Ryan's A.M.C.A. Giveaway bike build!

[Matthew N. Olse]

Guys,
I am glad that this whole project became a reality. I rounded up most of the parts for the bike through the AMCA, so it makes sense that Ryan and I share the whole experience with the people that made the whole contest possible.
best,
Matt Olsen

[Matthew N. Olse]

Ryan spent the rest of the day grinding the old tubes out of the castings. In this pic you can see that the 1 inch tubing fits in the casting. This is miserable grunt work, and I am glad that Ryan did it rather than me.


I found some 1 inch d.o.m. tubing out back, Ryan had to drill out the i.d. Check out the glasses.


In this pic Ryan is laying out the 60 degree slash cut for the sleeve. Our chop saw doesn't bend at 60 degrees, so we roughed it out and sanded it accordingly.


Here is the rough line.


In this pic we are milling a slot in the tube to make it look like original.


The finished piece. We are going back out to the shop to make the top sleeve, it is basically the same deal, but the slot is twice as wide. We will keep you posted!

[Paps]

Sharp looking fresh piece there ! I bet Ryan is proud of his new craftmanship. All that tough grinding and fitting really pays off. Ryan is getting a good base knowledge on the use of an endmill cutter to boot. Feeds and speeds are tricky to learn by first hand trial an error. I remember my first go at an endmill cutter, without consulting the machinists bible, broke that endmill cutter rather quickly. LOL ! Paps

[Slojo]

Ryan, remember watch those valuable fingures. Stay focused power tools can bite back.
Joe

[Eric MATHIEU]

Great topic. Ryan forget the old guy, watch out for the kid!
Eric

[Ohio-Rider]

This is the best thread I've seen since joining. Between Slojo's project and Ryan's, this winter should fly by.

Hey Ryan, Hang in there. Matt will give you one of the better jobs soon. And feel free to chime in once in a while around here.

[Chuck#1848]

Sharp looking fresh piece there ! I bet Ryan is proud of his new craftmanship. All that tough grinding and fitting really pays off. Ryan is getting a good base knowledge on the use of an endmill cutter to boot. Feeds and speeds are tricky to learn by first hand trial an error. I remember my first go at an endmill cutter, without consulting the machinists bible, broke that endmill cutter rather quickly. LOL ! Paps

Heck, my second attempt didn't last that much longer

[Ohio-Rider]

Amazing how far an end mill will bend before snapping. Oh... The good old days of earning a cool $2.25 an hour. While destroying tooling at a rate of $3.00 per hour.

[Matthew N. Olse]

We are waiting on the .875 tubing for Ryan's frame, so we decided to clean the oil tank. One of my friends in England told me that he always cuts his 45 oil tanks apart to clean them out. The way a 45 tank is designed, there isn't really a good way to get to the bottom of the tank to clean it so this idea makes sense. In this pic Ryan traced the outline of the mounting tabs and the tank.


This is what it looks like, he also drilled some holes for the mounting bolts!


I cut these welds off with the cut off wheel.


Then Ryan cut inside of the welds on the mounting brackets. This is a touchy operation but it turned out well.


Then Ryan ground the weld off of the seam all the way around the tank. Check out the oil bubbling out of the seam.


This is what the inside of an oil tank looks like. This tank slips onto the inside piece which has a lip around the whole thing. Then they are welded together.


This is all of the big stuff that was stuck inside of the tank. Ryan is cleaning the tank out, then we will beat out the dents, and I will weld it all back together. Have a nice day!

[exeric]

I just did that with a set of '48-'50 OHV tanks. You can really get at the dents and hardly any filler was used to finish them off. I don't have a tig outfit so I did what H-D must have done. I gas welded them with steel filler rod. I was slow and clumbsy at first but once you get the hang of it you can really sail along and almost "hear" when it's right. Still, I have to wonder how H-D did that in volume considering the number of years that tank was produced. I guess after many years of welding gas tanks; a guy would get quite proficient at it.