willedoo

This is an interesting video featuring an original, unrestored 1948 Indian Chief.

My sister found this negative in a packet of old family photos and had it reversed on one of those online sites. I can only do 35mm with the attachment on my scanner whereas these old photos are are much bigger size negative. Among all the old photos there's a few like this one that have no corresponding prints. It would have been taken by my great uncle, but have no idea who the bloke on the horse is. It looks like the beach at Gaza in the background, which is one place they were in 1917.

I remember a few years ago listening to an ex SAS bloke on Conversations with Richard Fidler. He'd written a book about his experiences. One thing that stuck in my mind was his description of the long term physical injuries that he ended up with (in his case mainly back issues) doing what they had to do. One thing was carrying heavy pack loads, but he also described the physical strain of ambush and/or observation exercises where thay had to sit in the one spot and not move for many hours or days on end. Movement is the main give-away on a stakeout so he said it could take 15 minutes or more to have a drink of water. A lot of time spent very slowly signalling others to take over his arc of responsibility, then virtually a millimeter at a time going through the motions.

The airflow in and out, but particularly intake air, has to take a lot of undesirable paths on a flathead V8 which restricts effeciency and performance. The trade-off is that it contributes to that unique sound they make. Cool sound at the cost of performance. Even stock standard they sound good. I think rodders mainly use them for looks and effect.

That's a treasure; it would be great to hear it running one day. Beautiful sounding engines, the flathead V8s. Not that efficient of a design but the sidevalve setup gives them that nice unique sound.

Yes, the Goldwing motors would be ideal. A lot of car motors are too tall for having a traditional bike tank on top. This one looks like a GL1000 Goldwing motor.

Just a project update, bearing in mind the whole harebrained idea is only a week old. At this stage, until a decision on the engine is made (do I put the V6 in it or source a more sensible motorcycle engine) there's no point doing any frame, tank, front end or side panel work. The rear wheel and sidecar wheels can be worked on, hub, brake, bearings, axle etc., and some initial sidecar chassis setout. This week I might see if I can set up a dedicated shelf area in the shed for components or component contenders. It would help to have it all in one place and readily visible. I'd like to avoid new hardware bits and pieces as much as possible and use mainly components that have some history and a bit of a story behind them. For instance, I've still got my Norton number plate from the early 70's, and a couple of days ago found two small spotlights from my old HJ Holden ute I had in the early 80's. Instead of things going straight to the pool room, they can go straight on the ratbike. As far as nuts, bolts, washers, piping, electrical harness and other small, odd fittings, I have stacks of scrap bin aviation stuff from various aircraft. That could be an initial job - sorting all that stuff into categories. With enough aircraft bits, maybe it could be classified as a rat bikeoplane.

That Flying Millyard is quite amazing. He even made his own carburettors.

Thanks for that info onetrack. I've got a heap of them all mixed up so I'll sort them out. With a bit of luck there will be a reasonable amount of the 2117 rivets.

I found a video on the 2 litre thumper. It wasn't in Norway, it was a German, Fritz Langer, who built it.

The original Wright piston was a long piston and needed that section of bore that protudes into the original radial crankcase, and that setup would have needed a much taller custom crankcase making the engine too tall, so that's why he trimmed the bore and shortened the stroke with the Continental O-470 piston.

I get the impression the engine runs but is not practical to ride around on. I think he just takes it to shows and starts it up. I don't think it has a balance shaft. He shortened the stroke from 5.5 inches down to 5 inches and used a shorter Continental piston. He had to cut the bottom skirt off the cylinder so it would clear the crank lobes. The one that was built (in Norway I think) using a single pot from a radial was around 2000cc and he could ride it down the road ok.

You're right there Nev, that one above with the Wright cylinder is a custom chopper in my view. It's that shiny, you'd need sunglasses to look t it..

I've got a question that hopefully some of the aircrafty types on the forum could answer. Regarding old surplus aluminium aircraft rivets: I've been told that they go a bit hard and brittle over time and are not much good to use when they're like that. I was also told that you can anneal them to make them useable again. Hoping someone might be able to shed some light on the subject.

The closest I have to anything like that is this Continental R-670 pot. It has around 1500cc displacement and is in good nick despite the outside appearance. Has valves, rockers, pushrod tubes and exhaust header. It's got a coating of protective gunk inside covering what looks like a chrome bore. Unfortunately I don't have the machining skills of Al Hackel or the equipment to make a motor out of it. If I was mad enough I'd give it a crack. I doubt my little mill would have the accuracy for a job like that.

This bloke in the U.S., Al Hackel, built a custom chopper using a single pot from a Wright R975-46 9-cylinder radial engine. Displacement is around 1700cc, which is a pretty big thumper. He made the bottom end himself, conrod, crankcase, crankshaft etc., but got someone else to make the cam. It has a piston from a Continental engine. Mated to a Harley gearbox. This is his Instagram page on it for anyone interested: https://www.instagram.com/alhackel/ There's a short video on there of a bloke kickstarting it at a show.

I've got a copy of the Ion Idriess book on prospecting for gold somewhere. Haven't read it in many years but I remember it as a good read.

This bloke needs help:

I still get the shudders when I think of the WLA Harleys that got away. It was around late 1971 or early 1972 when I heard the story of a pile of war surplus Harleys on a farm about a half hour drive from where I lived. I heard about it from the local bike shop mechanic who said he'd seen them but didn't remember exact directions. I knew the approximate area so rode out there on my AJS. At one stage I saw a farmer riding an ex-army WLA with an open box side car around his paddock so I pulled up and walked over to the fence. When he came over, I quizzed him about the bikes and as it turned out, it wasn't him who had them but a neighbour down the road a bit further. When I rode in the driveway and pulled up, I saw a solo restored registed WLA parked there. As it turned out, it belonged to a farm hand who had bought it from the property owner. The owner was an absentee type who lived in Central Queensland and had a manager running the farm. I had a yarn to the manager and he showed me around. As we wakled over to a shed, I spotted a WLA with box sidecar in the long grass beside the shed. It was oxidised from the weather but you could tell from the lack of seat wear and lack of dents and scratches that it had been hardly used. Lying all round the place in long grass were lots of Harley engines, gearboxes and bits, along with old Willys jeep stuff. We went around into the shed and there was another WLA with sidecar and three solos stacked there. At that stage, I thought there were the three solo bikes and two outfits plus a heap of bits and pieces in total. Unfortunately I was a bit young and naive and didn't push hard enough. The owner in Central Queensland for some reason had no phone contact, so the manager said he would be down to the property around a certain date. In hindsight, I should have got his address and rode up there to make him an offer in person as the manager said he would probably want to sell them. Anyway, I rode back out there on the date he was supposed to be at the farm and ended up walking right into one of those 'you should have been here yesterday' scenarios. The manager told me the owner had come down a bit earlier than expected and a bloke who was stationed at the Oakey Air Base had bought all the bike stuff from him only a matter of days before. I was told he took away a semi trailer full of Harleys and parts. The owner sold the lot for $200, about five weeks wages back then. At a later date, the mechanic who gave me the original lead asked me if I'd looked in the other shed which I hadn't. He said there was a heap more Harleys in there along with a pile of new old stock parts. That fitted in with the managers description of the size of the truck load compared with what I'd seen. In those days there were a lot of farms with old stuff lying around in sheds, but nothing like this one. I was only 17 at the time and not real savvy so missed the mother lode. It's funny when you look back and how we took that old stuff for granted back then when it was plentiful. Around the same time, I followed another lead on a so called barn find, a Panther 600cc Sloper. All it needed was a new clutch otherwise it was in really good condition. The farmer wanted $20 for it but I passed it over thinking it was not worth that price.

Was it one of these Nev, with the 750 motor.

Likewise, congratulations Peter; I'm looking forward to reading the book. My very limited gold experience was all in 1986. I worked for a time for a Brisbane based drilling company and we did five weeks of diamond drilling on an old abandoned historic gold mine near Inglewood. We were tracking a quartz reef that was about 4' deep and only about 6" wide. 60 degree angle drilling if my memory is correct. The boss made a lot of money on that rig. It was an old ex New Guinea Mindrill that he picked up for $4,000. 35 days drilling, 12 hour days, it would have paid for itself in no time. It was mounted on a 4 wheel trailer and towed behind a truck. Made in Melbourne I think and basically just a glorified lathe. Had a 5 cylinder Lombardini main motor and a little 2 cylinder mud pump. The old mine shafts were those old scary narrow ones. It was one of those mines that closed in WW1 due to lack of manpower and never restarted again. Not long after that job I left the company and went over to Halls Creek and did some subcontracting for Freeport, basically just constructing access and pads for gold test rigs. After that I worked for a while for an alluvial miner at the Old Halls Creek area. The creeks had been picked out in the 1800's and there were only a few odd exploratory trenches dug out from the creek banks. I'd strip and stockpile the bank area top until we found some gravel that indicated where the ancient creek bed was. Then it was a matter of very slowly shaving off a couple of inches at a time so the miner and his partner could go over the exposed gravel bed with detectors. That thin removed layer was stockpiled and they would run a detector over the heap after the wet season had washed it. If they fell on hard times, they would get the dry blower going and put the stockpile through it. Hot, dusty, hard work and the least desirable option compared to detecting and picking up nuggets. I saw my first decent sized nugget on that job.

You have a point there Jerry about the risks of 18 year old motorbiking. At least in my case, 18 was the year of most risky behaviour and I was lucky to survive it and almost didn't. Things were different back then. No such thing as learner approved motorcycles. We didn't even have learner permits then; once you turned 17 you could get an open bike license and go out and buy and ride the biggest, fastest motorcycle you could afford. As far as risky behaviour was concerned, you could get away with a lot. Police numbers were very small and policing was reactive and rarely proactive. There was no random breath testing (not until the end of 1988), no hidden speed guns (they hadn't been invented at that stage), no random roadworthy pull-overs, no roadworthy certificates; I could sit here for an hour and add to this list. We did have police speed radars but they were very rare and very obvious. It wasn't hard to spot a copper sitting on a chair under a tree with a big radar set perched on top of a small table. We didn't do cafe racing, more like pub racing, high speed pub crawls on bikes. In this district now, the police number in the high hundreds, whereas back in the seventies there was probably only about fifteen or twenty at most and usually only two to patrol the whole district after hours. Riding a bike back then was a bit like the wild west. I bought my first bike at age 14, a BSA Bantam 175cc, although I'd been riding the neighbours Francis Barnett for some time before that. At around 15 I graduated to a 250 Honda Dream for a paddock basher around the farm. On turning 17 I got my driver's license. No written test from memory. In those days we had separate license categories for car, body truck, semi trailer (one category to cover any number of trailers, no separate road train category like now), motorbike, and category G which was tractors, harvestors, graders and all sorts of general machinery. I got them all in one go and the only driving test was to drive our old AA160 International truck down the road and do a handbrake start on a sloping rail crossing. I had a neighbour's little Commer semi trailer lined up for a test, but the copper asked me if I'd driven it and was satisfied with my word that I had (8 miles down a straight, flat road). He also said he wanted to see me riding my first legal road bike, a 1957 AJS 500 single, before issuing a license. He knew I'd been riding it without a license but just wanted to check I could handle it ok. I drove the truck home, got on the bike and rode back to town,. As I pulled up in front of the police station, he was standing there with my license in hand, which he handed to me and said see you later. I never even got off the bike. The joys of a country copper back in the day. These days the bike license is the only separate category you have to have. All the others are covered by the highest level category. For example I have mototcycle and heavy combination (semi trailer). HC covers all those under it like car, body trucks, tractors and machinery. If I had a road train license (multi combination), my license would be only two categories, MC and motorcycle which would cover anything you can drive on the road. Around the time I had the AJS at age 17, I also had a 741 Indian unregistered for a restoration project that never happened before I sold it. After that came the Norton Commando and the 18 year old dangerous period. Other bikes I had over the years were a Yamaha SR500, a Suzuki 50 stepthrough and Honda postie bike. I'm not sure if you'd call the last two bikes, more like toys.

Nev, that's what a mate of mine did. He had a Triumph he'd been riding for a lot of years but gave away riding at age 70. He just didn't feel confident with all the traffic these days and health issues from a couple of heart attacks. I don't know how I'd go on the road these days. I haven't ridden a bike on the road for thirty years and it's a totally different ball game here now with the big population and car increases. A mate of mine is 67 and has just taken it up again after a lot of years. He's just recently bought a new Bonneville Speedmaster. One thing on his side, he lives north of here in a slightly quieter area with less traffic, and he rides with his son and his son's mates (all Harley riders) and they are all very protective of him and keep a good eye on him. The Speedmaster is a good old bloke's bike - nice low, very comfortable seating position, good for touring. His only issue with the Bonnie is that it sounds like a sewing machine with the stock pipes so he's ordered a set of straight through drag pipes from that mob in Tasmania that make after market pipe systems for a lot of bike brands.

Regarding the bridge, the local mill stopped running locos some time before the mill shut down and relied on road transport during that interim period. As a consequence, it fell into disrepair and was eventually dismantled due to public risk with people using it for fishing and jumping off it into the water. Eventually the company who owned the mill (Bundaberg Sugar I think it was at the time) came to the decision that their assets had more real estate value than they could make from crushing sugar so the sold it all up so developers could grow houses instead. Sad really to see one of the district's biggest industries vanish after being part of the place since the 1800's. The area had a lot of character when the cane industry was still solid. I live up on a hill and the old tram track used to go past the bottom of my property. Lots of good memories sitting on the verandah at night, listening to the locos rattling past and watching the cane fires out on the floodplain. Burning was not a very sustainable practice but it was very visual. For five to six months of the year it was like having cracker night every night. Over the years they ended up breeding varieties that produced less dead leaf trash and most burning went out of practice. What trash produced was left in the paddock to act as mulch in a way. Obvious benefits like more moisture holding ability, less weeds etc., but they had to develop machinery to be able to work it. There's not much cane grown here these days as it needs to be a high price to break even on trucking it some hours north of here to the nearest working mill. The only time they burn now is if they are harvesting what they call standover cane which is cane that has been left over to the next season or even longer. The more years it grows, the thicker the stalks get and the more trash and leaf growth there is, so it has to be burnt so the harvester can handle it. The sugar content drops as well with old cane. I miss the cane; these days instead of looking down over nice green cane fields, all I see is thousands of acres of weeds. It puts a lot of people out of work when a whole industry collapses. Farmers aside, a lot of the mill workers were multi-generational in their history there. I used to work occasional cane seasons harvesting cane and a lot of mates are local cane farmers or ex mill workers so I have a personal connection to it. I was born and bred in cattle, sheep and grain country so the cane was a big novelty to me when I first moved down here to the coast. Also here there's plenty of salt air to create rusty bits for making rat bikes (just to stay on topic).