift and did the following:

1.  Pulled the front wheel.  No easy task as the entire fender and brake calipers has to be removed first.

2.  Pulled the pipes.  Had to in order to pull the rear wheel.

3.  Pulled the rear wheel.

4.  Pulled the belt drive off.

Here is what I discovered:

1.  Have to move the front wheel over to the right .0185 inches.  Wheel is offset that much causing the caliper bodies to lightly rub the disks.  Nothing major and I caught it soon enough.  The .0185 is half the distance of the space on the ãfatä side of the calipers.  Should center the disks in the calipers.  I also machined a little more off the tripletree nut cover so that I can remove it without loosing the handle bars.  And while I was at it I re-torqued the nut and put some more tension of the bearings.  Other than those minor things the front end is solid.

2.  Looked in the front exhaust port and there is a nice coat of flat black exhaust.  A very slight trace of ãoilä is apparent at the valve seats.  This leads me to believe that the front head gasket didnât seal.  Doesnât surprise me either.  Mr. Truett recommended, and sent me, a set of James Fire Ring head gaskets.  I have used these head gaskets on shovels and I have never had any luck with them.  So I am going to change both head gaskets and replace the Fire Rings with the ole Blue Teflon type.

3.  The rear wheel assembly looks great.  No rub marks anywhere and everything looks to be tracking true.  Iâll pressure wash the inside of the fender, remove the hames and taillight, for the post painting buff and wax.  Iâm going to hit the front fender (try and remove the run) and tank as well.

4.  The front curved part (up by the engine pulley), broke off and took a hike.  I have a guy who wants me to build him a belt guard like mine so I pulled the primary belt off to use my bike as a mock up.  Well with the discovery of the missing piece I will be looking at a different mounting method for both my guard and the one I am building for the customer.  I think I will machine the front mount to fit into the existing primary boltholes on the motor.  Not a complete ring but a half moon affair.