Baker in Gear, Organ Donor-part three – Final Assembly and Build

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Contents
JULY 2013
10
ON THE COVER
Volume 23 • Number 5 • Our 193rd Issue
This issue's cover features a pair of timeless rides that defy the
bluster of short lived trends with their fundamental class. Bob Kay's
red Shovel, shot by George Najar, takes us back to a time when
customizing a bagger was about balance and details, not the size of
the front wheel. Meanwhile, the undeniable influence of Indian Larry
can be seen on Keino Sasaki's ’47 Knuck, photographed in NYC by
Mark Velazquez. Motorcycles like these will look just as captivating
50 years from now, and that's why they're on the cover.
FEATURE BIKES
FEATURE STORIES
Keino’s Magic Touch ..............................10
T & Copper Mike ...................................32
Sorcery in a ‘47 Knuck
Hard work’s rewards...
Bob Kay’s Mixed Bag .............................22
Daytona 2013 ......................................44
Classic Shovel remix
Stories among the palms
Humming a Happy Tune .........................28
Bert Baker’s Organ Donor ......................62
Pat Bonk’s ‘63 Hummer
Part 3: picking up the pieces
Bolting Ahead .......................................36
Fairless fabs a single
IW GARAGE
Todd’s V-Rod Hot Rod ............................48
IW Product Review: H-D Jacket...............20
No punches pulled
The Roadway’s the right way
IW Product Review: Helmetlok ................41
DEPARTMENTS
Keeping your stuff yours
Letters ................................................16
Garage Talk with Dan Pike ......................56
Readers write
Stroking for impact
Great Rides ..........................................52
Lincoln Electric Welding Series................58
Go your own way...
Framing the project
Made in the USA ...................................54
Shop Time with Mike Witt ......................60
Saddlemen
The ol’ orange krate
“Make it Your Own” Buyer’s Guide ...........68
Legend Suspension Series ......................66
Your ride is yours alone
Part 2: making an honest assessment
Seasoned Citizens .................................76
S&S Flathead Power ..............................72
1931 Henderson KJ
Tom’s big Shovel
IW Product Review: Aerostich.................80
Serious gear for serious riders
REGULARS
Marilyn Stemp ........................................6
Growing our own
Sam Kanish ............................................8
Roughing it
Rick Fairless .........................................14
44
Beauty and the beer
Ed Youngblood ......................................74
The Electric Indian
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Bert Baker’s Organ Donor: Part 3
Final Assembly and build wrap-up
Story by Bert Baker • Photos compliments of Baker Drivetrain
In part 2, Bert Baker took us through
the details of the engine and drivetrain
going into his Organ Donor drag bike.
Here in part 3, we’ll get a peek at all the
gritty details that had to come together to
build a bike that would be capable of giving
Bert the kick in the pants he’s looking for.
Brace yourselves... -ed.
onfession time: as I write the third
installment of the Organ Donor
story, I feel uncomfortable and
dirty. I feel like I gave birth to a healthy
bowel movement and didn’t do a good job
cleaning up after myself. When I watch
motorcycle shows on TV, I get frustrated
with how they compress the fabrication
and assembly process. At the beginning of
the show you see the frame, tank, wheels,
engine, and tranny. Thirty minutes later,
SHAZAMMM, the bike is assembled,
painted, and ready to ride. That pisses me
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off because I know a LOT of fabricating,
machining and technique goes into building a custom bike. Those details are the
stuff that is really interesting to me. So I
apologize for my dirty sphincter and for
not sharing all the juicy tech nuggets that
are near and dear to me. There is not
enough room in this magazine or time in
my schedule to do so. (If you catch up with
Bert and the Baker Drivetrain truck sometime this year, try to wring some of those
juicy tech nuggets out of him.—ed.)
Let’s start with the clutch actuator and
shift controls. On this project I wanted to
use an off-the-shelf BAKER TorqueBox, FFP
Primary, and King Kong Klutch, which I did
for the most part, except the clutch actuator. I’ve had the idea of a left side “pull” actuator for a few years to clean up the right
side of the transmission so this project was
the right opportunity to make a prototype.
Also shown is the rear set shift control. I
used the funky diagonal shift rod setup so
the shift pattern would be reversed. The
TorqueBox comes with a 0-down 6-up N1
shift pattern for a N-1-2-3-4-5-6 pattern.
However, for racing, it’s quicker and more
positive to stomp down to upshift the tranny, so the shift rod orientation shown accomplishes just that with a 0-up 6-down N1
shift pattern. Since the tranny had a right
side output (aka Right Side Drive), the shift
rod passed through the area normally occupied by a pulley or sprocket.
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I was lucky to have a talented seat
maker named Ivan Iler in my back yard,
because there was a lot of back-and-forth
between his shop and mine to get the
seat configured correctly. He runs Hammer-in-Hand Custom Cycles in St. Johns,
Michigan and manufactures seats,
frames, and anything he sets his mind to.
He is young, talented, and not afraid to
work 16-hour days so we’ve just seen the
beginning of this Viking-looking character
from the North.
This shot shows Ivan making a lower
seat pan template. I wanted a very special
seat for this project that locked my small
farmer butt in so it doesn’t fly off when I
launch this thing wide open with a warmed
up slick and wheelie bar. I also wanted the
shape to be inspired by my motocross
bike seat in the way it comes up on the
gas tank, and it had to be light. He designed a novel seat pan that featured an
upper and lower pan (image shown in previous article) to get the seat height in the
right position. He then welded trapezoidal
side plates to box-in the ultra-light pan.
The finished seat shown here features
leather and super sticky rubber seat material used on KTM motocross machines.
Here’s the rear wheel, brake, and
ing the meaning of. They are light (1.6 lb.)
and all the racers use them because they
withstand the heat that comes when the
brakes are applied at 180 MPH.
catch-can. Catch-cans are required on the
drag strip so the crankcase vent doesn’t
blow oil on the track. The catch-can and
1.1 lb. brake caliper came from Pingel
where all the cool go-fast stuff comes
from. Wayne and Donna Pingel are 2wheeled-speed royalty and very nice people. The rear wheel is a 2007 Fat Boy
wheel that I got at a swap meet for $100.
As is, without bearings, it weighed 23 lbs.
I put it on a Jenny Craig diet and got it
down to 18.8 lbs. which is very light for a
17” Big Twin rear wheel and is close to
PMFR wheels (the racing wheels by which
all others are measured).
Here’s the front end. The KZ900 fork
brace was necessary to stiffen the 39mm
forks for LSR runs at the Ohio Mile, which
I guess I can’t back out of now. Apparently
Mark P from BAKER had Jody Perewitz on
his “2-Wheeled Melt Down” radio program
(every Wednesday night at 6:00 on internetradioamerica.com) and she told the
world I should put Miracle Grow on my
testicles and go to the Ohio Mile in April to
do some high speed runs. She runs over
200 MPH and I won’t come close to that
without a fairing but I have to see what
the Donor will do. Like the African-American fellow in the Dirty Harry movie said, “I
gots to know.”
The Pingel 1.1 lb. brake caliper is the
same as the rear. We made the front and
rear caliper brackets with speed holes to
adapt the calipers to the chassis. The rotors, front and rear, came from Paul Kittrell at Lyndall Brakes and are made out of
a “functionally gradient metal composite”
that their website does a great job explain-
James got a custom carbon fiber aircleaner cover made by Mike at Carbon
Fiber Works in Florida. James sent Mike
the heavy steel version and Mike sent us
back the lightweight carbon fiber version
shown here.
This shows the location of the rev limiter and the shift light controller. We put
those units there for easy access for adjustment. I set the rev limiter at 5500
RPM to break in the motor and switched
it up to 6500 RPM after break in.
An Antigravity 24-cell 720CCA battery
was used with an All Balls 1.4KW starter
and Sumax cables. With the S&S compression releases engaged, the starting
procedure goes as follows: The 12-volt
power to the coil switched off, the motor
is turned over for a couple seconds and
the coil is energized by flicking the kill
switch. It starts every time! The Antigravity
battery weighs 5 lbs. and is 10 lbs. lighter
than the equivalent lead-acid battery.
So the bike was finished the day before
the road crew left for Daytona Bike Week.
I decided to adorn the Organ Donor with
my AMA number from the mid 80’s,
#311. We put the Organ Donor on the
scales and I got a kick in the groin. This
pig weighs 532 lbs! I thought for sure this
machine would come in under 500 lbs.
with all the conscientious weight saving
measures; what a pisser. I have since
been told it is very difficult to assemble a
continued
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Big Twin that will come in under 500 lbs.
and not break. Nevertheless, I’m already
making plans for some serious Jenny
Craig countermeasures next winter. The
winter weather in Michigan has been really crappy this year and the icy roads prevented me from going on a ceremonial
putt down the street so I saved that for
Daytona. The weather was beautiful this
year in Daytona and I put 150 break-in
miles on the old girl. The rings sealed up
nicely and the bike felt real good doing a
buck-20 down I-95.
We made it back to Michigan in the aftermath of Bike Week and turned around
to head out to the Great Southern Motorcycle Expo in Jackson Mississippi: the life
of a carnie. It’s the 17th year for this
show and we’ve never attended it, but
Mark Boler and his friend/mentor Wild
Bill Bissell (event promoter) made it real
easy for us to be there.
Mark Boler runs Oasis Cycle in Brandon, Mississippi and he’s the good-looking
guy second from the left with his crew.
The shop is located on a cozy little 50acre plot in BFE Mississippi; thus the
name Oasis. Customers within a 200-mile
radius bring their bikes to Mark and his
staff because they can repair and modify
bikes that others can’t. If Mark lacks the
knowledge to do the job, he is not shy
about picking up the phone and calling the
right person, and that’s kind of how Mark
and I met. If the Confederacy had been
manned with soldiers cut from the same
cloth as Mark, the Yankees would have
lost the Civil War.
In the next bonus installment I will report my track results from the ¼-mile and
the Ohio Mile. I will also report the dyno
results from the Oasis Cycle dyno run.
Mark put the Donor on his dyno and made
a couple passes, only to find out the
clutch was slipping with the lighter
springs. We will install the heavy King
Kong springs like James runs on his 145”
Super Duper Glide and that issue will be
solved so we can get a real number. You
won’t want to miss any of that. IW
*RESOURCE
Baker Drivetrain • Haslett, MI
877-640-2004 • www.bakerdrivetrain.com
Reader Service No. 42
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IronWorks July 2013