You do what you gotta do. For every post or comment we make. There are 10 lurkers who watch us and post nothing. If not more. Bunch of guys watching and maybe building or wishing they were building like we do. Ever see how many views our build threads get. Who is that? A lot of it is the other builders on here. But most of it is randos. The nameless lurkers. You put that headlight wherever. We will like it! That build is freakin sweet man. I would love to ride it daily everywhere. To be honest I would rather ride that bike than one of mine. My bikes only look good to me. I see yours and I see years of studying of bikes of old. They take you back to a time when none of us lived or worked on them. Really amazing stuff. That’s why I love the vintage stuff or vintage looking stuff so much. It’s just a peek into a time gone by. One old guy I met recently. Completely blew my mind. He is building a steam powered bike with the water heated by a zero motorcycle battery. Yep an ebike powered steam motorcycle. Talking to him about steam. Realized it’s an entire generation of builders gone by with the advent of the ICE. Steam was King back in the day.
Thanks Tony your comments are both insightful and humbling. I love looking back, history to me is fascinating, I admire it but don't long for it. With all it's problems life now is still great and what we actually have....our personal reality.
Recently I've invested quite a bit of time revisiting the amazing steam engines, both actual historic engines and current hobby recreations or restorations of famous designs. Steam powered cycles are a historical category, subset, of steam transport. Your Ol' guy is onto it!
I lurked this forum and built motobikes for several years too.
My Ol' Crow isn't a copy of a Harley. Though that's how I think of it; it's more a composite of manufacturer designs extant during the first two decades of the motobicycle. I lean towards the racing look of a weekend racer and a weekday work transport bike, but not a factory supported team bike. Regular people raced, but couldn't beg, borrow or steal a real team bike. They weren't for sale. So weekend track warriors pieced performance mods together to be competitive, they were the original motorcycle hotrods. Most of these were powered by intake over side pocket exhaust design motors which HD V-twin owners some time raced the same basic bike for decades on flat tracks and hill climbs. Bikes took a pounding with accidents on track and when old parts could no longer be repaired and used the parts of newer bikes were used as replacements/upgrades. Tins and forks were really common replacements as were handlebars. Also these bikes in some cases were used in both solo and sidecare events so forks and handlebars were switched between events. For my Ol' Crow I have wide bars, for sidecar and daily riding and downturn solo racing bars for board track and two different forks (simple girder and four spring). Four springs are more a late 1920's item on Harleys as is the style headlight I'm using (though Indian and others used this headlight bucket on earlier bikes) it was a definite lighting upgrade to carbide etc.
My frame and tank really look like the Reading Standard board track design to me. Check out the only known example housed at Wheel's Through Time's Maggie Valley exhibit and I think you'll see what I mean. Also I kept the motor drive side simple like the Reading Standard. Pat at Sportsman Flyer really built me a fine frame, to my design specs and fit his big battery "fuel tank" in it. The full scale size 61 V-twin engine case fit perfectly with no need for any frame mods. Great work as always from Pat!
As far as performance goes my electric using 48v and 40 amp controller can equal the Harleys 1912 advertised speed of mid 40's mph with full charge. Going to 72v and 70 amp continuous it easily runs high fifties. Daly riding for me, 48v is what I prefer and I have three motors and several controllers which are simple to just plug and play on this bike.
Original track bikes ran 2.5 to 3 inch wide tires on 28" rims. I use 26 inch x three which stand 27.5" tall on the Ol' Crow. Pretty close to original without the cost.
I did indeed plan to mount a 250cc Yamaha in a frame and had everything in hand to do so and I think that's a great setup still, but I really wanted a engine that looked original early teen's so I waited and the Ol' Crow developed and it doesn't leak or smoke and fires up without a push, wheel pull or pedal and it has a reverse for the sidecar. Three speeds, hand shift lever, not yet hooked up and eventually running a full suspension side car with foot pedal activation of a disc brake, definitely not vintage, but the bike's twin drum brakes just not up to stopping the weight of a side hack even from a modest 25 mph.
Tony I love what you do and how you innovate on both gas and electric builds. Real bikes are meant to ride, and are certainly not posers. I ran out of power, in the middle of nowhere a while back, and a guy in a PU pulling a well used cattle trailer (3" of fresh bull crap front to back) stopped to help. He was amazed that I didn't hesitate to lay the Crow flat in that mess to haul. I like bikes I can daily ride without worry of getting dings and scratches. Bottom line with me is how dependable and safe they are and if they clean up good that's fine too.
Good is when good works!
Keep building cool stuff and share often with us.
Rick C.