Posted by: TimothyT on: 10/13/2010 02:20 PM [ Print | 1 comment(s) ]

Everyone has a memory of their first car or motorcycle. I am no different. I bought a mid-70’s AMF Harley Davidson enduro when I was 16. At the time I built my own bicycles so this seemed like a natural progression. It barely ran, I had no driver’s license and I remember the throttle cable was broken so I had to pull the cable to drive it around at first. Well, mom wasn’t too happy about it and did the old “not in my house” routine and I had to get rid of it. Almost 30 years later I found one on eBay and bought it to restore. It is rare to find one complete, running and in excellent condition as many of these motorcycles were used on farms and in fields and often the titles have been lost. It only cost me a few hundred more than the one I purchased way back when, but it will cost about 5 times that to restore it to perfect condition. I have so much time and effort into the project that I thought I would share the story of this restoration so you can follow along. The thumbnail to the left shows the bike when we removed the motor and skins before we began disassembly.

A little history about this motorcycle; In 1969, Harley Davidson merged with the American Machine and Foudry Company (AMF). It is generally considered some of Harley Davidsons worst years as far as quality goes with the Super Glide and the SLCR Caféracer of 1970 getting bad names, to name a couple. But Harley Davidson bought itself out and survived and with launching the new Evolution-motor in 1984, the company managed to create a modern motorcycle, which was still a Harley Davidson. Because of this, many AMF bikes are undesirable to most with AMF almost being a dirty word to most.

Harley-Davidson purchased full control of Aermacchi's motorcycle production in 1974 and continued making two-stroke motorcycles there until 1978, when they sold the facility to Cagiva. This motorcycle is one that was made by Aermacchi during those AMF years.

In the following photos are pictures of the parts coming back from paint and powdercoat. Powdercoating was done by Affordable Powdercoating in Cato, N.Y. Paint and assembly\disassembly by Outback Auto body of Fulton N.Y and myself. The matte black paint and powdercoating are almost a perfect match! Also shown is the beginning of assembly.

It is amazing what new parts you can still find on eBay and various websites. In these photos are one of the brand new wheels, an original centerfold of a magazine advertisement for the motorcycle and proof that I did get my hands dirty as many will never believe it!

Assembly has been underway and time consuming. I spent a lot of time chasing new nuts and bolts as we replaced everything with stainless. We also had to do a lot of polishing on quite a few areas including the bolts on the top of the forks, chrome clips that guide cables, springs under the footpags and many other small parts that could be saved rather then replaced. A few other parts we could replace still need to be sanded and painted, often very small parts like the horn and mounting bracket. It does not seem like much but we have attached the swing arm, shocks, forks, handlebars, front and rear fenders, taillight assembly, foot pegs, battery box, seat latch and engine guard at this point. Hoping to pick up the wheels with new tires mounted tomorrow and some more assembly before it goes to Iron Horse Solutions in Fulton, N.Y who is doing some odd jobs like this but also got the engine running and are polishing it.

Also shown is the rear brake drum before and after. I was proud of it because it was the first time I ever sandblasted. We then gave it a light spray bomb to make it look consistent.

Update 1

New wheels and more small part polishing, painting and assembly from today. Now for a few days off.

Now that you can see some of the assembly, I can explain where the motorcycle will differ from the original. The biggest change is the color of the tanks and fenders. The motorcycle had gloss paint when new (I assume enamel) but I decided to go with matte black for a clean, simple look. Luckily the powdercoating is basically flat black and the tank and fenders actually have a slight gloss to the matte black, so I think they will actually look original. The other change is the handlebars. The originals were chrome but I didn’t want to send just one part to the chrome, so I decided to have them powder coated as well. The only other part I could not find is original mirrors, but I think I found mirrors that are almost identical.

Update 2

This was worth an update. All the wiring is in place as well as brakes and levers. Ironhorse Solutions will be adding in new grips, 4 turn signal lights, replacing the polished engine and finally wiring what’s left. The seat is also on which I had restored and as you can see, it looks great. Best of all is the tail light on this bike. The parts are hard to come by, the original was powdercoated and it took me some time to find the rear red tail lens and ended up costing me 16 bucks! But, the issue is the license plate light lens, which simply does not exist anywhere. We knew we had to make one, but it was the source that made it interesting. My friends girlfriend from Outback Autobody suggested to him that it looked just like the curve of a plastic bottle she had… a pickled sausage jar. Go figure, it had the exact same curve, so he cut a same size piece and there you have it; my pickled sausage license plate lens.

Update 3: Bike will be another week before completion, but we just applied the 35 year old, new old stock stickers to the gas tank and wanted to show off the matte black paint and decals! In the picture is a spare tank that came with the bike for comparison.

This should be completed by next week and update #4 should be the last, so stop back to see the finshed motorcycle and photos of it! Will shoot a YouTube video of it running as well.

Update 4:

Update 4 is now not the last update. Anything that could go wrong now has in the final stretch. There seemed to be an electrical problem so after hours of tracing I bought a used wiring harness and all was fine again. Not really. Once assembled the exhaust seems to be leaking where it bolted to the engine, so we ordered a new gasket for it so oil was not sprayed everywhere. That part was replaced and then we spotted the same issue in the oil mixture area and ordered another seal to be sure that the oil mixes properly. Now it runs but stalls after a while. After tracing the wires it turned out to be the magneto which you could see partial burn marks on. The good news is that we should have run out of problems and I am expecting the bike back in a few more days. We have to modify the kickstand to make it longer and spray Harley-Davidson on the back of the seat with a stencil and I think we will be done!

Update 5 and final:

Finally, it has arrived after Ironhorse Solutions finished up some engine tweaking. After a little more tweaking, I was able to drive it a mile up the road to Outback Autobody to complete some finishing touches. Oddly enough I expected the bike to be uncomfortable and awkward but it turns out that it is a very comfortable, nimble ride. To finish, we need to slap on some mirrors, stencil Harley-Davidson on the seat and fabricate a longer kickstand as well as make sure that all the nuts and bolts remained tight. This was a lot of fun (and often frustration) and I hope you enjoyed the story! Here are a few final photos and a quick video that I took: