Windshield

After some sheet plastic hunting i found a piece that was ok, not dark enough to be honest but good enough. I used the old windshield as a template and used a regular jig saw to get the right form.
I had already made a lower windshield of the stock clear one that looked great, so I just had to copy that one to do my darker version.
To mount it I walked an extra mile, two sets with “Bar’ n Shield” licence plate mounting kits was bought.
I used seven of these eight “Bar’ n Shield” bolts to mount the windshield and it looked awesome.

Nice shade

The mounting hardware

Carb tuning

When all the hardware job was done with the Dellorto carb the tuning begun.
After some tips from a English company that sold me parts I was on the road.
I realized quite fast that I needed some help with the basic tuning but the sad part that none had any experience with it. So the only thing was to use books to become familiar with the Dellorto.

This book and Matt at dellorto.co.uk was a enormous help in this adventure

But after hours of reading books something was still missing, so the hunt for a Lambda/AFR meter begun. Quite soon I found a decent one to a great price. 

A Lambda sensor bung was welded in the rear pipe and the gauge was mounted in the fairing instead of the broken clock.

The lambdameter hooked up in the fairing.

And a lambda sensor in the rear pipe

Now I was ready for some serious tuning.

After a while with lots and lots of short test runs I had a Dellorto set-up that looked amazing and with reasonable driveability. The next step was to do the final tuning on the dyno.

On the dyno, at last

But It took untill autum 2013 before I got to do some dynoruns with the Dellorto.

Because I had to do a cover for the "wire wheel" and solve a problem with a sloppy return spring first. So I had to go back to the trusty old CV for a season to pass technical inspection, but now the problems are solved and the mighty Dellorto crowns the Shovel again.

But the best news was that the cool Dellorto was even better than the boring, mainstream CV !!

Turquoise -> CV vs Red -> Dellorto

New carb

One day I saw a picture of a Dellorto DHLA two throat carb mounted on a long intake and I was hooked !!
I soon found an old intake on eBay and when I got it home I started by de-chrome the dodgy chrome and then did some hard time by the polish wheel and eventually it got a new shiny life.

The carb hunt was up next, after a while I found one in a really bad shape that i got for a bargain.
It didn’t matter because I was to rebuild it completely so I went for it.
First stripped it down completely and then some glass blaster before it got all shiny inside bits and fresh gaskets.
Really expensive in the end but when I saw it mounted on the FLT together with the awesome shiny intake and the huge K&N filter with velocity stacks hidden under it was worth every penny I can guarantee.

The new carb adventure started with this mess...

...and ended like this, maybe the most awesome Harley carb setup in the history

And to get all hardware together became the easy part when looking back at this project.

Next step was o get it dialed in properly, not the easiest task I discovered.

The fourth winter (10/11)

The fourth winter was supposed to be a middle year with just some minor tweaks but it didn’t last very long so the first spring run was made in the middle of the summer.

This year these things got my attention
# New carb
# Carb tuning
# Windshield

Luggage rack

The luggage rack had been a horrific part on the bike since day one.
The only problem was that it has to be there if I want to mount the Tour pack.
But after a whole summer without the Tour pack mounted a single time I took the decision to remove the luggage rack for good.
The Tour pack was an awesome way to get the stuff dry and easy to a party but the bike looked awful.
And when the looks of the bike gets better and better for each year the Tour pack and luggage rack had to go.
A drybag will be my packing choice for the future or at least until I figure out a more good looking way to mount the Tour pack.

Some seconds later with the grinder ...

...and the looks went for the better

Shocks

Even I struck gold sometimes it seems.
Had been looking for Öhlins rear shocks since I bought the bike.
I realized that new Öhlins shocks was out of the question, the price tag was way out of my league.
So old cheap ones that I could rebuild to my specs was my target.
But suddenly one day when I did my daily bargain hunt on the net for parts I struck gold.
A pair of Öhlins from a FXR appeared on the screen and with an awesome price.
A quick call and I have got me a set of my dream shocks.
The FXR has basicly the same frame as the FLT, so the mounting was Childs play.
A quick cleanup was the only thing I had to do before I could mount them with the old hardware.

Swedish performance for American iron

Seat

The year before I bought a used seat from England at eBay.
The idea was to take off the "leather" and reshape the foam to something that looked something like a Harley "badlander" seat. I have done this on my previous Harley FXR with very good result,
but this time I had to put in more time, effort and $$ to get some result. The plastic seat pan was way too wide to fit so I had to do a pan in fiberglass from scratch anyway.
The plastic seat pan was cut and redone so it could work as a mould, then I covered it with fiberglass and epoxy.
This pan was then reshaped together with the foam and then re covered with some good looking "leather look" black vinyl.
The result became decent but not perfect, but it was good enough for a while.
Next time I will do a pure custom seat pan with the frame, tank and rear fender as a mould.

The ugly stock seat with driving position way forward to suit my length and taste

New seatpan in the making

The new version, not perfect but good for now.