March 18, 2012
This bike, which I called “Devil May Care”, was a fun one for me. I played it very safe with the overall shapes, which was hard for me to do coming straight off the “Rusty Buzzard” build. Ironically, this was one of my favorites. This bike had a few noteworthy developments, function wise: One was the general complexity of the front end, which I had never attempted to build before. I naturally made it extremely strong and overbuilt, complete with all billet stainless rocker assemblies with needle bearings in 6 places!
The other was a double action clutch. I hate automatic clutches or transmissions of any kind on a motorcycle. However, I hadn’t yet spent a lot of time riding jockey shift and (since I didn’t run a front brake), I wanted a “crutch” of some kind to help me. Obviously, my fear was missing neutral on an uphill stop, not be able to take my foot off the clutch, and have my brake foot on the ground, therefore rolling backwards down the hill.
I made the rear brake work conventionally, but the clutch could be over-pushed and also engage the rear brake, via a crossover tube and a second “plunger”.
My new riding procedure was: slow down with right foot, while using clutch casually on the left. Upon slow speeds, forget the right side- just over- push the clutch pedal hitting the rear brake. That way my right foot could be on the ground, and my left foot doing both clutch and brake together. Upon pulling ahead, I just let off the clutch and I pulled away- never needing my right foot to help hold me as I ascended. I could have used the left hand assembly by itself and not used a right brake pedal at all- except for the need to brake over the clutch during normal riding. get it?
The bike turned out to be very easy to ride; I would say even easier than a stock Harley. It also ran great and had an amazing Pradke paint job.
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