 |
After
some final work on the Knuckle I could fire her up and she was running great!! In parallel
Sandra was doing some maintenance work on the Shovel like oil change, ignition timing new
spark plugs and adjusting the carburetor. After three day both bikes seemed to be ready for
our trip!
We took the Shovel to return the rental car to
the airport and had to stop to fill up gas first. This was the beginning of another day of
work.... |
 |
The
gas did not stay in the tank as it is supposed to! Both tanks had big cracks on the inside
and had to be welded.
While Bob welded the tanks Sandra
detected a
fine crack in the frame at the front motor mount! By checking the rest of the frame we
discovered three other cracks in the seat post!!
|
 |
What
to do?! Take the damn motor out and weld the shit!!
The next day we reassembled the whole thing and
finally brought the rental car back with the Shovel. This time we had no further problems.
The bike was running good! |
 |
The
same evening we had packed our bikes and headed toward Dallas where we met Pamela and
Dexter who joined us on the trip to South Dakota.
After some relaxing in Dallas we finally started
the trip.
|
 |
On a Knuckle, a Pan and a Shovel,
all rigid and accompanied by a pickup truck we rode in three days to Sturgis! The whole way we did not have any problems with the bikes except a
broken set of points and a loose rear pipe on the Shovel. |
 |
We arrived at Bob and Barbara's
house in Black Hawk about twenty miles from Sturgis in the late afternoon of the third
day. He was certainly impressed about Sandra driving that Knucklehead all the way from
Austin to Rapid City. Sandra was really happy that we
made it because the heavy vibrations of the Knuck really are BAD TO THE BONES! |
 |
I immediately started with what I
did the whole five days during Sturgis: working on the damn Shovel! Preparing her for the
ten day trip through the high mountains of Colorado and back to Austin. |
 |
W certainly went down town Sturgis
a couple times!!! Never seen that many people here. The
estimates went up to ONE MILLION people!
Pretty crowded he. |
 |
A Knuckle just like mine! Or
is that one slightly modified? |
 |
A whole bunch of
Knuckles!! |
   |
Girls....(ok.
two girls are form Daytona) |
   |
....., Boys and both
together!! |
 |
After five day of the crowd we had
enough, packed our bikes , said good by to our friends and headed for the
Rockies in
Colorado. The Knuckle was huffing
and puffing over the high passes (up to 12'000 feet!) and we had to change or clean spark plugs all
the time. |
 |
Garden of the
Gods. |
 |
Somewhere in Colorado.
Nice isn't it? |
 |
In the middle of nowhere in
New
Mexico at about 105°F on a Sunday it happened: a flat tire. Thanks to the BAM-Card I
could organize a tube after a couple hours and we could continue our trip to Texas. The day after about 120 miles from Austin just before
Fredericksburg I
heard a big BANG and my Shovel sounded like an air compressor: the rear spark plug was
shot out of the head with the already oversized insert....no way to fix that on the road!!
|
 |
I rode on one cylinder about 20
miles to Fredericksburg and there we fortunately did run into very nice people who trailed
us the last 100 miles back to Austin and that was the END
of our trip. |
| |
|
Traveling
information:
(July 28th to August 26th, 2000) |
Bikes: 1947
Knuckle, 84' Special Construction (93ci Shovel) 4
weeks (14 day of riding and the rest was working on the bikes and relaxing)
4'000 miles (6'400 km)
States: Texas, New Mexico,
Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota |
