Here are some photos showing the engine teardown on the 1926 – more updates to come as we move along.
Today’s post is a guest piece written by Don Caldwell. Don brought us a pile of parts that used to be a 1926 Harley and this is its story so far.
Thank you Don for the story and the chance to help share this with the world.
As an update to the previous post – here is the engine setup on the run stand for it’s first start in 15+ years. You can see the bagged engine in the last update.
A customer tore this bike down 15 years ago by a customer of ours, who had us rebuild the engine, tranmission, and quite a few components.
But after that the project stalled for a decade and a half.
Through a twist of fate, the bike is now back in our hands where we’ve pulled it out of mothball and are now setting off to restore the motorcycle.
It’s time this bike was back together and out there being enojoyed.
More updates to come.
Didn’t have time to start it up this week, ran outta time – but hoping to get it started early next week and film a video of the process.
Here’s a gallery of images (and captions) showing some of the build process.
Notice the white oil pump and lifter stools. During the war the government stopped the use of all aluminum based paint. 
Completed engine ready for the run stand 
Shimming the generator for the correct gear clearance. 
Final assembly process. Setting timing, etc
And here’s a video of the initial startup. The ‘runstand’ that it’s sitting on is actually a product of ours that we’ve been refining to eventually manufacture and offer to the public. We can run engines on them from the 30’s – 90’s.
This is a bit of a unique engine, it’s a 5 inch stroke using Truett and Osborne wheels. We were assembling this lower end for a customer and thought you guys might be intersted in seeing this unique Indian Chief engine.