måndag 29 augusti 2011

Avoiding Traffic Police / Step By Step

How to avoid getting caught by traffic police for not having a valid driving license.
Step 1:
Get a sidecar mounted to your bike.

Step 2:
As soon as you see an officer on the freeway, shift her down in third gear.

Step 3:
Jump over in the sidecar. (This will take a while, trust me)

Step 4:
You can still reach the bars pretty easily so steering is not a problem, but if your bike, like this one, has a foot clutch there's no way to slow it down, or brake.

Step 5:
Gently pass the officer, think about a safe place and keep a straight face, and as soon as the officer is out of sight you can start the process of climbing back up on your bike. (This will also take a while, trust me)

In Sweden it’s not illegal to sit next to someone who’s not even sitting there riding a bike so that’s perfectly safe, I hope. But please check up what the law says about this particular matter in your country before utilising the stunt in traffic.
Or just get a driving license...

fredag 26 augusti 2011

The Mirror of Abandoned Commandments

Dead pony island baby walking down the hall, tomorrow echoes from silence, come together

Paradox timelines forms a crocodiles jaw, eating equators beneath me, it's now or never

Electric orphans rising in the nightfall, chimes of freedom is ringing, come together

People gather round me and let me tell a tale, come sit around the atomic campfire behold the Holy Grail

Cold blooded ancient jaws that shreds my insides also eases the yearning, come together

Elastic membrane enveloping high tides also pleases the burning, it’s now or never

Untamed frenzy from the brim of the claw whirling here right inside me, come together

Mirage-like alligators tainting my mind, green-purple creatures complete me, it's now or never

Spectral beings with the outlines of time, chimes of freedom is ringing, it’s now or never

Black surface’s silent midnights stride, white sunset’s whispering winds

torsdag 18 augusti 2011

Monoblocks On Their Way To Germany

This is an open letter to my buddy Ivan from the faboulous Draggers;
Hi Ivan, hi internet, my name is Nicke Svensson and I am from Sweden, I like to eat lunch and ride motorcycles and think about melting jelly kremlins in explosion and I have a computer and a grumpy parrot named Acrobat Clam. I finally managed to not do anything else and get the matched Amals ready for your Panhead.

Sometimes I have nightmares when I'm wide awake, I have been told they will go away when I grow older, and I'm already older. I hope you are doing great over there in Germany.

I got them completly apart, not my nightmares - the carburetors, I did not drink. I took my time, brake cleaner and compressed air, David Crosby's falsetto on the stereo, I honed them and cleaned them. Crosby Stills Nash And Young.

Now they are jetted for a 74" and pre-tuned, the carburetors also comes with a lifetime warranty and 24 hour phone support, so if you ever have problems with them you just call me up or send them over. In four years I'll be 40 years old so I'll probably get all kinds of crisis doing alot of cocaine selling my bikes and buying a Ferrari, or not but anyway it's good that you get the carburetors in time.

They will be shipped Monday 11/08/22 09:30. Well, that's all for now Ivan. Thanx for last time and I hope to meet you soon, give my love to my friends over there, you know who they are. Thanx.

måndag 15 augusti 2011

Mag-nificent Longbike Wheel Part II

I've been getting quite a few "how to" questions about this setup so I figured I'll do another post about the wheel. The threads in the drum are milled out and then the drum is bolted up to the wheel from the inside. And if you need to replace the bearings at some point that's not a problem since you can just unbolt the drum and pop them out.

I cut down a 1936-57 brake sleeve to fit inside the hub as a spacer between the bearings ...Pretty beefy, and it already has the perfect ID to fit over the axle.

Here's how it all slides together, it's really quite simple. The combo of running a press-fitted spacer-sleeve on the wheel's left side along with running three (insted of two) 1967-72 Midstar bearings inside the drum makes it possible to run the original 1967-72 brake sleeve and brake shield without any modifications.

Bolted up with everything, four bearings total, steady as a tank ...All it needs right now is chrome.

...Oh, and a longbike.

torsdag 11 augusti 2011

Mag-nificent Longbike Wheel

EME/US Mag ad from Street Chopper 1973... This pic is sniped from the great MC Art

Since I'm not really sure on what bearings these wheels were set up with I choose to run 1967-72 Harley Midstar bearings which required a few minor adjustments to fit. The brake of choice is a 1967-72 juice drum, just like in the ad.

Hey look! I even remembered to remove the chuck key, fantastic.

Left side spacer-sleeve ready to be pressed in the hub.

If this pic were turned upside down it would totally remind me of the movie poster for Independence Day.

Get it!? Ok, sorry...

Here's the sleeve pressed in, it sticks out 7 mm and has a 0.02 mm press fit inside the drum, not only to add a little extra stability but also as a stop for the bearings. To make this setup work you also have to drill out the threads in the drum and bolt the drum to the wheel from the inside.

The 1967-72 drum had internal bearings from the factory, but only two, I pressed in an extra so now there's three bearings on the left side, the more the merrier.

Machining press fitting is a bitch... The sleeve requires a 0.03 squeeze inside the hub and the bearing requires a 0.02 millimeter squeeze inside the sleeve.

The right side sleeve and bearing ready for the press.

Here we go again...

Now this wheel has a total of four bearings(!) which is overkill, but pretty funny and super steady, and that reminds me of the fact that now I also have to build a bike for this wheel to be mounted on...