contentsbakerdrivetrain.net/articles/bert-baker-bert-bakers...contents july 2013 on the cover volume...

http://www.ironworksmag.com

ContentsJULY 2013

ON THE COVERVolume 23 • Number 5 • Our 193rd IssueThis issue's cover features a pair of timeless rides that defy the bluster of short lived trends with their fundamental class. Bob Kay'sred Shovel, shot by George Najar, takes us back to a time when customizing a bagger was about balance and details, not the size ofthe front wheel. Meanwhile, the undeniable influence of Indian Larrycan be seen on Keino Sasaki's ’47 Knuck, photographed in NYC byMark Velazquez. Motorcycles like these will look just as captivating50 years from now, and that's why they're on the cover.

FEATURE BIKESKeino’s Magic Touch ..............................10Sorcery in a ‘47 Knuck

Bob Kay’s Mixed Bag .............................22Classic Shovel remix

Humming a Happy Tune .........................28Pat Bonk’s ‘63 Hummer

Bolting Ahead .......................................36Fairless fabs a single

Todd’s V-Rod Hot Rod ............................48No punches pulled

DEPARTMENTSLetters ................................................16Readers write

Great Rides ..........................................52Go your own way...

Made in the USA...................................54Saddlemen

“Make it Your Own” Buyer’s Guide ...........68Your ride is yours alone

Seasoned Citizens .................................761931 Henderson KJ

10

44

FEATURE STORIEST & Copper Mike ...................................32Hard work’s rewards...

Daytona 2013 ......................................44Stories among the palms

Bert Baker’s Organ Donor ......................62Part 3: picking up the pieces

IW GARAGEIW Product Review: H-D Jacket...............20The Roadway’s the right way

IW Product Review: Helmetlok ................41Keeping your stuff yours

Garage Talk with Dan Pike......................56Stroking for impact

Lincoln Electric Welding Series................58Framing the project

Shop Time with Mike Witt ......................60The ol’ orange krate

Legend Suspension Series ......................66Part 2: making an honest assessment

S&S Flathead Power..............................72Tom’s big Shovel

IW Product Review: Aerostich.................80Serious gear for serious riders

REGULARSMarilyn Stemp ........................................6Growing our own

Sam Kanish ............................................8Roughing it

Rick Fairless .........................................14Beauty and the beer

Ed Youngblood ......................................74The Electric Indian

IWjuly13pgs_cs_IW0204Pgs_CS 4/16/13 5:38 PM Page 4

62 IronWorks July 2013

In part 2, Bert Baker took us throughthe details of the engine and drivetraingoing into his Organ Donor drag bike.Here in part 3, we’ll get a peek at all thegritty details that had to come together tobuild a bike that would be capable of givingBert the kick in the pants he’s looking for.Brace yourselves... -ed.

Confession time: as I write the thirdinstallment of the Organ Donorstory, I feel uncomfortable anddirty. I feel like I gave birth to a healthybowel movement and didn’t do a good jobcleaning up after myself. When I watchmotorcycle shows on TV, I get frustratedwith how they compress the fabricationand assembly process. At the beginning ofthe show you see the frame, tank, wheels,engine, and tranny. Thirty minutes later,SHAZAMMM, the bike is assembled,painted, and ready to ride. That pisses me

off because I know a LOT of fabricating,machining and technique goes into build-ing a custom bike. Those details are thestuff that is really interesting to me. So Iapologize for my dirty sphincter and fornot sharing all the juicy tech nuggets thatare near and dear to me. There is notenough room in this magazine or time inmy schedule to do so. (If you catch up withBert and the Baker Drivetrain truck some-time this year, try to wring some of thosejuicy tech nuggets out of him.—ed.)

Let’s start with the clutch actuator andshift controls. On this project I wanted touse an off-the-shelf BAKER TorqueBox, FFPPrimary, and King Kong Klutch, which I didfor the most part, except the clutch actua-tor. I’ve had the idea of a left side “pull” actu-ator for a few years to clean up the rightside of the transmission so this project wasthe right opportunity to make a prototype.Also shown is the rear set shift control. Iused the funky diagonal shift rod setup sothe shift pattern would be reversed. TheTorqueBox comes with a 0-down 6-up N1shift pattern for a N-1-2-3-4-5-6 pattern.However, for racing, it’s quicker and morepositive to stomp down to upshift the tran-ny, so the shift rod orientation shown ac-complishes just that with a 0-up 6-down N1shift pattern. Since the tranny had a rightside output (aka Right Side Drive), the shiftrod passed through the area normally occu-pied by a pulley or sprocket.

Final Assembly and build wrap-up

Bert Baker’s Organ Donor: Part 3Story by Bert Baker • Photos compliments of Baker Drivetrain

IWjuly13pgs_SS_IW0204Pgs_CS 4/16/13 3:05 PM Page 62

63IronWorks July 2013

continued

I was lucky to have a talented seatmaker named Ivan Iler in my back yard,because there was a lot of back-and-forthbetween his shop and mine to get theseat configured correctly. He runs Ham-mer-in-Hand Custom Cycles in St. Johns,

Michigan and manufactures seats,frames, and anything he sets his mind to.He is young, talented, and not afraid towork 16-hour days so we’ve just seen thebeginning of this Viking-looking characterfrom the North.

This shot shows Ivan making a lowerseat pan template. I wanted a very specialseat for this project that locked my smallfarmer butt in so it doesn’t fly off when Ilaunch this thing wide open with a warmedup slick and wheelie bar. I also wanted theshape to be inspired by my motocrossbike seat in the way it comes up on thegas tank, and it had to be light. He de-signed a novel seat pan that featured anupper and lower pan (image shown in pre-vious article) to get the seat height in theright position. He then welded trapezoidalside plates to box-in the ultra-light pan.

The finished seat shown here featuresleather and super sticky rubber seat ma-terial used on KTM motocross machines.

Here’s the rear wheel, brake, and

catch-can. Catch-cans are required on thedrag strip so the crankcase vent doesn’tblow oil on the track. The catch-can and1.1 lb. brake caliper came from Pingelwhere all the cool go-fast stuff comesfrom. Wayne and Donna Pingel are 2-wheeled-speed royalty and very nice peo-ple. The rear wheel is a 2007 Fat Boywheel that I got at a swap meet for $100.As is, without bearings, it weighed 23 lbs.I put it on a Jenny Craig diet and got itdown to 18.8 lbs. which is very light for a17” Big Twin rear wheel and is close toPMFR wheels (the racing wheels by whichall others are measured).

Here’s the front end. The KZ900 forkbrace was necessary to stiffen the 39mmforks for LSR runs at the Ohio Mile, whichI guess I can’t back out of now. ApparentlyMark P from BAKER had Jody Perewitz onhis “2-Wheeled Melt Down” radio program(every Wednesday night at 6:00 on inter-netradioamerica.com) and she told theworld I should put Miracle Grow on mytesticles and go to the Ohio Mile in April todo some high speed runs. She runs over200 MPH and I won’t come close to thatwithout a fairing but I have to see whatthe Donor will do. Like the African-Ameri-can fellow in the Dirty Harry movie said, “Igots to know.”

The Pingel 1.1 lb. brake caliper is thesame as the rear. We made the front andrear caliper brackets with speed holes toadapt the calipers to the chassis. The ro-tors, front and rear, came from Paul Kit-trell at Lyndall Brakes and are made out ofa “functionally gradient metal composite”that their website does a great job explain-

ing the meaning of. They are light (1.6 lb.)and all the racers use them because theywithstand the heat that comes when thebrakes are applied at 180 MPH.

James got a custom carbon fiber air-cleaner cover made by Mike at CarbonFiber Works in Florida. James sent Mikethe heavy steel version and Mike sent usback the lightweight carbon fiber versionshown here.

This shows the location of the rev lim-iter and the shift light controller. We putthose units there for easy access for ad-justment. I set the rev limiter at 5500RPM to break in the motor and switchedit up to 6500 RPM after break in.

An Antigravity 24-cell 720CCA batterywas used with an All Balls 1.4KW starterand Sumax cables. With the S&S com-pression releases engaged, the startingprocedure goes as follows: The 12-voltpower to the coil switched off, the motoris turned over for a couple seconds andthe coil is energized by flicking the killswitch. It starts every time! The Antigravitybattery weighs 5 lbs. and is 10 lbs. lighterthan the equivalent lead-acid battery.

So the bike was finished the day beforethe road crew left for Daytona Bike Week.I decided to adorn the Organ Donor withmy AMA number from the mid 80’s,#311. We put the Organ Donor on thescales and I got a kick in the groin. Thispig weighs 532 lbs! I thought for sure thismachine would come in under 500 lbs.with all the conscientious weight savingmeasures; what a pisser. I have sincebeen told it is very difficult to assemble a


64 IronWorks July 2013

Big Twin that will come in under 500 lbs.and not break. Nevertheless, I’m alreadymaking plans for some serious JennyCraig countermeasures next winter. Thewinter weather in Michigan has been real-ly crappy this year and the icy roads pre-vented me from going on a ceremonialputt down the street so I saved that forDaytona. The weather was beautiful thisyear in Daytona and I put 150 break-inmiles on the old girl. The rings sealed upnicely and the bike felt real good doing abuck-20 down I-95.

We made it back to Michigan in the af-termath of Bike Week and turned aroundto head out to the Great Southern Motor-cycle Expo in Jackson Mississippi: the lifeof a carnie. It’s the 17th year for thisshow and we’ve never attended it, butMark Boler and his friend/mentor WildBill Bissell (event promoter) made it realeasy for us to be there.

Mark Boler runs Oasis Cycle in Bran-don, Mississippi and he’s the good-lookingguy second from the left with his crew.The shop is located on a cozy little 50-acre plot in BFE Mississippi; thus thename Oasis. Customers within a 200-mile

radius bring their bikes to Mark and hisstaff because they can repair and modifybikes that others can’t. If Mark lacks theknowledge to do the job, he is not shyabout picking up the phone and calling theright person, and that’s kind of how Markand I met. If the Confederacy had beenmanned with soldiers cut from the samecloth as Mark, the Yankees would havelost the Civil War.

In the next bonus installment I will re-port my track results from the ¼-mile andthe Ohio Mile. I will also report the dynoresults from the Oasis Cycle dyno run.Mark put the Donor on his dyno and madea couple passes, only to find out theclutch was slipping with the lighter

springs. We will install the heavy KingKong springs like James runs on his 145”Super Duper Glide and that issue will besolved so we can get a real number. Youwon’t want to miss any of that. IW

Reader Service No. 42

*RESOURCEBaker Drivetrain • Haslett, MI

877-640-2004 • www.bakerdrivetrain.com


http://www.bakerdrivetrain.comhttp://www.smartercharger.comhttp://[email protected]

cover2-84L2-21IW_0713_02IW_0713_03IW_0713_04IW_0713_05IW_0713_06IW_0713_07IW_0713_08IW_0713_09IW_0713_10IW_0713_11IW_0713_12IW_0713_13IW_0713_14IW_0713_15IW_0713_16IW_0713_17IW_0713_18IW_0713_19IW_0713_20IW_0713_21

22-42IW_0713_22IW_0713_23IW_0713_24IW_0713_25IW_0713_26IW_0713_27IW_0713_28IW_0713_29IW_0713_30IW_0713_31IW_0713_32IW_0713_33IW_0713_34IW_0713_35IW_0713_36IW_0713_37IW_0713_38IW_0713_39IW_0713_40IW_0713_41IW_0713_42



/ColorImageDict > /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict > /JPEG2000ColorImageDict > /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 300 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages false /GrayImageDownsampleType /Average /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth 8 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /FlateEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages false /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict > /GrayImageDict > /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict > /JPEG2000GrayImageDict > /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 1200 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages false /MonoImageDownsampleType /Average /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict > /AllowPSXObjects false /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier (CGATS TR 001) /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName (http://www.color.org) /PDFXTrapped /False

/CreateJDFFile false /Description > /Namespace [ (Adobe) (Common) (1.0) ] /OtherNamespaces [ > /FormElements false /GenerateStructure true /IncludeBookmarks false /IncludeHyperlinks false /IncludeInteractive false /IncludeLayers false /IncludeProfiles true /MarksOffset 6 /MarksWeight 0.250000 /MultimediaHandling /UseObjectSettings /Namespace [ (Adobe) (CreativeSuite) (2.0) ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfileSelector /UseName /PageMarksFile /RomanDefault /PreserveEditing true /UntaggedCMYKHandling /LeaveUntagged /UntaggedRGBHandling /LeaveUntagged /UseDocumentBleed false >> > ]>> setdistillerparams> setpagedevice

/ColorImageDict > /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict > /JPEG2000ColorImageDict > /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages true /GrayImageMinResolution 300 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages false /GrayImageDownsampleType /Average /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth 8 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /FlateEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages false /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict > /GrayImageDict > /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict > /JPEG2000GrayImageDict > /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages true /MonoImageMinResolution 1200 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages false /MonoImageDownsampleType /Average /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict > /AllowPSXObjects false /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile (None) /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier () /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName () /PDFXTrapped /False

/CreateJDFFile false /Description > /Namespace [ (Adobe) (Common) (1.0) ] /OtherNamespaces [ > /FormElements false /GenerateStructure true /IncludeBookmarks false /IncludeHyperlinks false /IncludeInteractive false /IncludeLayers false /IncludeProfiles true /MultimediaHandling /UseObjectSettings /Namespace [ (Adobe) (CreativeSuite) (2.0) ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfileSelector /NA /PreserveEditing true /UntaggedCMYKHandling /LeaveUntagged /UntaggedRGBHandling /LeaveUntagged /UseDocumentBleed false >> ]>> setdistillerparams> setpagedevice



































































/ColorImageDict > /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict > /JPEG2000ColorImageDict > /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages false /GrayImageMinResolution 300 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages false /GrayImageDownsampleType /Average /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth 8 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /FlateEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages false /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict > /GrayImageDict > /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict > /JPEG2000GrayImageDict > /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages false /MonoImageMinResolution 1200 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages false /MonoImag

contentsbakerdrivetrain.net/articles/bert-baker-bert-bakers...contents july 2013 on the cover volume...

Documents