Issue #269 Let's Make a Deal
I once knew a guy who swapped a running CB360 with a torn seat for a dead-in-the-water Harley-Davidson Knucklehead motor. I forget the model year, but it was an FL, not an EL. That sounds like one of those trades you used to hear about in the 1970s, and actually it was. But even by the standards of the day, the deal was a headscratcher for the group I was riding with at the time. Was it a good one or was it not?
“Guess it all depends on what you want,” concluded my friend.
True enough. Both parties walked away happy ... and stayed that way.
But if both the Honda bike and the Harley motor could be brought into the here and now through the time portal would it still be a good deal? I think it could be. Straight-up, as the barter went down way back in the 1970s, I think it could still work. Maybe even more so today. There are a lot of people out there collecting and restoring vintage Japanese bikes—even CB360s.
As for the knucklehead, well, I’ve heard it said and I think it’s true, “Nobody, anywhere has ever thrown out a Harley motor on purpose.”
And there are folks out there, myself included, who believe the knucklehead motor (1936-47) is still the most beautiful V-Twin to ever emerge from Milwaukee.
The one you see on the cover isn’t Hollywood beautiful by the standards of today: the cases are fitted with slotted fasteners and the finish is scratched and scuffed, not polished, powercoated or blacked out.
Still, it’s one of 12 motors cited in Harley-Davidson’s “Hall of Engines,” and with good reason, according to Rick Epp. With his feature story “The Group of Seven” Epp argues that the mighty knucklehead EL morphed into the bigger displacement FL to become the great-grandaddy of the modern cruiser V-Twin.
You might say the story name is a misnomer because there are actually eight platforms referred to in the story, not seven. But technically the EL started life as a litre-bike (988cc) and that category was already spoken for by Epp in the GL1000 Gold Wing. So, perhaps you have to squint a little to see the poetic licence we used in the creation of the story title. We hope you don’t mind.
As for the author, Mr. Epp is a driving force behind the Saskatchewan section of the nation-wide Canadian Vintage Motorcycle Group. We feel his selection of history’s most influential motors of all time is certainly worth a read—and even if your only intent in reading the story is to firmly disagree or even to become thoroughly outraged. Epp shows courage by making his thoughts on the matter public, and he does have some well-reasoned arguments.
To be frank, I was wondering how successful I would be in sliding the story concept past my publisher. He’s a 30s-something kind of guy who has only a passing familiarity with most of the motors cited in the story.
I should have known better.
John Molony has a true DIY spirit, as do most of the residents of Saskatchewan, Rick Epp’s home province. What is it with that place?
Let it be known publicly and throughout the land, that I love Saskatchewan. The people are fun, tough, and enduring—the definitive Canadian qualities, I reckon.
John Molony, who signs my paycheques true, would have made an excellent Saskatchewanian and I do not hold it against him that he was born elsewhere than on the prairies. Nor should the people of Saskatchewan. He does what he can.
One of Mr. Molony’s favourite stories in recent times is “Doug Wilson Rides Again” from last issue because it is about a Saskatchewan-born man who used the materials he had at hand to overcome the obstacles of the Depression-era in which he existed. It’s the DIY thing that grabs Molony. That’s what people used to do back in the 1930s. When that generation finally fades away, we as a people will be the lesser for their passing.
But as a young fella John Molony should be forgiven for asking the obvious question as it pertains to Rick Epp’s story. Where, he wonders, is the boxer engine, which has been so terrifically enduring for BMW?
But, never mind the boxer, what about Harley-Davidson’s buckboard? Here’s a mill that would have completely hit all of Molony’s notes. From 1905 to 1908, Harley-Davidson sold the buckboard as an industrial powerplant with an output shaft that could be used in various ways including marine applications.
The archivists at Harley-Davidson surmise that the name “buckboard” most likely came from another suggested use: attaching the motors to the buckboards of carriages for propulsion without horses.
Factory paperwork from that time even implied that a buyer could build his own motorcycle with the motor. The buckboard motors started with a hand crank and produced three to four horsepower. In a 1905 letter from Arthur Davidson, the motors were quoted as costing $54, though by 1908 the price had reached $75.
I’m quite sure my publisher would have ordered one, but would have been appalled with the price and therefore set about looking for an alternative with equal or better value at a more affordable cost. He can be like that—always looking for a better deal. That’s so 1930s of him.
