Throttle/bars assembly

[gpp3442]

I need some help, my 57 has been sitting for 15 years. Believe it or not but she started up with only a tank cleaning, new fluids, and I dumped the SU for a Bendix.
She's a bit of a rat. The throttle assembly runs outside of the bars, and I see most stock 57's running the cable through the bars. Any info on how to do this would be appreciated. Love the site, spent 4 1/2 hours going through all the questions back to "03".

[sleeper]

Welcome GP-
Stock bars have Spirals on the ends under the grips. That come off by removing a stainless plug at the ends of the handle-grips & revealing a large Plain screw. That you must remove & the grip/spiral will come off.
Your HD Manual [that you MUST have] will show this in good detail. Anyway if you have a external throtte cable then you probably don't have the Original style bars to do this.
That's the first step, determining if you have spiral bars.
When you check this out, post your info,& we can continue.

[adjustaglide]

Any advice you guys have on internal spark and throttle controls would be great. I dont know much about them except that I would sure like to set old "blues" up with a pair of internals. What do I need to know? Aftermarket, repop, cheap, used, someone please show me the way to internal happiness!

[DuoDave]

V-Twin have repops of all the parts you will need, but they are not cheap. Internal cables and wiring tidy the bars up, but they are more of a hassle to work on. If you are going to go with this set up, it is easier to run the cables and wires through the bars with the bars completely off the bike. If you are using a Linkert carb, you will need a push action throttle, any other type of carb uses a conventional pull action throttle.

[VintageTwin]

???Here's a pix of the spiral. This is a push spiral. Both sides of the h. bar use a push. The Harley Hummer used a pull spiral. You can use a Hummer spiral on the throttle if you run a Bendix.
The complete (spirals and cables) handlebars from V-Twin are backordered. The problem with all the AM (aftermarket) spirals is that while appearing perfect (indistinguisable from OE) were made with too shallow of a channel botom. The only fix I've heard was to remove the spot welds and un-roll the casing, take a dremel tool and a grind-burr to the channel to make it deeper, evenly (ha!) along the entire length of the channel, then roll the casing back up and tig weld it and hope it works. There are who knows how many spirals collecting dust in parts bins all over the world. None of them work. It is the only blockade to building a complete replica '54-59 Big Twin as far as I know (lack of an unlimited supply of Linkert bodies not-withstanding). Some of these sprials were painstakingly re-worked and built into complete handlebar sets. There are no more. There are none at nosParts.com/ If you are of strong mental fortitude with the initiative of the "Energizer Bunny," and a fully equipped shop, you could probably wrassle & hassle a set to work.Stop copying
Post by Panhead on Oct 16, 2004, 6:14pm

Please stop copying text/postings from others and use in in other places. Only if you have explicit approval you can do this.
Don't let me have to ban people from my site, although I will not hesitate to do so if my rules are not respected.

[gpp3442]

Thanks guys,
You are right Billy I dont have stock bars, but lucked out today at a Dealer fall clearout today in CT. I found a police 39" bar and ordered a complete grip set from V-twin, gonna stick with the externals. Man, feels great to be back in the garage and thankful to have found your site. Looking for exhaust preferably black, shotgun rear with squish pipe up front, prefer mufflers but straights O.K. Spent hours cruising the net with no luck. Thanks again Billy,Duodave.

[Plain]

GPP3442

Don't know if you will find black, but you can locate a LOT of exhaust pipes and/or mufflers for your model sled at http://www.paughco.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. Hope that this helps if you have not been there. There website is pretty damn difficult to navigate and find what you are looking for. You almost have to spring for the printed catalog to make heads or tails out of things.

Plain

[sleeper]

GP-
Panhead is the one to thank, This is of course, His site.
And he manages it very well!! Which can't be easy!!!

It sure sounds like you've been out of the garage TOO long. It's obvious by your excitement.
I hope the vtwain spirals work for you. There is some written here about them & their non-fitment. Sounds like a simple fix..
I don't know first hand, as I personally avoid vtwain at all costs. Too much crap... Hopefully, you'll have better luck.
Sounds like you had a Nice find on the Police Bars..
OEM stuff. Doesn't get any better than that..
I get a lot of parts from http://www.nosparts.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; for the USA
& for the Europeans, http://www.jwboon.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[DuoDave]

My spirals are original, so I don't have experience of the V-Twin repops. My friend Morten, over in Norway, has a V-Twin spiral on his pan. He said it needed some minor fettling to fit, but that it works okay, so it does not seem like a big deal.

[VintageTwin]

Lookit....! Read my lips ya's grease monkeys.... there...are...no...'54-up handlebars left anywhere, not on the internet, not at boon or nos. They are gone. Bye-Bye. Store shelf is empty. None. Nada. Gone forever. If I had a set I sure wouldn't sell them. Yes, it is nice that someone has figured out a way to re-work the spirals. Now, lets put our hands in our lap and sit quietly and wait like old women until we all figure it out for ourselves and then....we can commence building.

[Greasemonkey]

Listen up plumber, I been reading your taiwan blues for quite a while now & you don't deserve to own a bike. you need your hand held to put air in the tire; & wipe yoyur nose; when are you gonna just give it to your mechanic & have him call you when it';s done. caues you don;t knowwhet you are doing. that is afact. you are no mechanic, and besides you're a idea man. you steal everyone's ideas.
the vtwin spirals are esily fixed & are being used right now. the fix is simple like you a simpleton.

[VintageTwin]

Proud to be a grease monkey myself Just wondering where all these re-fabricated, re-pop spirals are?
The probelm with "not registering" is that your post is going to be glued up here for quite awhile.
Where are the re-fabricated spirals and handlebars? Show me a set and I'll go back and erase every reference to handlebar complaints I ever made. My word on that.
I'm an "assembler" of re-pop components, but I "build" the machine with conventional tools. I am a class-B mechanic. Good one too. Ask Stettler.
What's the big secret about how the spirals are re-worked? I don't want to tool up for anything more than assembly, neither does any pilgrim. Knowing you limitations will get you on the road with something running sooner.
Do us a favor everybody out there.... and register. Occasionally there are differences of opinion here and the other poster who IS registered may change his text. When this happens, it could leave you hanging with an opinion that later you may have had a change of mind about. The registered poster's posts are editable for only a certain amount of time too; and then you'll find that there is no "modify" button any longer. Maybe because the post's get archived into the library, to be used as permanent reference material. Anyway, I'll go back and remove the words
"cheap bastards" from a few posts (not that "they" care). But until I see a separate re-pop "push" spiral that matches up (without throttle slop, and the big screw seats on the bar-end like it should); with a set of re-pop '54-up buckhorn or speedster bars, or a "complete set w/ wires" of re-worked, re-pop '54-up Buckhorn AND/or Speedster bars my opinion is valid.
I prefer to run my own cables. On the old forum we don't use anymore, there are some pix of the process, if you can connect to it through Panhead, but he said once, the pix can't be transferred.

[VintageTwin]

GP - call Kick-Start (616) 245-8991, on those upswepts with flat cross-under section. He had some old ones from Superior. Paughco has them. I call them Hollister pipes. Look good on a Knuck. Not-so-hot-some, on a rigid Pan. My opinion.

[suicideshovel65]

Seeing as my '49 engine has had advance/retard mount filed off the engine, I went for a set of old police bars bought off ebay, with an internal cable only on the right side, and a fixed grip on the left.
They were pretty wide which would have been nice for long distance touring, but I've had about 2 inches or so cut off each side to bring them in and get them closer to the look I'm after.
I advance and retard manually, keeping the circuit breaker advanced with a spring that stretches to the frame.
When this bike finally gets closer to looking like I want it to I'll post pix - just bought a digital camera!

[VintageTwin]

Yeah, I saw a '59 with a spring stretched across from the post of the timer to a hole in the spark control bracket. I'm posting some pix of the fitment junctions of alot of stuff , like wiring, tool box connections to the frame. All on '54 and '59 models. Rigid and swing. The digital cameras are neat. I was at Del Mar crawling inside the frames of those Panheads, using flash and no flash. It's incredible how you don't need a flash. The darn things take the same results you'd see with your plain ol' eyeball. And you just keep clicking until the battery runs down, switch batteries and your off running. Photo-journalism... cut-loose, brah! Get an extra battery and the 128 meg card, and a card reader accessory, so you can take the card out of the camera and not have to plug cables into the camera. Mo-tor scooter!