Rat Bike Project

[onetrack]

Willie - Here's a Steam Punk Goldwing for sale locally, that might give you some ideas! I like the jerry can panniers and the fake exhaust pipes.

 

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/4553036374957016

 

Of course, if you feel like going the Full Mad Max, you could always build a Steam Punk Chariot!

 

https://www.webbikeworld.com/steampunk-goldwing-goes-auction/

[Marty_d]

Someone took a perfectly good Goldwing and did that to it? 

They should be flogged with their leather braces.

[willedoo]

You see a lot of Goldwing ratbikes on the net. The motors look the part. Of all the Jap bikes, it's about the only one that fits the style. This is an older one:

 

[Marty_d]

I just don't get the whole concept, obviously.

To create a bike out of bits, as an engineering challenge - yes, I can see that.

But to take a bike in good condition, like I assume that FB one was (and I could be wrong) and make it less comfortable and kind of ugly... I don't get that.

Mind you I don't get modern art or discordant music either, so I'm happy to concede it's just that I have something missing, aesthetically.

[willedoo]

I agree with you there Marty. Making up a bike out of old bits has some honour about it, but turning a new or modern type bike into one seems to be a bit like fraud in my way of seeing it.

[willedoo]

With hot rods, there seems to be way more ratrods now days than the traditional glossy customised hotrod of the past. I guess while it's in fashion, it makes building and owning one much easier and cheaper. 

[willedoo]

This sidecar outfit is a wild bit of gear. It's an older Ural frame, same type as the M-63 frame I picked up recently, but has the current type of leading link Ural front end. The engine is a Howard rotary hoe engine, the Howard Twelve, a 12hp water cooled V twin, mounted sideways. This photo has been bugging me for a while now. I know those faces and the country in the background looks familiar, but I just can't get a handle on it. They did a short video on Youtube with a couple of them doing wheelies in it while one filmed.

 

[willedoo]

Both the Howard V twins, the eight h.p. and the 12 h.p. like the one above have unusual shaped cams. Their camshafts run at 90 degrees to the crankshaft rather than parallel like Harley V twins. The magneto is coupled to and runs directly off the end of the camshaft.

 

[willedoo]

This is the camshaft on the Howard 8hp motor. The cams look bent but they have that weird shape to work properly with the 90 degree shaft. The magneto runs off the left side of the camshaft and the external oil pump from the right end.

 

[onetrack]

Geez, what a nightmare of a job, trying to machine those cam lobes! They must have used an eccentric rotating jig?

[willedoo]

It would have been interesting to watch them do it. There's a young Russian bloke on Youtube who would just grind something like that by hand with his angle grinder. He's one of the roughest I've seen. He built a V twin out of scrap in his back yard with only an arc welder and angle grinder. A couple of things he got a mate to turn up on a lathe but most of it was built by hand, except for donor Ural barrels, heads and pistons. The bottom end was all hand made.