tirsdag 22. mai 2012

A Saucerful of Secrets

With this rather psychedelic melody by Pink Floyd in the background, its time to share some thoughts on hubcaps, which in a way is just saucers too.

Initially when planning the Panhead dresser build I knew there had to be hubcaps to get that correct fat attitude to the bike.
Got my re-popped caps from one AMCA guy that I learned to know trough the e-bay, great workmanship and excellent finish on the chrome, still I soon understood there where issues.

First off, when building my wheels I forgot to locate the valve to the opposite side of the break drum, argh! Had to tear down the wheels to get the valve to fit the cap, fair enough I didn`t do my homework in advance. I then found the screw holes in the cap where the hole for the valve is located where all located towards a spoke, hence all holes had to be re-drilled like 7 mm away from the original holes. I find the only reason is the maker of the repop rim didn`t locate the valve hole exactly as on an original rim?? This really annoyed me a lot!
OK, then there is the previously mentioned limited access to the grease nipple in the hub center. I made a kit allowing the grease nipple to be located in the right side hub cap slightly off the center, this allow greasing without removing the hub caps, quite satisfied with this one.
Then I found there is no way you could add the caps to the wheel, slide this onto the brake drums to finally slide in the right side spacer, NO WAY.
Solved this by remaking both front and rear spacers as two halves, no big deal, still, what did the guys do back then???

My final conclusion is; OK, you don`t get dirt stuck in your spokes by using hubcaps and it IS a cool detail, else from that it is, ahhh, a stupid idea creating several hours of work!


2 kommentarer:

  1. Can you let me know where I can get the hub caps (You won't remember me - bec I didn't know AMN was you - we had a amall talk at Wauseon AMCA last year - are you going again? I was at the Carls Cycle Supply stand)

    SvarSlett
  2. Hi Gareth, I do remember our talk at Carls stand when in Wauseon last year, time sure flies.

    Out of my head I do not remember from whom I did get my caps, I could find out when back shore for you.
    I know Kevin Baas at
    http://vintagebikeaddiction.blogspot.com/ makes some too, different layout tough.
    There are some great looking hub caps availiable in stainless from W&W, World Wide Cycles in Germany, another layout on these too.

    I think mine are pretty musch as original HD spec., other sources mentioned are more like custom ones.

    Kind regards
    Sverre

    SvarSlett