Shovelheads

Ya gotta love the old shovelheads, and the old guys who ride them.  There’s a direct connection between them and the earliest motorcycles in that they are known for arbitrary breakdowns and vibration-assisted spontaneous disassembly, and the resultant skills and improvisational fixes their riders come up with to keep them on the road.

A case in point is Ron’s ’77 FXE, which he recently resurrected from exile in some garage where it was being used as a clothes hamper.

We decided to take it on the Dave run for a shakedown cruise.  That is an annual run organized by Big Dave that always features a mixed bag of bikes of all types, with skilled experienced riders that tend to go fast.  This year, for example, we had a Victory Vision, a Honda Sabre, a Kawasaki Ninja, three Harleys - my FXR, Ron’s FXE and a Lucky’s chopper that was in theory a 1983 , a BMW, a Vulcan, a Yamaha Super Tenere, that sort of thing.

We gathered at the Black Diamond Bakery on a Saturday morning for the usual pre-ride ritual of coffee, carbohydrates and cholesterol, then launched ourselves in a loose pack down the OK highway towards Mount Ranier.  The eventual destination was the Columbia river via that cool road on the back side of Mt. St. Helens.  We made it all the way to Eatonville before something  fell off the shovelhead, one of the nuts that holds the gas tank in place.  We should have seen that for the omen it was.  So Ron and I sent the rest of the pack on ahead, while we looked for an auto parts store to buy a nut and washer.  We never did catch up with the rest of the guys, but we had a great ride anyway, as it turned out.

After we fixed the gas tank, we headed out the Eatonville cutoff, thinking to jump ahead of the pack that went the long way around on Highway 7 through Alder.  We holed up in Elbe at the tourist trap in the middle of town with all the train cars and such, one of which sold a blackberry smoothie that I recommend highly.  No sign of the boys, so we headed out on the projected route down Skate Creek road to Packwood the back way.  This road is as beautiful a twisting windy country road as you could wish for, but it gets pretty rough up near the top, after you pass the “End County road” sign outside of Elbe.  Somewhere past the top there was a chuckhole with a perfectly square sharp corner that took the spoked steel rim of Ron’s front wheel and put two perfectly matching dents in the rim that peeled the rim edge back from the sidewall neatly and made the wheel into one that was round on three sides and flat on the bottom.  So we thump-thump-thumped into town and stopped at a gas station to figure our next move.  Yay, innertubes!

One thing that has happened to gas stations all over the country is that they have turned into convenience stores, and the concept of a “Service” station with the skills and equipment to keep your car running has fallen by the wayside.  Walk into one of them and ask the clerk behind the counter racks of cigarettes, candy and junk food for a hammer and they look at you like you’re from another planet.  Fortunately, there are a few old time stations left, often in small towns, and you can usually find one if you poke around.  In Packwood, it’s the old Chevron on the west side of town, the one with the fuel pumps that are so old that the numbers physically spin around on the dials while you pump, and the clerk has to come out with a square key and reset the pump manually between each transaction.  This particular clerk was a wizened old guy who had obviously been kicking around town for many a year, so we softened him up by buying some gas, then put the hammer question to him.  He came up with a 20 oz. claw hammer and a 12 oz. ball peen.  Ron took the claw hammer and did the nicest job I’ve seen in a while of beating a steel rim back into shape in the parking lot with precise blows at the correct angle and force while I held the front end steady and offered cogent advice like, “you missed a spot.” “Hit it harder” and  “Ooh, did that hurt?”  Soon the wheel was round enough to hit the road again, and off we went.  Another problem solved.

We decided to go up and over Cayuse pass and stop at the Naches Tavern in Greenwater for lunch.  That’s where the next little problem happened.  This time, as we pulled into the gravel parking lot, Ron’s front exhaust pipe just up and fell off onto the ground.  The engine was still running, and it made that blup-blup-blup sound along with the whistle-chirp-chirp you get when the hot exhaust valve is open to atmosphere.  Ron laughed the laugh of one who knows he can fix it somehow, and picked up the truant pipe and leaned it against the bike to cool while we went in for beer and ideas.

The problem was down at the muffler end of the pipe, where the slotted bracket welded to the muffler fits against the hanger bracket, and the nut and bolt was still tightly fastened, along with the shards of the muffler bracket that had fractured from the heat and vibration, which let the muffler hang down, only connected at the head bolt, which soon vibrated loose and fell out somewhere between Ohannapecosh and Paradise, and left us stranded at a tavern with good beer and food, not even close to the worst case scenario.  So even if we could come up with a 5/16”-18NC cap screw ¾” long somewhere in Greenwater to secure the pipe to the head, we would still have to find a way to secure the muffler to the hanger, given the current state of the shattered bracket on the muffler.  We needed wire, lots of it.

Sitting in the booth at the Naches Tavern I looked around.  The high wainscotting around the great room was full of odds and ends of logging equipment on display, blocks and tackle, peavey and pike poles, along with the occasional buck saw and mule harness.  Directly above my head was a cast iron valve body, held together by a couple of 5/16”-18NC cap screws about 3 inches long, with about ¾” of thread and a nut holding the body together.  I whipped out my trusty Gerber stainless steel multi-tool, don’t leave home without it, removed the nut and pocketed nut and bolt.  We could screw the nut all the way down the threads on the bolt, then screw the bolt into the head until it bottomed, then jam the nut against the head pipe, and voila, one problem solved.  I walked out into the back yard of the tavern and looked around some more while Ron put Plan A into motion.  There was a guy back there taking a break from the kitchen, and I told him my story.  He suggested I look at the burn pile around the corner, where I saw a section of hog wire fence.  Out came the trusty Gerber, complete with wire cutting jaws, and soon part of that fence was rendered back into its original configuration, that of wire.  It fit neatly into the hole and wrapped through the remains of the muffler bracket just right, and twisted tight behind the muffler, so it was invisible.

So it was, and so it worked, and so off we went down the hill to home.  I kinda like the looks of that long bolt in there, and suggested we install another one in the rear head, then drill the heads and safety wire them to each other.  You could hang Christmas lights off the safety wire.

As for the wire on the muffler, why not just leave it there?  At least until it breaks again?

Which we know it will do.  With a Shovelhead Harley, you know it’s only a matter of time.

Nowadays, all the new bikes are computerized and complicated, with trouble codes for everything and Electrical Diagnostic manuals an inch thick to help the mechanics figure it out.  When you break down, you whip out your cell phone and call AAA or MoTow and then you sit and wait.  Hopefully near a beer place.  I guess that’s progress, of a sort.

I can’t help thinking, somehow, that there’s a place in the modern world for the old machines that go blup-blup-blup , and that, when they break, and you fix them, you kinda feel better about yourself.  It’s like the smooth, painless rides are over and soon done, and the memories fade like an old Polaroid, while the adventures that include some challenges, some adversity, those are the ones you remember and talk about.  That’s when you’re really living.  :-{)}