Chronicle of the Rubber Shovel Project: Alice
Black 1981 Harley-Davidson FLTC - Tour Glide Classic

Chapter 4 - Bitcoin Sucks!

So the plan was to have the proceeds from the past year's Bitcoin mining fund Alice's engine mods...but that hasn't quite turned out according to plan. As I'm currently stuck watching the market's 6k 'Red Candle' horror show sink farther into the toilet, while my plans for a spunky-er engine sit perched precariously on the window sill of doom. If the current Bitcoin market goes up - like 10k - I'm gold ... But appearances being what they are ... I'm probably just screwed. But that is the nature of a project...they take time. And this is a waiting game.

...Waiting sucks.

But Alice is still a blast to ride!

 

Saturday: June 30, 2018

Since the above is still - unfortunately - true... Not much has been happening in the garage with Alice for a while now. But the rear brake has been dragging a bit, and the rotor has an almost mirror polish to it. So the caliper got rebuilt, the brake fluid has been changed, and she rolls much easier now.

Hay, if I can't afford to add any horsepower, at least I can stop wasting what little she does have ... Maybe I'll even be able to get her up to 93MPH now..

 

Time Passes...

Life Happens...

[Insert something profound here],
that's not going to fucking happen.

Did I ever mention that waiting sucks??

 

Saturday: July 14, 2018

Online at eBay:

 

So I've been looking for one of these things forever ... Yet every time I ran across one, they wanted a king's ransom for the friggin thing ... And so I waited yet some more, until I found this one. And it was finally on the way. All I needed now was the 10 pin Amp plug...

...And that's where the plan promptly went to shit.

This is the picture - from eBay - of the part that I ordered.

But that is not the part that I received.

Nope... Gender == Bent.

So I actually had to go back and order the wrong plug - from the same seller - in the hopes that they had screwed up both photos, in both listings, in the same fashion .. And would therefore subsequently - once again incorrectly... - send me the correct part.

Captain Jack Sparrow would be proud of that logic - go ahead, ask me if I'm crazy...

Yepper ... That's exactly how I felt when I clicked the 'Buy Now' button on the secound round.

 

Monday: August 6, 2018

The now correctly ordered incorrect part has been ordered, and delivered, and much as I'd suspected was indeed (incorrectly...) correct. Albeit a clear indicator that their webmaster has some flavor of gender identification issue.

I'm not judging here ...
I'm just saying it was clearly written on the packaging - How the hell did you manage to fuck that up???

 

Saturday: August 15, 2018

Other projects what needed done, finally being out of the way. It was finally time to tear Alice apart to get the 1981 electrical system updated all the way to 1988 which was when Harley first started offering self-canceling turn signals as an option.

I'd already spent hours on end tracking down schematics with the pinouts for the various (possible option) modules, and had a diagram of what needed to be done and handy to complete the conversion. So I set about disconnection the old, and looming, grooming, and adding the wiring that would connect to the module to the system. With the intention that this result in as close to a factory appearance as possible.

And it did ... Which brings us to what is now euphemistically known as the rodeo test.

Everything was checked, double checked, triple checked, and verified before I energized the circuit, because these Turn Signal Modules are harder to come by these days than a nun that knows where to get good coke..

I hit the left turn signal button, and blinky blinky blinky blinky blinky ... Good!

I hit the right turn signal Button, and blinky blinky blinky ... Long Pause ... Fuck.

Much diagnostic fiddling then ensued. Left TS worked, and right TS would deactivate the left TS. Holding both would activate the hazard lights, on and then off. Everything pretty much worked perfectly except for the whole right turn signal lighting up and fucking flashing and shit part.

Now I'm not going to rip on the seller here for what is obviously a five star shit happens type of situation. They said it worked when they removed it, and it did indeed (as advertised) work for me as well when I got it out of the box ... It just didn't manage to last more than 8 seconds outside of said box...

Son-of-A-Bitch ... Now I gotta hunt down another one of these god damn things, and the current rate for them on eBay is in the $300-500 range ... Because apparently everybody seems to think that they're made of fucking gold or something.

And I gotta find one that can actually blink more than 8 time before it up dies...
                                                                                                   ...And that folks, is the 'Rodeo Test'.

Time passes...

 

Saturday: August 25, 2018

Online at eBay:

The fine folks at PinWall Cycle Parts, Inc. - in Massilon, Ohio - actually had one available at a fair price, which I happily paid. It came in 5 days later, and Alice has been happily blinking away like a freaking Christmas tree ever since.

 

Side Note: So while Alice was down, I scavenged a VOES off my brothers Softail, and added a vacuum tap to the intake manifold. Her - performance - behavior improved noticeably. I'm going to have to do another top end run soon to see if she can now break into triple digit speeds ... Butt dyno says, yes is definitely going to be the answer to that question.

 

Saturday: October 6, 2018

Okay, I'm going to take a second to back up a little for a picture of Alice's TSM mounted and wired in place. I do this only as an example of how carefully I groomed the wiring to come out with something as factory looking as possible.

And that's about as factory as I could fake it..

 

Now, about Alice's dark secret...

A long time age, someone managed to strip out the rear exhaust bolt on Alice. Then they Heli coiled it, and all seemed fine for an indeterminate length of time ... Until said Helicoil decided to let go. The bolt backed out, the Helicoil buzzed its threads to powder, and the whole shebang went completely to shit.

Now I don't really know who fucked up what on this one, it's actually quite possible I could have caught this earlier ... But I'm going to go with shit happens ... Because this is total shit - I'm not ready to pull the engine apart - and it friggin happened.

Shit...

So has anyone ever heard of a Big-Sert?? They are incredibly wonderful things that were specifically designed for this exact scenario. However they are also really expensive..

...And they are also really fucking worth it.

Online at eBay:

No major disassembly required - Crisis Avoided!

 

Sunday: October 7, 2018

Alice got a bath, and is ready to head to work tomorrow.

 

Current Project Cost: $8,472.33

You really have to truly love doing this type of thing or you don't get to play the game - Alice is not, nor will ever be for sale. She is the sum total product of a crazy man's dream. And the scant few close brothers that have ridden her know, she is one spooky fast tight little bitch.

 

Wednesday: October 24, 2018

My brother was in town, and decided to spring for a dyno run, so we could finally have a solid - numeric - baseline for what Alice was capable of. The consensus among onlookers at the shop as she rolled onto the dyno, was that she was one pretty scoot ... But she'd never make it past 60 ft lbs of torque. Well... - long story short - Alice is a sleeper. They were way the hell off. And I haven't stopped laughing about it for days.

Alice broke 70 ... And by broke I mean smashed it like a china doll.

On the dyno Alice's - bit of a mean streak - secret is out..

Now picture if you will... My brother and I sitting at a stop light; He is on Alice, and I am on Trixie (my 2010 96" stage 1 Twin Cam). Our buddy Paul and his Ol' lady are sitting behind us on his bone stock - also 96" - 2009 Street Glide. I tell my brother when the light turns green, turn her loose. And he says, no shit - I knew what you were up to.

The light turns green, and I launch Trixie as hard as I can. I've got the jump on Alice ...(she spun like mad on my brother)... But she ain't giving up any ground for shit. I've got Trixie between 2/3 and 3/4 throttle, and it's clear I can pull away any time I want ... But Alice is gnawing on Trixie's ass like she was fired straight out of hell ... And it's just too much fun to watch to go to full pin. Alice stayed dead center of Trixie's mirror through the next few gears all the way to 90mph where I leveled off.

At the next light, our buddy Paul catches up and says: "What the hell did you pull out for, I almost had you!"

I respond with WTF do you mean 'You almost had us'???

And he says: "Well I'm running two up."..

Um... Derp! - 2009 96ci EFI Twin Cam vs. a 40 year old Shovelhead ... And your only excuse for coming in last is the old lady?!? OMFG - He Just Went Full Retard.. - Somebody's not getting laid for the next year or so..

I'm not going to repeat here exactly what I said to Paul after that - feel free to indulge your imagination... - But, my brother was laughing so hard he almost dropped Alice..

 

Tuesday: November 20, 2018

Okay... So I'm not sure if anyone has thought to notice how many of these vignettes have started with my brother being in town ... But my brother is in town, and we're frolicking back from our favorite watering hole...at a fair clip. He's two up on his Stage 2 1985 Evo FLTC trying desperately to chase down Alice, who is yet again - oddly - out in front. I've got Alice WFO in 3rd at about 4k when her exhaust note changes...radically ... And her power goes right through the floor.

Shit... She just spit the baffle out of her Paughco exhaust so hard, that my brother described it at looking like a torpedo skipping across the road. Baffle = Back Pressure; Back Pressure = Torque; Lack of torque = Slug. Alice is now running like total shit.

Just for the sake of curiosity, I rode Alice to work the next day. And it was a total horror show; she had no power (e.g. torque) what-so-ever. She would barely make it to 60 mph going up a hill in 5th. Now as to why Paughco only put in two tack welds to hold the baffle in place on a $300.00 muffler - lazy pricks - I which I knew. But nobody else I could find makes a 2 into 1 exhaust for a 1981 Rubber Glide Shovel.

But fortunately my brother is a welder, so we got the baffle tacked back into the Paughco muffler ... Without completely roaching the chrome. And Alice is back to being a feisty little bitch. And by feisty, I mean she spun a 180 - back towards traffic... - on my brother when he spurred her to hard making a U-Turn.

Damn it Alice ... You really do have a mean streak!

 

Saturday: December 8, 2018

Old people (me included) make a lot of weird noises, and Alice is no exception. So in spite of all the work that's been done, she still has a few odd sounds that emanate from somewhere that I've yet to track down. One of those noises - which I've actually never heard - comes from the right side cover which is and has been missing the grommet for the oil tank since day 1. Now I'm not actually sure exactly what noise it is making...as I've never heard it.. I'm just sure it has to be making one because it moves around a lot - which it shouldn't - and it therefore must be - at some point - making some sort of noise ... That I am just not as of yet hearing. But I know it's there - in spite of all indicators to the contrary - because it has to be there, and it's bugging the fuck out of me.

Yeah, this is definitely going to have to be fixed immediately.

Online at eBay:

Current Project Cost: $8,480.83

 

Alice's (indicated) Current Mileage: 339.7

To date, I have put 3,886.0 miles on Alice.

 

 

Hi Wolf! - Yes brother, I'm finally getting the site updated...

 

 

Daytona Bike Week 2019 & The Disco Strangler

So Bike Week was the usual combination of beer, bars, bands, swap meets, and shenanigans. But I'm going to focus on the swap meets as I'm not entirely sure what the statute of limitations is on the other stuff...

First weekend was the Volusia County Fairgrounds swap meet which didn't do a damn thing for Alice, but did make for several major scores for Trixie. And it gave me a chance to race Paul ... Who - as usual - lost...

Second weekend was the Daytona swap meet, and that left me with the opportunity to pick-up something I'd been debating on for a very, very long time. It was a seat that I'd seen on eBay many times, but never pulled the trigger on, because...it's more than just a bit gaudy, quite impractical, and so excruciatingly 80's disco that it would probably make a pimp wince. But for the price I negotiated on the still in the box NOS seat, I could not resist - I probably should have - but I couldn't...

So without further ado:

Daytona Swap Meet:

Current Project Cost: $8,545.83

 

 

Leesburg Bikefest 2019
A momentous occasion

Why?? Well... Long story short, I was adopted. So my brother and I are actually only two, out of a set of three. The third brother still lives in California ... So - at 54 - I have only met the man twice in my entire life ... And we had never had the opportunity for all three of us to ride together ... Until now.

L2R - Ken on Alice, Me on Trixie, and Chris on Nightmare - Heading out to see Wolf.

 

Now since Ken had not been on a bike in almost 20 years, the agreement between Chris and I was to run 'Best Behavior' during the entirety of the trip. However... We also had to run down my favorite rode on the way there and, well... I have total shit for impulse control. So the plan got modified to 'FFS Do Not try to follow me through here' somewhat on-the-fly. But all arrived intact, brother Wolf got to meet brothers all, and we made it back with everybody's rubber on the bottom where it belongs.

Then we met up with brother Fish for a bar hopping run to and through Leesburg Friday night that lasted well into the wee hours of the next morning. Chris and I stayed up all night, bullshitting, bench racing and drinking beer ... But Ken had enough sense to get some sleep.

Leesburg: Saturday afternoon: Notice who looks like total shit ... Me!

 

 

Okay, so WTF does this have to do with Project Alice?
Well... The answer to that would be, Bitch.

And that brings us to the sub plot of the Leesburg story which is that Wolf has been thinking of selling his bike - named Bitch - for a while now. He and I have discussed this on several occasions at great length. The short version of those discussions is that he has to be excruciatingly carful of who he sells Bitch to, because - if he's not - he's going to end up killing the poor bastard that buys her. Bitch, you see, is not stock, by a long shot. Bitch is a 100+" Shovelhead stroker that tops out somewhere north of 140mph.

While we were there, my brother made arrangements with Wolf...to buy Bitch.

 

When he told me of the plan (which I already knew was going to happen), I simply, and casually informed him that the instant she hit the garage (mine...) I was going to steal the engine out of her for Alice. He kicked, screamed, and put up quite a fuss at first - but like most virgins - he eventually started to relax and enjoy the idea after he had been given some time to get used to it...

 

Did I ever mention that I was - just a touch - evil..?

 

Alice's (indicated) Current Mileage: 777.5

To date, I have put 4,323.8 miles on Alice.

 

 

Chapter 5 - You Bitch...
Project Alice: Getting back behind the barn door