Grizzly reminded me of a guy who spent a lot of money on tuning his Mercedes. He conceived of a deep modernization, he improved the engine, transmission and clutch. His goal was to instantaneous start + stormy set speed.
In late autumn, I noticed his Mercedes is not used. When we met I asked him: "Finally, you destroy your missile?"
No! The missile is in order! But I can not leave the parking, as an idiot!
The sharp cooling and freezing. It turned out that his car was just not able to catch hold of icy soil. Wheels silly spinning, but the car is stationary. The guy tried to gently press on the gas - it is useless. He tried to start the second transmission - the same effect. He waited for the thaw 2 weeks, but the Winter has its rights and the ice is not melted. He was forced to call tow truck and tow the car to a repair shop to install winter tires. Unfortunately, winter tires are not much better. Start the car is possible but very uncomfortable. Not only pure asphalt. Any traffic light - the torments of hell. Small rise or glacial ridge - spoiled the mood for the day.
The guy waited for the summer and sold his Mercedes.

 

D U A L S ! !

 

And they didn't run for sh...crap on a Harley either. BTDT Still got the manifold somewhere in the garage, I think.

 

Perhaps you didn't set it up right ? My Panhead run much better than the ol Linkert it came with..

 

The one I had was set up for a Pan and it ran OK until you leaned into a sweeper, it would stumble a little until you got the bike upright. My biggest problem was what to do with my right leg, trying to get it to go around the carb and air cleaner. My pan ran great with its M-74.

Wow, what a thread drift.

 

At one time I bought several boxes and baskets of what used to be a prewar 45ci side valve flathead service cart.

I spent a lot of money just looking for parts and more on actually buying parts. I ended up making 2nd gear at the high school machine shop then hardened the gears in my backyard forge because I simply could not find a replacement gear set anywhere.

I made a lot of parts for the bike to get it to run at all. I had multiple problems with the axle on it. You could shift the thing into reverse but you had to shut down the engine then tug and pull and beat a lever on the rear end over to the reverse position then do it all again to make it go forward again. A chain went between the transmission and the engine then a real wide belt like on a snowmobile went to the axle.

I could not trust the thing to even go down town and back and I lived in a darn small town. Then I discovered Joe Hunt magnetos and put a new 50mm snowmobile carb on it and could actually go somewhere but I still had problems with the axle.

One fine spring day I cut all the junk off the back end and installed a Amen’s hard tail with only the one wheel back there. I got rid of the belt drive by switching the transmission for a totally different one. It was still three speed and you used a stick to shift it but it was more reliable, I only wished it was a 4 or 5 speed transmission.

With these mods and a King Queen seat I could successfully ride pretty well anywhere I wanted,… and back. The ‘and back’ was a major plus for me but some of my friends who owned pickup trucks or a trailer got to missing me.

 

Back to the other part of the thread drift about SU carbs. I have no experience with Harleys but some with British cars and quite a bit with Datusns (which used a Japanese copy of the SU carb). What I noticed with them is that if the damper oil level and/or weight/viscosity wasn't right they could be problematic during cornering.

 

Ahhh, here's my former Atlanta, Ga. Police 45" Servi-Car, & the motor 'after' I rebuilt & stroked it..
Harley made these non-stop from 1932 - 1973

 

Way more interesting than discussing a shaved bumper......

 

Man, your trike is a lot more complete than mine ever was. Does it have the belt drive thing or just chain or maybe shaft? Some of the Harley dealers I went to tried to sell me a shaft drive rear end for mine.

Also mine had a Springer front end, no hydraulics when it was built I guess.

Before I got the Joe Hunt magneto when I would be kicking the engine to life it would sometimes do its best to pitch me over the bars. After I got the new mag and could actually set it with the handle bar lever for that it, wasn’t so bad.

I discovered that sometimes {quite rarely, everything had to be just right, engine warm and stuff} if I whipped the mag lever just right the bike would start almost like electric start. Occasionally it would try to run backward. But if it did not start I would generally have a real fun time getting it going. Not sure why it would be so problematic if it didn’t work.