Wide Glide back in black.....

[kiwidave]

Greetings from Down Under!

Hell of a good time to have the 1980 FXWG painted, pimped, pampered and back on the road, seeing as it has been the hottest spring in Melbourne for, oh, 100 years . Been 29-35degrees all week here.....anyways....to backtrack...

Got here 18 months ago. Needed a bike, bought this in July last year looking like this:


As you can see, when I bought it, it had high apes, solid rear wheel off some Softail, wrong front end (FL style wide glide trees that in themselves were mismatched) and with Evo-era FLHT fork tubes), and a paint job I thought was OK at best. So it looked OK on the surface....

On closer inspection there was a lot of mismatched and worn out shit i.e. S&S carb bracket was to fit a late Evo….wrong starter motor for year….horrible chrome oil bag, shrouded rear shocks that I didn’t like either….. some dodgy wiring, rear brake reservoir located high up just below the steering neck (!!), mismatched and crappy switchgear, chrome rear with tired and tatty button sides,. rear brake poorly mounted with no freeplay so it seized a lot….comp sprocket assembly and primary chain were at the limit of their wear….the Big Fix 52 roller bearing kit which made the clutch work OK but fell out all over the garage floor with every disassembly (catching them on the roadside? No thanks) .

Also, I was a bit over apes by the time I got it, having ridden with 18in ones for about ten years in the UK…and whitewall tyres are just a pain in the ass on a old non-bagger ….they look shoddy when you get the inevitable oil on them. etc etc

What I did like about it was , uh, the fairly original lines and frame, sealed H-D battery, generator Shovel style dash console, fairly clean motor, easy kickstart action, stainless brake line….er…..that’s about it! Oh yeah, and the main attraction was that it was a great price for a registered bike…. $11,500 or about 5000 quid off eBay with known state roads history. (Harleys and parts are VERY DEAR here, most reasonable used Shovels are 7000 quid, any this price are usually fresh imports with no history and no registration, which is expensive first-time).

I smiled when I got home and found that the ‘’new top quality Accel ignition system’’ mentioned in the eBay listing was in fact just fresh points…..and probably not that fresh, given that a couple of months later the lobe on the points arm had worn down enough to screw up the ignition and leave me at the roadside, fitting new ones for the first time in my life.

But I rode it otherwise trouble-free for some 3000 miles while I thought about how it should look…..with just a few upgrades until the second week of January, when the most godawful crunching and clattering inside the camchest occurred.

And that was the worst news….some previous owner had fitted a non-stock cam but kept the shit quality cam bearing that H-D used here and there through the Shovel and Evo era......AARRRGGGHHH!!!!!!

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[kiwidave]

The damage looked like this:



Needle roller bearings everywhere, stuffed breather gear and hole, camshaft, etc, etc, etc...luckily the oil pump wasn't badly scored.

Encouraged by many Shovel sadists in person and online including here, I ended up tearing it all down and splitting the cases myself….never done that before….and taking it to a specialist, flywheel by flywheel.

I had to suck up the cost of a major bottom end rebuild, luckily there is an expert in the city and although he took a little while he did a good job, except for mismatching the rocker arms for front and back heads – the back one for some obscure valve-seat reason was clearanced…..and I could not get any compression for about a week with the front rocker arms in the rear head. Boy that had me confused as hell.

Then jeeeeez the hassles during reasembly…the last head bolt snapping on the final turn when every other one was torqued up……..the ‘’no compression’’ issue detailed above…..the S&S carb betraying its age and needed new needle and seat….after reassembly of the engine I couldn’t do anything but flood the plugs instantly.

I set the carb up as per S&S instructions, but some P.O. had got it running OK by screwing with the settings to compensate for the ingestion of too much fuel And this only became obvious when I got some gold advice….attach a long clear plastic fuel line to the carb, hang it high, fill with petrol and mark the level of the fuel in the hose….walk away for an hour and see if you have lost any fuel into the carb. Sure enough……the fuel was seeping past….

AND the throttle plate was slightly bent….so I got an S&S rebuild kit and replaced the shaft and plate.

Anyway, then I got on ebay. And started scrounging off people also. And did some trading. And shopping. And came up with, in no particular order…

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[kiwidave]

To get it looking how I wanted I got...

an OEM style black oil tank

OEM FXWG fork trees

Vulcan Engineering raked bearing cups to kick the front end out properly with those FLHT trees so it now looks good to my eye (and it handles great, no issues at all with the trail equalised by raked trees AND raked cups). But had to fabricate a new fork stop myself.

Prog Suspension spring-look shocks. THANK YOU ROGER!!!

new inner clutch hub and Alto red clutch plates, orig basket for clutch hub bearings (goodbye, you 52 pains in the ass) and a Ramjett retainer THANK YOU ROGER!!!

new primary chain and comp sprocket assembly.
plain dash trim to replace a shitty old fake snakeskin thing

all new oil and fuel lines

brass rocker nuts and brass stock-style oil lines

new rear master cylinder and brake lines and a bettter bracket attachment to let the caliper move a fraction….

new switchgear stock style

an AMF-era cast rear wheel.................

a tatty 50 buck find off eBay that after a week of elbow grease now looks nice. New bearings, etc. And I polished up the bowling-ball logo.

stock style risers and drag bars,
]
long-stem mirror so I could see behind me with those short bars,

right-size cables to work with the shorter bars,

had the S&S air cleaner cover reshaped by a welder to take a cut-down late-
Shovel air cleaner decal, then rattle canned that myself

endless endless trips to the fastener shop to make it all work. A lot of the nuts and bolts that came with the bike were, yep, screwed and bodged….

Rivera heavy-duty advance weights and Blue Streak points, and spares of each to carry on the road

And this is how it looks now…

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[kiwidave]

Sorry to Tibbs and Graeme, that's a mate's garage, I have not turned Aussie!!

I spent as little as possible and really enjoyed doing it myself. And I have (through desire, enthusiasm, and often economic necessity) learned more about points-powered Shovelhead maintenance in the last 16 months than I believe I did in 17 years of owning and working on my 1985 FXEF Evo in the UK, and that was not trouble-free either!

Paint is based on a 1981-83 OEM paint scheme….my favourite stock paint job ever……..it’s plain .... done by guys at a custom car body shop around the corner. A guy at work knew them, and the owner rides an older Evo Heritage…so he was very interested to take on the job, as they had hardly done any Harley painting. And, of course, at 400 quid it cost a fraction of what a proper custom Harley sprayer would charge. Even though they had the tanks for 3 months instead of one month!! (what IS IT with painters???)

The 1982 OEM decals were 50 bucks off eBay. I love the original flame job on these but I thought that if I went for that look, I would end up going down the addiction path of a concours resto, and that would get spendy in a country where all Harley bits are stupid money.

I bribed some guys at a local polishing shop with beers to let me use their big-ass polishing belt for a couple of hours on the fork lowers which were real tatty …and did a fair job for an amateur. Elsewhere, a Dremel, a felt wheel on the end of it and Autosol metal polish worked a treat.

Strangely, I actually am finding myself loving the Shovel more and more and getting less attached to the Evo. Sad but true. I am betraying my first Harley with an old tart.

I just think it looks RIGHT. Well, right for me. Still to come will be a nice BLACK Metzeler on the front to match the new one on the rear, a full rewire (the one bug still existent is a live wire at the starter relay plug, even with ignition off!! I cannot be arsed to go into that as I never use the button but admittedly keep the relay in my tool roll), new or rechromed pipes and a stock FX seat from the era, one with the square panels. Just got my hands on some cheap-ass tappet block covers (NO downtime) to get bronze or copper plated to match the paint and brass nuts and lines. The powdercoated blocks just don't look quite right.

But….it’s a never-ending project really. The clearanced rocker arm in the rear head and the very very occasional smoke at idle indicate it will certainly need a valve job at some time in the next year or three, and these orig barrels re-sleeving as the 80 in engines can only take a couple of rebores, and these barrels have used up their quota.

But in the overall scheme of things they are no big deal but I have quietly snapped up parts (valves, rocker arms, etc) for that along the way this year… and after that I *KNOW* I will have a mechanically excellent old-ish beast.
And yes, I do really love it when I go out on a run and there’s not very many Evos and hardly any Shovels to be seen, and people with newer bikes worth three times what I have in this one just stand back and admire mine. So long as they are not blocking MY view….ha ha ha

[kiwidave]

As for the oddball shit.........the custom fork nut cover is a reflection of my ongoing passion for classic punk rock. Can you guess who? How about the battery box decal?


The oil dipstick cover will sport this tiki coin from my year of birth when it arrives...


and bolted to the forks for protection on the road and in the rougher houses of ill-repute is what I call .....

the Toffee Hammer of the Gods.

Thanks for the help, you guys on here. You know who you are. Especially you Roger.

But mostly to my main man here Lawnmower Mark, whose garage this all happened in, and his bench tools were a godsend!!! Cheers mate!!! He offered continual encouragement and occasional solace all year, then just hit the button and rode off into the sun on his faultless Road King. Constantly..... ha ha ha. Bastard....


Done about 500 miles in the last two weeks. Looking forward to a long hot summer of riding, but if shit happens, it happens. Stay tuned for fresh breakdown news!

Yours, broke but very happy. Sorry for rambling.

KD

[BaZa®]

Before and after looks great Dave. Great thread very interesting still seems funny though you not having apes. It's always been part of you since I have known you.

[Mark-Bursledon]

Great write up Dave & cracking looking bike as you say 'just looks right' with some me really nice personal touches, rip joey, johnny & dee-dee

[kiwidave]

Thanks Baz. One of the issues for me is that there are an awful lot of newbies here in Aussie who have new bikes, dealership servicing, a coal-scuttle WW2 helmet and the highest apes they can ride with, to look ''hard AS, bro''. They wear support shirts. You know the type. And I am a bit tired of those wannabes!

[RobK]

Looks cracking Dave, nice job.

Still think you should have done the flames...

[panster]

Great job Dave, really nice bike.
I know what you mean about the nouveau bad asses too, some nice bikes that would have stopped you in your tracks a few years ago but built from kits or hugely expensive mass produced "authentic bobber components".
And, I don't mean to worry you but it appears you've run out of oil !
Ride safe,
J.
p.s.
Hey Ho lets go.