willedoo

That Flying Millyard is quite amazing. He even made his own carburettors.

Thanks for that info onetrack. I've got a heap of them all mixed up so I'll sort them out. With a bit of luck there will be a reasonable amount of the 2117 rivets.

I found a video on the 2 litre thumper. It wasn't in Norway, it was a German, Fritz Langer, who built it.

The original Wright piston was a long piston and needed that section of bore that protudes into the original radial crankcase, and that setup would have needed a much taller custom crankcase making the engine too tall, so that's why he trimmed the bore and shortened the stroke with the Continental O-470 piston.

I get the impression the engine runs but is not practical to ride around on. I think he just takes it to shows and starts it up. I don't think it has a balance shaft. He shortened the stroke from 5.5 inches down to 5 inches and used a shorter Continental piston. He had to cut the bottom skirt off the cylinder so it would clear the crank lobes. The one that was built (in Norway I think) using a single pot from a radial was around 2000cc and he could ride it down the road ok.

You're right there Nev, that one above with the Wright cylinder is a custom chopper in my view. It's that shiny, you'd need sunglasses to look t it..

I've got a question that hopefully some of the aircrafty types on the forum could answer. Regarding old surplus aluminium aircraft rivets: I've been told that they go a bit hard and brittle over time and are not much good to use when they're like that. I was also told that you can anneal them to make them useable again. Hoping someone might be able to shed some light on the subject.

The closest I have to anything like that is this Continental R-670 pot. It has around 1500cc displacement and is in good nick despite the outside appearance. Has valves, rockers, pushrod tubes and exhaust header. It's got a coating of protective gunk inside covering what looks like a chrome bore. Unfortunately I don't have the machining skills of Al Hackel or the equipment to make a motor out of it. If I was mad enough I'd give it a crack. I doubt my little mill would have the accuracy for a job like that.

This bloke in the U.S., Al Hackel, built a custom chopper using a single pot from a Wright R975-46 9-cylinder radial engine. Displacement is around 1700cc, which is a pretty big thumper. He made the bottom end himself, conrod, crankcase, crankshaft etc., but got someone else to make the cam. It has a piston from a Continental engine. Mated to a Harley gearbox. This is his Instagram page on it for anyone interested: https://www.instagram.com/alhackel/ There's a short video on there of a bloke kickstarting it at a show.

I've got a copy of the Ion Idriess book on prospecting for gold somewhere. Haven't read it in many years but I remember it as a good read.

This bloke needs help:

I still get the shudders when I think of the WLA Harleys that got away. It was around late 1971 or early 1972 when I heard the story of a pile of war surplus Harleys on a farm about a half hour drive from where I lived. I heard about it from the local bike shop mechanic who said he'd seen them but didn't remember exact directions. I knew the approximate area so rode out there on my AJS. At one stage I saw a farmer riding an ex-army WLA with an open box side car around his paddock so I pulled up and walked over to the fence. When he came over, I quizzed him about the bikes and as it turned out, it wasn't him who had them but a neighbour down the road a bit further. When I rode in the driveway and pulled up, I saw a solo restored registed WLA parked there. As it turned out, it belonged to a farm hand who had bought it from the property owner. The owner was an absentee type who lived in Central Queensland and had a manager running the farm. I had a yarn to the manager and he showed me around. As we wakled over to a shed, I spotted a WLA with box sidecar in the long grass beside the shed. It was oxidised from the weather but you could tell from the lack of seat wear and lack of dents and scratches that it had been hardly used. Lying all round the place in long grass were lots of Harley engines, gearboxes and bits, along with old Willys jeep stuff. We went around into the shed and there was another WLA with sidecar and three solos stacked there. At that stage, I thought there were the three solo bikes and two outfits plus a heap of bits and pieces in total. Unfortunately I was a bit young and naive and didn't push hard enough. The owner in Central Queensland for some reason had no phone contact, so the manager said he would be down to the property around a certain date. In hindsight, I should have got his address and rode up there to make him an offer in person as the manager said he would probably want to sell them. Anyway, I rode back out there on the date he was supposed to be at the farm and ended up walking right into one of those 'you should have been here yesterday' scenarios. The manager told me the owner had come down a bit earlier than expected and a bloke who was stationed at the Oakey Air Base had bought all the bike stuff from him only a matter of days before. I was told he took away a semi trailer full of Harleys and parts. The owner sold the lot for $200, about five weeks wages back then. At a later date, the mechanic who gave me the original lead asked me if I'd looked in the other shed which I hadn't. He said there was a heap more Harleys in there along with a pile of new old stock parts. That fitted in with the managers description of the size of the truck load compared with what I'd seen. In those days there were a lot of farms with old stuff lying around in sheds, but nothing like this one. I was only 17 at the time and not real savvy so missed the mother lode. It's funny when you look back and how we took that old stuff for granted back then when it was plentiful. Around the same time, I followed another lead on a so called barn find, a Panther 600cc Sloper. All it needed was a new clutch otherwise it was in really good condition. The farmer wanted $20 for it but I passed it over thinking it was not worth that price.

Was it one of these Nev, with the 750 motor.

Likewise, congratulations Peter; I'm looking forward to reading the book. My very limited gold experience was all in 1986. I worked for a time for a Brisbane based drilling company and we did five weeks of diamond drilling on an old abandoned historic gold mine near Inglewood. We were tracking a quartz reef that was about 4' deep and only about 6" wide. 60 degree angle drilling if my memory is correct. The boss made a lot of money on that rig. It was an old ex New Guinea Mindrill that he picked up for $4,000. 35 days drilling, 12 hour days, it would have paid for itself in no time. It was mounted on a 4 wheel trailer and towed behind a truck. Made in Melbourne I think and basically just a glorified lathe. Had a 5 cylinder Lombardini main motor and a little 2 cylinder mud pump. The old mine shafts were those old scary narrow ones. It was one of those mines that closed in WW1 due to lack of manpower and never restarted again. Not long after that job I left the company and went over to Halls Creek and did some subcontracting for Freeport, basically just constructing access and pads for gold test rigs. After that I worked for a while for an alluvial miner at the Old Halls Creek area. The creeks had been picked out in the 1800's and there were only a few odd exploratory trenches dug out from the creek banks. I'd strip and stockpile the bank area top until we found some gravel that indicated where the ancient creek bed was. Then it was a matter of very slowly shaving off a couple of inches at a time so the miner and his partner could go over the exposed gravel bed with detectors. That thin removed layer was stockpiled and they would run a detector over the heap after the wet season had washed it. If they fell on hard times, they would get the dry blower going and put the stockpile through it. Hot, dusty, hard work and the least desirable option compared to detecting and picking up nuggets. I saw my first decent sized nugget on that job.