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View allAll Photos Tagged lectron
Just updating my stream with some older new stuff... lol... sorry for the mass uploads!
Models: Marie Ericsson, Jenny Lectron, Brittany Dunk
Bonhams Grand Palais Paris
1991 Ford GT40 coupé réplique par GT Developments
Châssis n° 100E321274
Moteur n° 321274
'Une GT40 authentique est hors de prix, mais il existe une alternative tout aussi charismatique, la GTD40. Les deux sont impossible à différencier à moins de cinq pas, encore moins à cinquante, tant la réplique GTD est fidèle, même aux yeux des plus avertis. Ce n'est pas une voiture en kit, mais un pur sang dans tous les sens du terme.' Autosport, 1989.
Dix ans après sa victoire au Mans, la GT40 était déjà considérée comme l'une des plus grandes classiques de tous les temps, générant une demande accrue pour les vraies voitures authentiques et donnant naissance à toute une industrie de répliques. Avec à peine 107 GT40 construites par Ford Advanced Vehicle à l'usine de Slough entre 1966 et 1972, il n'est pas surprenant qu'une industrie d'arrière-cour par de petits constructeurs indépendants ait prospérée pour satisfaire une demande croissante pour des répliques de la charismatique Ford victorieuse au Mans.
D'abord installé à Manchester puis à Poole dans le Dorset, GT Developments se révéla rapidement comme l'un des constructeurs majeurs de fidèles répliques de la GT40. GTD avait commencé au début des années 1980 en construisant des sous-ensembles pour les répliques de GT40 de KVA, la société de Kenneth Vincent Attwell, avant de fabriquer des voitures complètes. Ken Attwell avait été directeur de production à l'usine Ford de Swansea et avait pris des empreintes du moule de la voiture originale qu'il avait eu ensuite l'autorisation d'utiliser pour construire des répliques. Sous l'impulsion de Ray Christopher, un des directeurs de la société, GT Developments s'était plus tard lancé dans la construction de sa propre version. C'est ce lien avec la voiture originale, via KVA, qui rend la GTD supérieure à ses rivales, en plus du fait que Ray a passé un accord avec Bob Lutz, alors à la tête de Ford Europe, pour la fourniture de pièces originales.
Construite par les experts reconnus de GT Developments, cette fidèle réplique de la légendaire Ford victorieuse au Mans a été acquise au Royaume-Uni en février 2009 et immédiatement immatriculée par la FFVE. Basée sur le modèle Mk I, elle s'enorgueillit de caractéristiques améliorées qui la rendent aussi à l'aise sur route ou sur circuit. Parmi ses spécificités remarquables, une suspension ajustable à l'avant et à l'arrière, des amortisseurs réglables AVO (route/circuit), des étriers à 4 pistons HiSpec, des disques AP Racing ventilés aux quatre roues et des jantes alliage BRM (8 pouces à l'avant, 10 pouces à l'arrière) chaussées de pneus Avon. Les suspensions, freins, radiateur, pneus, échappement, etc ont coûté 16.700 â¬.
Monté en 2012, le moteur (17.850 â¬) est un Ford Boss 347 ci (5,7 litres) de compétition équipé d'une culasse en aluminium, de carburateurs compétition, d'un allumage électronique Mallory et d'un échappement céramique. Un vrai moteur de compétition avec un bloc à quatre goujons qui développe 430 ch mais peut grimper à 550 avec une préparation. Montée en même temps que le moteur, la boîte est une SADEV séquentielle à six rapports. La carrosserie a été repeinte il y a un an, tandis que les fenêtres latérales en Lexan ont été remplacées et l'intérieur regarni avec des matériaux conformes à l'origine. Tous ce travaux ont été effectués par des professionnels et toutes les factures sont fournies. Le coût total (y compris le prix d'achat) dépasse les 138.000 â¬.
La voiture est vendue avec son manuel indiquant la procédure de démarrage et les recommandations, un test au banc (enregistré en 2011) des essais de boîte sur les six rapports, la brochure de GT Developments, un rapport d'expert (indiquant une valeur de 120.000 â¬) et un dossier conséquent de restauration contenant des photos de la restauration.
Cette voiture est éligible pour des démonstrations lors de manifestations historiques comme Spa Classics, les Dix mille tours du Castellet, Le Mans Historique, etc et peut réaliser des temps au tour comparables à ceux de la GT40 originale. Cette superbe réplique de GT 40 peut être acquise pour une fraction du prix de la vraie et est vendue avec une carte grise française de collection et son contrôle technique valable jusqu'en 2017.
Bonhams Grand Palais Paris
1991 Ford GT40 coupé réplique par GT Developments
Châssis n° 100E321274
Moteur n° 321274
'Une GT40 authentique est hors de prix, mais il existe une alternative tout aussi charismatique, la GTD40. Les deux sont impossible à différencier à moins de cinq pas, encore moins à cinquante, tant la réplique GTD est fidèle, même aux yeux des plus avertis. Ce n'est pas une voiture en kit, mais un pur sang dans tous les sens du terme.' Autosport, 1989.
Dix ans après sa victoire au Mans, la GT40 était déjà considérée comme l'une des plus grandes classiques de tous les temps, générant une demande accrue pour les vraies voitures authentiques et donnant naissance à toute une industrie de répliques. Avec à peine 107 GT40 construites par Ford Advanced Vehicle à l'usine de Slough entre 1966 et 1972, il n'est pas surprenant qu'une industrie d'arrière-cour par de petits constructeurs indépendants ait prospérée pour satisfaire une demande croissante pour des répliques de la charismatique Ford victorieuse au Mans.
D'abord installé à Manchester puis à Poole dans le Dorset, GT Developments se révéla rapidement comme l'un des constructeurs majeurs de fidèles répliques de la GT40. GTD avait commencé au début des années 1980 en construisant des sous-ensembles pour les répliques de GT40 de KVA, la société de Kenneth Vincent Attwell, avant de fabriquer des voitures complètes. Ken Attwell avait été directeur de production à l'usine Ford de Swansea et avait pris des empreintes du moule de la voiture originale qu'il avait eu ensuite l'autorisation d'utiliser pour construire des répliques. Sous l'impulsion de Ray Christopher, un des directeurs de la société, GT Developments s'était plus tard lancé dans la construction de sa propre version. C'est ce lien avec la voiture originale, via KVA, qui rend la GTD supérieure à ses rivales, en plus du fait que Ray a passé un accord avec Bob Lutz, alors à la tête de Ford Europe, pour la fourniture de pièces originales.
Construite par les experts reconnus de GT Developments, cette fidèle réplique de la légendaire Ford victorieuse au Mans a été acquise au Royaume-Uni en février 2009 et immédiatement immatriculée par la FFVE. Basée sur le modèle Mk I, elle s'enorgueillit de caractéristiques améliorées qui la rendent aussi à l'aise sur route ou sur circuit. Parmi ses spécificités remarquables, une suspension ajustable à l'avant et à l'arrière, des amortisseurs réglables AVO (route/circuit), des étriers à 4 pistons HiSpec, des disques AP Racing ventilés aux quatre roues et des jantes alliage BRM (8 pouces à l'avant, 10 pouces à l'arrière) chaussées de pneus Avon. Les suspensions, freins, radiateur, pneus, échappement, etc ont coûté 16.700 â¬.
Monté en 2012, le moteur (17.850 â¬) est un Ford Boss 347 ci (5,7 litres) de compétition équipé d'une culasse en aluminium, de carburateurs compétition, d'un allumage électronique Mallory et d'un échappement céramique. Un vrai moteur de compétition avec un bloc à quatre goujons qui développe 430 ch mais peut grimper à 550 avec une préparation. Montée en même temps que le moteur, la boîte est une SADEV séquentielle à six rapports. La carrosserie a été repeinte il y a un an, tandis que les fenêtres latérales en Lexan ont été remplacées et l'intérieur regarni avec des matériaux conformes à l'origine. Tous ce travaux ont été effectués par des professionnels et toutes les factures sont fournies. Le coût total (y compris le prix d'achat) dépasse les 138.000 â¬.
La voiture est vendue avec son manuel indiquant la procédure de démarrage et les recommandations, un test au banc (enregistré en 2011) des essais de boîte sur les six rapports, la brochure de GT Developments, un rapport d'expert (indiquant une valeur de 120.000 â¬) et un dossier conséquent de restauration contenant des photos de la restauration.
Cette voiture est éligible pour des démonstrations lors de manifestations historiques comme Spa Classics, les Dix mille tours du Castellet, Le Mans Historique, etc et peut réaliser des temps au tour comparables à ceux de la GT40 originale. Cette superbe réplique de GT 40 peut être acquise pour une fraction du prix de la vraie et est vendue avec une carte grise française de collection et son contrôle technique valable jusqu'en 2017.
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.
Braun Lectron Radio, "Rundfunkempfänger Lectron 8090"
design by Dieter Rams & Jurgen Greubel in 1967
Found on the "Design Classic Düsseldorf" last sunday
Complete and new with its original box but partially assembled at the time
An object that I was looking for a long time and I imagined find only on ebay ...
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.
This is Jenny Lectron... she is amazing! She is a new model in San Antonio, and I guarantee you, photographers, you will NOT be disappointed if when you book her. :D She has beautiful red hair. I totally killed it with this editing, but I really feel this style suits these images best. I guess I'll just have to shoot her AGAIN and really show off that hair. Lol. Anyway, we have Dominic Alonzo on styling again, and boy can he work a crimper or what? Makes me wish I held on the one I had back in the early 90s. :D Everyone go add Dominic and Jenny!!!!!!! Book them for your shoots, they are awesome!
Side note: I plan on doing a little flickring tomorrow and catching up on what I've missed lately (meaning the last year, lol). :D Ill see you here!!!!!!
P.S. Below is the inspiration for this shoot. It got a little off track, but you can kind of see where the idea started. :D If you aren't familiar with the artist William Kentridge, check out an interview with him, and see a bit of his moving drawings here.
Model: Dale Fastle
Makeup Artist: Leslie Vossmer
Hairstylist: Johnny Serafin
Book Page Dress: Mikailee Alton
Set Design: Jennifer Crowder, Marie Ericsson, Victoria Grimm, Jenny Lectron
Books Provided by: Matt and Kat Williams, Celia Crowder, Lance Crowder, Ruth Meyer Smith, Kadiva Alcorta, Brennan and Marcy Richie, Stephen Lira and Heather Young-Lira, Anthony Alvarado
Braun Lectron Radio, "Rundfunkempfänger Lectron 8090"
design by Dieter Rams & Jurgen Greubel in 1967
Found on the "Design Classic Düsseldorf" last sunday
Complete and new with its original box but partially assembled at the time
An object that I was looking for a long time and I imagined find only on ebay ...
Braun Lectron System,
George Greger has invented and patented this "without welding" system in 1965
Dieter Rams and Jurgen Greubel design the models for Braun in 1967
Toy, Teaching tool for use in school ...
Composed by little bricks build in plastic, Perspex and metal
those little bricks (dominoes) are magnetically connected to one another and to the conductive metalic board to form electronic circuits ...
this box and his explanatory book allows for 100 different electronic experiments ...
But we can achieve much more when you add additional boxes
This system is present in the collection of MoMa museum of New York
www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=137471
and we find a good description of this system on this page :
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.
That's what the mystery box ... I had been pick-up 8 days ago in the Netherlands ...
A vintage wood box of Braun Lectron System,
George Greger has invented and patented this "without welding" system in 1965
Dieter Rams and Jurgen Greubel design the models for Braun in 1967
Toy, Teaching tool for use in school ...
Composed by little bricks build in plastic, Perspex and metal
those little bricks (dominoes) are magnetically connected to one another and to the conductive metalic board to form electronic circuits ...
this box and his explanatory book allows for 100 different electronic experiments ...
But we can achieve much more when you add additional boxes
This system is present in the collection of MoMa museum of New York
www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=137471
and we find a good description of this system on this page :
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.
From Lock Baker Builder of Icarus...The inspiration for Icarus was primarily to push my limits as an engine builder. You see, for years I only did the metal fabrication on my motorcycles, leaving the motor rebuilds to professionals.The problem was that the local professionals, in many instances, turned out to be unreliable, costly, and difficult to work with. I knew that in order to become a true bikebuilder I needed to master every aspect of bike construction. I had assembled a few engines in a conventional manner but nothing that proved I knew the true dynamics and intricacies of internal combustion. When you simply assemble a motor from a parts catalog you do not need to know much, other than how it all fits together. Look at a shop manual for the given engine type, follow the instructions, and presto—you have a running engine. This engine may not be a competitive race winner, but it will go down the road. I wanted to prove to myself, and mypeers, that I truly understood the mechanics and theories of internal combustion. The only way to do this was to design and build— not simply assemble—a custom engine.
I remember several years ago watching a TV program with Indian Larry. He was explaining one of his engines, one with two different Harley heads on a common crankcase. He said that he liked engines to be as bizarre and mechanical looking as possible, hence the two different heads. I couldn’t agree more! I thought that I could push that concept further still—by not usingHarley parts at all. This engine is a hybrid of different designs. The crankcase is Harley style. In other words it is a V-twin, single cam, 45-degree cylinder angle, with a gear driven breather system. The cylinders, pistons, and heads started life as Continental 0 200 parts. Continental is an aircraft engine company that primarily builds boxer style prop plane piston engines. The work involved in making this whole thing come together is too long a story to tell here, but I will cover some of the major challenges. The task of mating the cylinders to the case was a big one. Continental cylinders are “oversquare,” meaning that they have a larger bore than stroke. In this case, the bore is 41⁄8” while the stroke is only 31⁄2”. In order to make this fit the case, I needed a much larger “deck” area than a typical Harley. The cases I used were manufactured by Delkron, who were kind enough to sell them to me with a blank deck, meaning there were no stud holes. I also specified a case set up for a 1⁄4” extended pinion shaft, essentially moving the entire cam compartment over in order to make room for the increased cylinder base area. There are more differences between typical Harley cylinders and Continental cylinders. Continental cylinders have six base studs instead of the usual four, as well as an O-ring base gasket instead of a flat paper one. The base studs were a problem because two of the six studs per cylinder were located exactly where my tappet blocks were! To fix this I built up weld material outward from the deck area towards the tappet blocks then shaped them by hand, blending them into the case. This provided the extra meat I needed to accommodate these new base studs. The tappet blocks themselves then needed to be machined in order to have them fit this new deck modification. They barely fit!The connecting rods had to be custom made for a few reasons. The wrist pin was Continental and the crank pin was Harley style. Also, the distance between the two pins was much longer than a Harley. Carrillo was chosen to manufacture these custom rods, and after four months of waiting they showed up. They are the most beautiful rods I have ever seen: H-beam, shot-peened, perfect. The crank assembly was another challenge. Because of the short stroke the Continental cylinders called for, I needed to have custom flywheels made. You see, the only Harley flywheels to have a 31⁄2”stroke were 61” Knuckleheads. My crankcase calls for Evolution style pinion and sprocket shafts, meaning a corresponding set of flywheels. I called Truett & Osborn, a trusted flywheel manufacturer, and asked them if they could build these custom wheels around my custom connecting rods. Once they started, I received a phone call saying that because the stroke is so short, the nuts that hold the crank pin in place are too close to the sprocket and pinion shaft bases. Makes sense when you think about it. Luckily for me, they are cool people over there at T&O, and they came up with a neat solution: make a custom crank pin with smaller threaded ends, meaning they could use smaller nuts. Problem solved. Here’s another: Harleys have two different cylinder heads, a front and a rear. They are almost mirror images, allowing for both intake ports to be located across the street from one another. This allows them to use a common intake manifold and a single carb to feed both cylinders. Continental engines are boxer style, so every head and cylinder is exactly the same. When you take two of them and put them upright in a 45-degree configuration, they look like two rear Harley heads. This means a few things. I needed two custom-made intake manifolds and two carbs. I also needed a custom camshaft with the front two lobes reversed. In addition, the rocker arm ratio of the Continental is 1.2/1 while modern Harleys are 1.6/1. This would mean that in order for the valves to lift as much as Harley valves do, I would need a much higher lift cam. The cam design and construction was given to Redline Racing Cams out of California. It took over six months but they eventually nailed it. Thank you Redline! I could go on forever, but here is a basic synopsis of the other challenges: custom collapsible pushrods, custom intake manifolds, custom Lectron carbs, custom load bearing rocker boxes, cus-tom pushrod boots, custom top end oil drains, magneto re-degreed, custom exhaust, cylinder fins extensively clearanced, custom base studs and nuts, and I even had to make a custom valve spring compressor due to the fact that the cylinders and heads are permanently attached to each other! (No head gaskets.) The rest of the bike is every bit as wild as the engine. With the help of Acme Choppers, we made an entirely stainless steel frame in order to fit the taller engine. I made the hubs from scratch and had them laced to imported Morad rims from Spain. Bandit Machine Works provided the primary drive, which I modified to accommodate a 10-degree transmission plate tilt. This allowed me to get a fair lead on the final belt drive (an old Indian Larry trick). I also made the fuel tank from scratch out of aluminum (see past Iron- Works article for that one!). The fork is a shaved 35mm narrow glide. Everything else, including the bars, foot controls, fender struts, taillight, plumbing, seat, oil tank, and 4-bar pneumatic seat suspension were all made by me at Eastern Fabrications.I feel very satisfied with the final result. The engine runs like a top and the bike rides exactly the way I wanted it to —light, quick, agile and fun. It goes without saying that I had the help of a lot of talented and generous people. Mark Simiola, from Sterling Performance was instrumental in helping me calculate the length of the rods to get my desired compression ratio. He also
answered countless questions and helped me time the engine. Acme Choppers came through as usual with the bottom half of the frame. Clifford Frizzel from Esquire Machinehelped make the beautiful rocker boxes and decked the cases. Cooney Engraving did the custom badges that adorn the bike. Truett & Osborn, Carrillo, Delkron, and Redline all treated me with professionalism and kindness. I would like to thank all of you for your willingness to think outside the box with me. Oh yeah, the name. The story of Icarus comes from Greek myth. Icarus was the son of Daedalus, a craftsman who built a set of wings that allowed man to fly. Icarus was allowed to use the wings on one condition; that he not fly too close to the hot sun, as the wings were held together with wax. As Icarus flew he did not heed his father’s warning; the wax melted and he fell to his death. I chose the name because, by using aircraft parts, I was taking a risk. I knew that if I was not careful and diligent it would not work. Luckily, patience pays off and so, this Icarus Flies.