Project No. 4 - 47' Knucklehead

The whole story began when I was in Austin in January 2000 for business. Before I went to the airport to fly back home I went to Bud's Motorcycle Shop on Cesar Shavez to buy some parts for my Pan Project and there was that Knuckle basket case sitting on the floor. It was basically a powder coated frame, a fresh motor, a rebuilt transmission and the sheet metal parts painted in red. After a long discussion with Bud the deal was perfect. We agreed that Bud looks for all the rest of the parts to complete the Bike and then ship all the parts to Switzerland. Like always things changes and by March Sandra and I decided to spend our summer holidays in the USA which means we needed two bikes in the states to ride on. Since there was the Knuck waiting in Austin we decided not to ship our bikes from Switzerland but buy a second one in the states which I managed to do on a second business trip to Orlando in March. Fortunately it was the time of bike week in Daytona and found a nice rigid Shovel chopper for a good price. Bud who was in Austin too brought the Shovel back to Austin. The only thing I had to do now was to assemble the Knuck one time before our holiday in August. I decided to flight to Austin for one week in May to do this. And there we go.......
	After a delay of 10 hour in Cincinnati I arrived 3am at the Motel in Austin. After 4 hours of sleep I went to Bud's Motorcycle Shop to start working: The first day I mounted the motor and transmission to the frame and added some other parts like floorboards and foot controls and.....
	....the primary. I decided to use a Primo Belt Drive instead of the originally duplex chain.
	The second day I finished the primary, added the exhaust pipes and muffler and mounted the springer front end with the handle bars. The front end was quite tricky cause the first time I wanted to tighten the nut on the steering axle the axle came loose and I had to take the whole thing back off again to weld the axle to the fork leg. While putting the springer back on I show that now the dam axle was off line... back off, a couple hits with a big hammer and back on the third time.... perfectly this time. The funny thing is the ball bearing on the bottom of the steering axle!!
	The third day the bike took shape and started to look like a real motorcycle! The wheels came back from the powder coating and could be installed after assembling front and rear brakes. Fenders, headlight, oil tank and -lines and the carburetor.... almost ready to go!
	The forth day I started to do all the wiring. The time consuming part is to fiddle the wires into the three peace rear fender. Connecting rear and front light, the coils mounting plate and distributor and also this day is almost over. Before going back to the hotel I mounted quickly the nice old seat I found.
	The last day of my stay in Austin. I had to hurry up with all the little details like dash and cover, shifter, controls, horn and finishing the wiring. Finally the tanks and there we go... almost there. Lets fire em up!! Unfortunately I did not have a proper coil and the gas lines were missing too. Well, I had to catch my plane and leave to Knuck as she was. But we came back July 28th to finish the bike and head off to Sturgis, but this is another story!

Many thanks to Bud and his team for all the support and that I could use the workshop and all the tools!!!