Ok ... nach mehr als zehn Jahren scheint es Zeit zu sein, dieses Blog wiederzubeleben...

Was ist mit der Raceknuckle passiert?

Nun ja, das Projekt ist nach einem schweren Motorradunfall und wegen anderer Faktoren mehr oder weniger eingeschlafen. Mir selbst ist physisch gar nicht so viel passiert, an den Unfall kann ich mich selbst gar nicht erinnern, aber es scheint so zu sein, daß in meinem Unterbewusstsein eine Blockade vorliegt, die ich nicht auflösen kann. Ich habe natürlich - wie es alle empfehlen - direkt nach dem Unfall wieder angefangen zu fahren, ein zweiwöchiger Trip in Nepal mit einer Royal Enfield, aber dennoch die Lust auf's Motorrad zu steigen ist "faded".

Meine Lieblings-Panhead, mit der ich den Unfall hatte, ist aber komplett repariert und ich ertappe mich inzwischen manchmal dabei, daß ich darüber nachdenke, wie es denn wäre ... es besteht also noch Hoffnung...

Well ... after more than ten years, it seems time to revive this blog...

What happened to the Raceknuckle?

Well, the project has more or less been put on hold due to a serious motorcycle accident and other factors. Not so much happened to me physically, I can't even remember the accident myself, but it seems that there is a blockage in my subconscious that I can't resolve. Of course, as everyone recommends, I started riding again immediately after the accident, a two-week trip in Nepal with a Royal Enfield, but still the desire to get on a motorbike has faded.

However, my favourite Panhead, the one I had the accident with, is completely repaired and I sometimes find myself thinking about what it would be like... so there is still hope...

Was ist aber nie verloren habe, ist meine Lust, "Dinge" zu bauen, konstruieren, CAD, Dreh- und Fräsmaschine, etc.. Nach ein wenig Modellbau (Copter), Füllern  und anderen Sachen und auch im Hinblick auf das irgendwann eintretende Rentenalter und meine Vorliebe zu reisen (und da bin ich auch zehn Jahre hintendran) ... lange Rede kurzer Sinn:

Ich habe einen Toyota Land Cruiser GRJ78 - oder auch kurz Buschtaxi - gekauft, werde diesen weltreisefähig um- und ausbauen, um danach über Land nach Indien zu fahren.

But what I have never lost is my desire to build ‘things’, to construct, CAD, lathe and milling machine etc.. After a little model making (copter), pens and other things, and also in view of the approaching retirement age and my love of travelling (and I'm also ten years behind on that) ... to cut a long story short:

I bought a Toyota Land Cruiser GRJ78 - also known as a ‘bush taxi’ - and I will convert and expand it so that I can travel around the world, and then drive overland to India.

Warum nach Indien?

Ist schon lange eine mehr oder weniger fixe Idee. Entstanden im Jahr 2006, als wir zum ersten Mal mit einer Royal Enfield durch Goa gefahren sind. In der Werkstatt des Anbieters arbeitete Werner, der wiederum einmal im Jahr "mit Bus und Bike nach Indien" durchführte; habe ich leider nie gemacht, aber die Idee blieb immer in meinem Kopf.

Warum ein Land Cruiser?

Lange im Kopf war ein Unimog, aber Kosten, Größe und die mögliche Nutzung als daily driver haben mich davon abgebracht. Und auch natürlich, daß ich mit zunehmendem Alter zunehmend Schwierigkeiten haben werde, das Ersatzrad durch die Gegend zu wuchten...

Daneben spielt auch mein Empfinden eine Rolle, daß das Reiseerlebnis umso intensiver ist, je kleiner das "Fahrzeug". Zu Fuß, Fahrrad, Motorrad scheiden aus ... nächste Größe ist also Buschtaxi oder alter Defender...

Why to India?

It has been a more or less fixed idea for a long time. It originated in 2006, when we first travelled through Goa on a Royal Enfield. Werner worked in the workshop of the provider, who in turn went ‘by bus and bike to India’ once a year; unfortunately I never did it, but the idea always stayed in my head.

Why a Land Cruiser?

For a long time I considered a Unimog, but costs, size and the possible use as a daily driver put me off. And of course, with increasing age, I will have more and more difficulty heaving the spare wheel around...

In addition, my feeling that the smaller the ‘vehicle’, the more intense the travel experience. Walking, cycling, motorbikes are out of the question... so the next size up is a bush taxi or an old Defender...

Cheers, 

Axel

p.s.: die Anfänge der Geschichte sind auch in einem deutschen Forum zu lesen, in dem ich mich anfänglich auch recht wohl gefühlt und wertvollen Austausch erlebt habe. 

Es gibt aber auch - keine Ahnung, ob das ein deutsches Phänomen ist oder nicht - Dinge, die mir die Teilnahme an dieser Community zumindest zur Zeit verleiden. Gibt man Empfehlungen zu einem Land ab ohne dort gewesen zu sein, einfach weil man viele Freunde und Bekannte dort hat, wird dies sofort in Frage gestellt, "weil man selbst ja noch nie da gewesen sei".

Oder "hier nur Themen zu Landcruiser, Lebenshilfe und Angeln woanders" ... klar, diese bevormundenden Foren-Mitglieder gibt es überall, aber ... ich brauche das nicht mehr, ich möchte nicht das Gefühl haben, mich für irgendetwas zu rechtfertigen zu müssen. 

Ich bin dann einfach weg und suche mir eine andere Plattform.

p.s.: the beginnings of this story can also be read in a German forum, where I initially felt quite comfortable and experienced valuable exchange.

But there are also - I don't know if this is a German phenomenon or not - things that make me dislike participating in this community, at least for the time being. If you make recommendations about a country without having been there, simply because you have many friends and acquaintances there, this is immediately questioned, ‘because you have never been there yourself’.

Or ‘only topics about Landcruisers here, life coaching and fishing somewhere else’... sure, these patronising forum members are everywhere, but... I don't need that anymore, I don't want to feel like I have to justify myself for anything. 

I'll just leave and find another platform.

#17 Raceknuckle

Exhaust...because available space is limited on that bike, no commercially available exhaust would fit except a Supertrapp (which I decided not to use after I read an article from RB Racing), as usual I started to design a new one:

Auspuff...am Bike wird's ein bisschen eng und es gab keinen käuflichen Auspuff, der aussah, als würde er passen, ausser Supertrapp (den ich aber nicht nehmen wollte, nachdem ich einen Artikel von RB Racing las), also wie immer einen neuen gezeichnet:

Inlet flange for a 2inch merge collector which merges the two 1 3/4 inch exhaust manifolds:
Einlassflansch für den 2 Zoll Sammler, der die beiden 1 3/4 Zoll Krümmerrohre zusammenführt:

Clamping device for doing the Wohlhaupter-work of the end part of the main tube:
Aufspannvorrichtung, um die Rundung des Hauptrohres zu wohlhauptern:

Works as expected:
Hat funktioniert:

#15 Raceknuckle

Finally, in very short time the casted part arrived. It was made by Weihbrecht in Wolpertshausen, really nice work using the lost wax model / dead-mold casting process.
Here's the PS model attached to the wax tree which then will be embedded into a ceramic compound:

Endlich, nach kurzer Zeit ist das Gussteil angekommen. Es wurde von der Firma Weihbrecht in Wolpertshausen mit dem verlorenen Wachsmodell / verlorener Form-Gussverfahren hergestellt, sehr schöne Arbeit.
Hier sieht man das PS-Modell am Wachsbaum, das dann von der Keramikmasse umhüllt wird:

The ceramics will then be heated/burned which melts out the wax and PS model. After that the mold is filled with the liquid metal (here AlSi10Mg) and after cooling down the ceramics is removed. Here are the two casted parts, one is intended as spare part (or maybe last resort if I bungle the final machining):

Die Keramikmasse wird nun erhitzt/gebrannt und Wachs und das PS-Modell herausgeschmolzen. Danach wird das flüssige Metall (AlSi10Mg) eingegossen und nach Abkühlen die Keramikform zerstört/entfernt. Hier zwei gegossene Teile, das zweite als Ersatzteil oder als "letzte Hoffnung", falls bei der Endbearbeitung des ersten etwas schiefgeht:

It is tested for leak tightness, so should work all right. My work with this part starts now which means grinding, inside and outside, machining both round flanges on bottom and flat one on top.

Die Teile sind auf Dichtigkeit getestet worden, sollten also funktionieren. Meine Arbeit an diesem Teil fängt nun an, heisst innen und aussen schleifen, die beiden runden Flansche auf Maß bearbeiten und den flachen oberen Flansch.

Cheers,
Axel

#14 Raceknuckle

Carb again ... using the two barrel Weber DCOE40 causes two problems with this bike: first it is a really fat carb and occupies lots of room on the right side. It's a problem while driving since the leg or knee is covering the stacks. Also it's a cosmetic problem because it gets crowded as the exhaust will be on the same side.
Attaching the DCOE40 on the left simply looks weird and the manifold is too short (loss of torque).
Given this I decided to use a standard upright assembly which in turn means, exchanging the DCOE40 for an IDF40 down draft carb.

Since there's no manifold for IDF40 and Knucklehead that has each barrel and tube separated up to the heads' inlet (they are all 2into1 manifolds that in the end merge both barrels) I had to design one:

I call it "TheTubes" and it cost me quite a while to create the final version. It is twisted in the lower part, because I wanted to have the inner diameter of 39mm over the complete length of the tubes (of cause right after the top flange it goes from 40mm to 39mm). The inlet port of the head is 39mm as well.

I had a polyamide prototype made by 3D printing for fitment tests:

Fits as desired, exactly between both heads:

First thought for the final manifold was to have it printed in metal, AlSi10Mg, too. But ... after some inquiries I soon dropped that idea (the most expensive offer was about the price of the complete KN93 engine!). Currently I'm searching a metal casting company that is able to sand cast or precision cast that part. Next challenge to come is machining the flanges to measure.

Cheers,
Axel

#7 Raceknuckle

I have to admit that some of the parts I use are bought but most of them will be modified either way. While searching some hot rod stuff on the internet I found those really nice lights and gas cap:

Of cause the lights have to be changed a little bit in order to pass the German TÜV.

Transmission is a Baker 4-speed, not the 6-into-4 everyone uses, it's really too wide for my purpose. Added a luxury item, the N-1 shift drum, which reverses neutral and first gear order, so I now have N-1-2-3-4. Kicker arm and pedal that came with the Baker I found less appealing so the kicker arm was replaced with the strong arm from Fab Kevin:

"If it ain't steel it ain't real!" Oh yes, but it weights a ton! Not sure if I keep it or do something different ... and lighter of cause. Tried to reduce weight a little bit by adding an additional hole but fine words butter no parsnips.

By the way in the picture above you'll see the leaf springs for the seat attachment, derived from two sets  of seat springs from an American tractor.

Primary is from Evil Engineering. Took me quite a while to get it...

Cheers,
pan51

#6 Raceknuckle

All the work on the motor internals is now done. Parts are polished and laquered to keep the churning losses minimal, crank discs are lightened to a certain extent. It's not overdone since the bike will appear on the quarter mile but the main use is as a daily runner so focus here is on a stable idling. Sunglasses on!

That's how cases should look like. Simply beautiful.

We decided not to use the S&S cam that came with the motor but to switch to a Leineweber #3.

You can check the specs here if you like.

Cheers,
pan51

#2 Raceknuckle

OK. S&S KN93. As some of the parts will be modified, polished, ported, flowed etc. etc. the motor was disassembled first. As it turns out this was a brilliant idea because a piece of debris was found as the cover and gears were removed. Remember, this is a new, unused motor!

Where does that piece come from? As it turned out, the piece was missing from one of the tappet blocks and first guess how that could have happened was that the tappet was slightly twisted upon assembly so the roller broke off the edge.

However this issue was solved quickly with the help of the german distributor by replacing the broken block with a new one. One other thing to mention is that you don't expect a lot of scratches as shown below when opening a new motor:

Just not to forget, motor and assembly work on this project will be done by Michael Schneider. Check out his website: Schneider Performance

Cheers,
pan51

#1 Raceknuckle

Well, how to start? This story is about building a new bike, based on a fake knucklehead that I bought some years ago. It sat unused in the garage for some time and after spending some time thinking about if I should burn it or use it for something fancy I decided to start a new project with it.

The good thing about it is the fact that it has a german license stating the year built is 1947 which in turn means that higher exhaust sound levels are possible, no turn lights and mirror are needed. I decided to keep only the frame and add some new parts:

Old fender is removed and a new, light one made of aluminum is fitted as well as a Mesinger racing seat. However the Mesinger doesn't fit right, looks good from side view but seen from the top it is too wide and disturbes the frames line:

Regarding the motor I'd always liked the S&S KN93 Knucklehead so this one will make it into the bike:

It will be equipped with a Weber two-throat DCOE40. The motor will be tuned a little bit, so in preparation of the tasks to come and to decide if the S&S cam is to be used the valve lift is measured:

Most parts of the motor are getting polished, heads and connecting rods for example:

Finally, to call a spade a spade I'll name it "Raceknuckle"...

pan51