Before setting the engine in place there were a couple of other things to attend to. The wheels for this bike have been a lot of work for me and are my first wheel building effort. I started out with a pair of 1952 (I believe) Schwinn cruiser rims given to me by Tinsmith from a donor ladies bike. Dan had done the same thing with his stretch Worksman... removed the original down tube and replaced it with the sweeping ladies' Schwinn down tube. So I got the left over wheels which were in very good condition.
I stripped them down to bare metal, and primed them, then laced AMF moped hubs with NOS Schwinn 12 gauge spokes I got from Bairdco and gave them their final paint with clear topcoat. I haven't had any kind of stand for the final truing until now... the bike they are going on.
I had to grind out the axle slots a bit front and back and then make them wider to accommodate the wider hubs. I gave a lot of thought to this and the solution was simple. A piece of all thread, some nuts and washers is all it took. You can see that I have two nuts midway, tightened against each other so that I can keep it all from turning as I tighten the nuts against the dropouts... pushing them out. I did it a little too much on the front fork, but no problem... if you put the nuts to the outside of the fork arms, tighten down and bend it back in just enough.
Now I'll be able to flip the bike upside down and I have my truing stand to get the wheels done. And now with the wheels in place I'll have a better idea of how it is going to look.
One last thing to do is come up with a stand so that I can work on it and have the bike well supported. I like center stands, but didn't have one free for this bike. I did have what was left of the one I had on a bike that got burned in a fire. I cleaned up the remains on a wire wheel and have been hanging on to it since. I found a replacement spring at the hardware and figured there was some way to give it a peg leg. As you can see, one leg was melted off in the blaze. I cut off the other one so the bend at the bottom was gone and fitted up copper water pipe with street elbows and end caps, brass bolted it together and have a center stand I may end up leaving on the bike, as I like it very much.
Now the engine is sitting in place and there is room for it to sit as it should... with the carburetor level and even room for the stock muffler. Progress. Awesome.
SB