Junior's Fish Fry: Wednesday, October 11, 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2023 11:45 pm
There it is folks. Next week's ride. It's a good time and good food. Not to mention you'll see a LOT of great old bikes.
For more details see the post by roginoz just prior to this one.
This past weekend was a comedy of errors. It seemed that I had the reverse Midas touch. Everything I worked on turned into garbage. It started with a tire change that turned into a four hour ordeal. The new inner tube I installed had TWO count them TWO splits right out of the box. Of course I didn't spot them until I had them installed and I tried to air the tire up. I pulled it back out and patched it. Put it back in and that's when I found the other one.
Pull it back off and at that point all I could do is put the old tube back in. Well at least there is a new tire on until I get another tube. Shift to the rear wheel. GREAT! This one has a rim lock to deal with. The new tire was apparently stored on the bottom of the stack as the tow beads were pinched together, making mounting all that much harder. The heavy duty tube is made out of some rather thick rubber and with the tight bead it was a real wrestling match getting it stuffed in the tire. Now I have to feed the valve stem through the hole in the rim. I have a fishing tool for that, but of course it broke mid project. As stiff as the tire and tube are there was NO WAY I was going to get the valve through the hole without the tool. By this time I was so frustrated that I could have picked the bike up and thrown it through the window. The next hour was spent trying to repair the tool so I could finish the job. Now I have to get the tube stuffed inside of the rim lock and the bead of the tire between the lock and the rim. Well, my tire machine was having none of it. I had to stretch the bead over the rim by hand. After about 15 minutes of wrestling I got the bead over the rim only to find it was pinching the tube at the valve. I got that freed up and after checking that there were no other pinches I aired the tire up, declared victory and decided that I had endured enough abuse for the day. Fast forward to Sunday. I got the wheel mounted on the bike so at least I could move it and get another bike on the lift. This one is a chain and sprocket change. The issue here is that the front sprocket is held on by a huge nut that is torqued down to a bajillion foot pounds of torque. Of course it's on the end of a spinning shaft so I need to jam it so I can untorque the nut. I figured I could jam it with a socket extension and put my half inch air impacter to it to break it loose. I get this Rube Goldberg system set up and hit it with the power. It immediately grabs my index finger and drives the tip of a sprocket through my finger nail. 
The next half hour is spent administering first aid. After several more attempts I was starting to round off the corners of the smaller of the two hexes on the nut. Realizing that this method wasn't working, I resigned myself to having to use hand tools. This nut is located in a position requiring the use of an extension on the socket. As tight as this nut is I can't have any side load on the socket. Two 4X4s a length of 2X4 and an old sprocket for a final shim gave me a support for the extension allowing me to put all the force to the nut without the socket slipping off. A piece of rebar provided the stock to make a makeshift jamming tool. I put a half inch breaker bar and a length pipe for leverage on it and put all my weight into it. The breaker bar began to flex. 5,10, 15 degrees. I was waiting for one of two things to happen. Either the socket would slip off the nut and parts and tools would fly in all directions requiring me to take cover from the shrapnel, or the nut would admit defeat and come loose. Fortunately it was the later and I was, once again, able to declare victory. Unfortunately there was enough damage to the nut from previous attempts to extract it that it warrants replacement. So it's waiting for parts. Once again, beaten to a pulp, I called it a day.
It looks like tomorrow will bring us some pretty good weather, albeit a bit breezy. Winds are forecast to be around 20MPH out of the south, so we will probably work up a good apatite on the way down and have some help on the way back. The trip maps out to be about 2 hours. I don't know about you, but I don't feel like launching real early, so I figure if we launch at 9:30 from the Rodeway Inn it should put us there about 11:30. That should give us plenty of time to get a good lunch and tour the museum.
TIME........11:00
Here it is
Twisted Oz Motorcycle Museum
527 W. 7th Ave.
Augusta, KS 67010
(316) 977-9257
Facebook Page.....https://www.twistedoz.com/
Map site..........https://tinyurl.com/wd4hsez
Of the bikes in the museum the Indian 6 and the 1931 Henderson KJ are my favorites. I first learned about the Indian 6 from a picture post card that my dad had pinned to the bulletin board in his shop many years ago. It just had a little paragraph with a brief description of the bike on the back. That's all I knew about the bike. I spent years searching for the bike and was thrilled to find it so close to where I now live.
The Henderson is identical to the one my dad found as a basket case when I was in my teens. There were 3 engines that came with the bike. All were torn apart and a were for an earlier model. Not only that, but all three had thrown a rod through the crank case. Dad had a friend who had restored a 31 KJ and he had an extra engine. Dad bought it and rebuilt it. He had to cast his own pistons since Bigfoot riding on the back of the Loch Ness monster would have been easier to find. Not only that, but he had to bore it .060" oversize. That was larger than the largest oversize pistons that were made for that bike. I remember him pouring his own babbit bearings for the crankshaft and connecting rods. He used to brag that the only parts of the engine that rub together now, that rubbed together originally, were gear teeth.
He made his own exhaust system, bending and necking down the header pipes to fit the heads. All other bike manufacturers were making their gas tanks out of sheet steel, but Henderson cast theirs out of aluminum. That was quite unique, and identified the basket case as a Henderson. The Henderson had a TRUE suicide clutch. Unlike the rocker type foot clutch found on Harley Davidson and Indian, Henderson's clutch operated like a car. Press it with your foot and it engages by spring pressure as you release it. The same as our hand clutches do, only operated by your left foot. This could be quite dangerous for the novice rider. Often the rider would get the clutch half engaged and think it was fully engaged, then release all the foot pressure. The clutch would then grab, the bike would lurch forward, jerking the bars out of the riders hands. This would cause the rider to roll the throttle on. There was no throttle return spring, so the bike would take off at full throttle leaving the rider behind. My dad practiced against a wall, gradually backing farther away from the wall until he got used to the clutch operation. Although he let me ride his Indian many times, he only let me ride the Henderson once, and not out of first gear. 
For more details see the post by roginoz just prior to this one.
This past weekend was a comedy of errors. It seemed that I had the reverse Midas touch. Everything I worked on turned into garbage. It started with a tire change that turned into a four hour ordeal. The new inner tube I installed had TWO count them TWO splits right out of the box. Of course I didn't spot them until I had them installed and I tried to air the tire up. I pulled it back out and patched it. Put it back in and that's when I found the other one.
Pull it back off and at that point all I could do is put the old tube back in. Well at least there is a new tire on until I get another tube. Shift to the rear wheel. GREAT! This one has a rim lock to deal with. The new tire was apparently stored on the bottom of the stack as the tow beads were pinched together, making mounting all that much harder. The heavy duty tube is made out of some rather thick rubber and with the tight bead it was a real wrestling match getting it stuffed in the tire. Now I have to feed the valve stem through the hole in the rim. I have a fishing tool for that, but of course it broke mid project. As stiff as the tire and tube are there was NO WAY I was going to get the valve through the hole without the tool. By this time I was so frustrated that I could have picked the bike up and thrown it through the window. The next hour was spent trying to repair the tool so I could finish the job. Now I have to get the tube stuffed inside of the rim lock and the bead of the tire between the lock and the rim. Well, my tire machine was having none of it. I had to stretch the bead over the rim by hand. After about 15 minutes of wrestling I got the bead over the rim only to find it was pinching the tube at the valve. I got that freed up and after checking that there were no other pinches I aired the tire up, declared victory and decided that I had endured enough abuse for the day. Fast forward to Sunday. I got the wheel mounted on the bike so at least I could move it and get another bike on the lift. This one is a chain and sprocket change. The issue here is that the front sprocket is held on by a huge nut that is torqued down to a bajillion foot pounds of torque. Of course it's on the end of a spinning shaft so I need to jam it so I can untorque the nut. I figured I could jam it with a socket extension and put my half inch air impacter to it to break it loose. I get this Rube Goldberg system set up and hit it with the power. It immediately grabs my index finger and drives the tip of a sprocket through my finger nail. The next half hour is spent administering first aid. After several more attempts I was starting to round off the corners of the smaller of the two hexes on the nut. Realizing that this method wasn't working, I resigned myself to having to use hand tools. This nut is located in a position requiring the use of an extension on the socket. As tight as this nut is I can't have any side load on the socket. Two 4X4s a length of 2X4 and an old sprocket for a final shim gave me a support for the extension allowing me to put all the force to the nut without the socket slipping off. A piece of rebar provided the stock to make a makeshift jamming tool. I put a half inch breaker bar and a length pipe for leverage on it and put all my weight into it. The breaker bar began to flex. 5,10, 15 degrees. I was waiting for one of two things to happen. Either the socket would slip off the nut and parts and tools would fly in all directions requiring me to take cover from the shrapnel, or the nut would admit defeat and come loose. Fortunately it was the later and I was, once again, able to declare victory. Unfortunately there was enough damage to the nut from previous attempts to extract it that it warrants replacement. So it's waiting for parts. Once again, beaten to a pulp, I called it a day. It looks like tomorrow will bring us some pretty good weather, albeit a bit breezy. Winds are forecast to be around 20MPH out of the south, so we will probably work up a good apatite on the way down and have some help on the way back. The trip maps out to be about 2 hours. I don't know about you, but I don't feel like launching real early, so I figure if we launch at 9:30 from the Rodeway Inn it should put us there about 11:30. That should give us plenty of time to get a good lunch and tour the museum.
TIME........11:00
Here it is
Twisted Oz Motorcycle Museum
527 W. 7th Ave.
Augusta, KS 67010
(316) 977-9257
Facebook Page.....https://www.twistedoz.com/
Map site..........https://tinyurl.com/wd4hsez
Of the bikes in the museum the Indian 6 and the 1931 Henderson KJ are my favorites. I first learned about the Indian 6 from a picture post card that my dad had pinned to the bulletin board in his shop many years ago. It just had a little paragraph with a brief description of the bike on the back. That's all I knew about the bike. I spent years searching for the bike and was thrilled to find it so close to where I now live.
The Henderson is identical to the one my dad found as a basket case when I was in my teens. There were 3 engines that came with the bike. All were torn apart and a were for an earlier model. Not only that, but all three had thrown a rod through the crank case. Dad had a friend who had restored a 31 KJ and he had an extra engine. Dad bought it and rebuilt it. He had to cast his own pistons since Bigfoot riding on the back of the Loch Ness monster would have been easier to find. Not only that, but he had to bore it .060" oversize. That was larger than the largest oversize pistons that were made for that bike. I remember him pouring his own babbit bearings for the crankshaft and connecting rods. He used to brag that the only parts of the engine that rub together now, that rubbed together originally, were gear teeth.
He made his own exhaust system, bending and necking down the header pipes to fit the heads. All other bike manufacturers were making their gas tanks out of sheet steel, but Henderson cast theirs out of aluminum. That was quite unique, and identified the basket case as a Henderson. The Henderson had a TRUE suicide clutch. Unlike the rocker type foot clutch found on Harley Davidson and Indian, Henderson's clutch operated like a car. Press it with your foot and it engages by spring pressure as you release it. The same as our hand clutches do, only operated by your left foot. This could be quite dangerous for the novice rider. Often the rider would get the clutch half engaged and think it was fully engaged, then release all the foot pressure. The clutch would then grab, the bike would lurch forward, jerking the bars out of the riders hands. This would cause the rider to roll the throttle on. There was no throttle return spring, so the bike would take off at full throttle leaving the rider behind. My dad practiced against a wall, gradually backing farther away from the wall until he got used to the clutch operation. Although he let me ride his Indian many times, he only let me ride the Henderson once, and not out of first gear.