When you work among other professionals that are all doing the same thing and continually working on getting better and faster you come up with some bad ass moves from time to time. I while back after doing about 1000 chrome fork legs on 41mm front ends I found that you don’t have to change the fork oil! I know that sounds psycho but this is how it works………

Remove the  41mm fork legs from  your ride, re-install the gasketed top bolts and sit them upside down for at least 20 minutes. This allows the fork oil to flow up into the sliders.  Then remove the fork leg seal circlips, remove the bolts at the very bottom of the fork legs (the top if now if you are holding it right), and slide hammer those lame, un-chromed, stock fork legs off.

From here you just have to go back together in reverse with a new fork seal. I know that I made it sound pretty easy but our fork leg Hog Bite download will go through all the fork leg parts in better detail to make this super easy to do (that was a shameless plug by the way).

If you are looking for any tech tips in particular please shoot us an e-mail and I’ll be happy to post them.

Thanks Build A Hogers

Michael Durham

Palm Springs Bike Weekend looks like it is making a turn around. Ever since the Laughlin shoot out in 2002 the city of Palm Springs decided to take the event off the strip and stuff it into a parking lot. It was a bad move and has choked the event out ever since.

Just last year Palm Springs decided to close down the main drag and allow the event take place there again.This year there were a fair amount of vendors and bikers to match. Despite how crappy the economy has been it looks like things are beginning to make a slow turn around. People are beginning to dust off their bikes and put them to good use.

Michael Durham

Tried very hard to get the Shovelhead Engine build up by the middle of October. Some how the audio got out of whack on the editing timeline and had a battle to get it back in sync again.

I am uploading the video files tonight to the server and then in the next few days will build the product page and get this puppy released.

I just put some exerpts up on the home page of part one. The video is broken down into two parts. Bottom-End and Top-End. That way it won’t be a GB plus for downloading.

So looking for that winter project? Here you go!

Ray

We will be releasing a video about building a Shovelhead engine this month. This is the very engine that Michael used in the BYOB build video. It was shot very early in 2007 when we were just kicking around the idea of Build a Hog. It was the first thing or second thing I had shot along these lines and the first time Michael was before a video camera. I just set it aside because I wanted to upgrade my little studio to three cameras for a better product.

Just getting done with the Evolution rebuild video I broke out the 4 hours of tape on the Shovelhead build and it really didn’t look that bad after editing it down to a little more than an hour and a half.

We will be looking forward to your reaction when we release it mid-October.

Ray

We get a TON of people interested in seeing an Evolution engine video. We shot an engine build video a couple years ago but we weren’t happy with picture quality.
So what are most of the questions we receive about? The top end and what is our new video specifically on, the top end! Shooting a bottom end build is cool and all but no one but professionals will have the necessary tools to do it. We want people to actually be able to use our videos so I took one of my customer’s bikes with a mean base gasket leak to work on and explain along the way.

There was a great turn out for the LA Calendar show this year. Saturday was filled with a good amount of vendors and half naked chicks. The perfect weather drew a large crowd to check out everyone’s new products. There was good turn out of bikes for the show also.

Do you have a Hog Bite that covers Sportster front forks?
Thanks

Hi there,

The Hog Bite for 41mm front ends will give you the same info for your Sportster. The only differences will be that the fork caps on your fork tubes are spring loaded so be careful when you take them off because they will pop up at you. I have found that it is good cover your socket with a rag just in case the cap pops off.

The only other difference will be that you will need to remove a dust cover to get to the fork seal.

Besides those two differences they will be the same.

Thanks,
Michael Durham

1987 fxrc
My name is xxxx from Saskatchewan Canada. Last week I had a Rivera pro clutch installed by my local bike shop on my 1987 fxrc, 113ci S&S, stock five speed. Everything worked great for about two hours when it seemed to jump out of 1st. gear pulling away from a stop sign. I engaged the clutch, reapplied 1st gear, released the clutch and…..nothing, no 1st, no 2nd, no any gear. I got the bike home and on the lift, the rear wheel turned freely in all gears. While draining the oil and removing the primary I turned the wheel it seemed to click and went into gear. I topped up the oil, started the bike, put it in 1st, the wheel started to spin like it should then stopped, I was able to hold the rear wheel with my hand as the bike idled in 1st gear. I know very little about trannys and clutches but i’m thinking this is a tranny issue as the clutch is moving in and out as it should. Has this happened to others? Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
xxxx
Hi there xxxx. From the symptoms you have described it sounds like you have a clutch adjustment issue.
Your transmission has three shift forks and if one of them gets damaged it can cause a “false neutral” or no neutral situation. If this happens it would only affect one or two of gears, not all of them consistently.
An improper clutch or clutch cable adjustment will affect all the gears across the board. If you don’t have enough free play in your clutch adjustment the clutch plates can warm up, expand, warp and exacerbate the problem. This will make it feel like the clutch is moderately engaged through all the gears and may quite possibly ruin all of your clutch plates from getting burned.
Without being able to see the issue that is where I would go first.
Thanks,
Michael Durham

Riding season is here for those of us in Southern California and it’s right around the corner for the rest of the country. Is your bike ready?

If your bike has been sitting for months on end it will be a good idea to change your motor, transmission, and primary oil as oil will still deteriorate by just sitting in your motorcycle. You will also want to check your tires for dry rotting and correct pressure.

A battery tender and fuel stabilizer are great to install before storage. If you haven’t, a new battery, fresh gas, and a carburetor clean may be in order.

Happy riding

It is an interesting time to be alive. You rarely hear any positive news these days while a good number of my friends are loosing their jobs. One of my  best friends just let me know that he will be closing down his bike shop by the end of the year.

The fact being that the majority of his customers just aren’t able to spend the $80 an hour to have their bikes worked on.  Not to mention that loosing their homes may take priority over their bikes. We are heading towards a time that requires more simplicity. For a while you could find your average American with at least one house, cars, Harleys, boats and all kinds of other excessive crap. People would come into our shop and blow money at the drop of a hat. Now that money is becoming more scarce and most people are thinking twice before spending it on.

Fortunately one of the business beliefs Build A Hog has built itself on is that people should be able to work on their own bikes to further enjoy the experience of motorcycling and save some serious cash in the process. In these crazy times I hope people can still look to their motorcycles as a source of happiness.

Michael Durham