1977 Chop Top Crew Cab Dually!

Ya I found them. Took a bit of digging.
Email me today.

Still waiting on my top plate for the rear bags. My buddy got real sick before he could cut them out. So I moved on to other stuff.

Cab corners done, they were in real bad shape once we started digging at it.




After a lot of head scratching and WTFing... I got the panels to fit. Panel on this one side was a bitch, just had to massage it to fit in. And my welder was acting the damn fool all the way through.

Come to find out it was binding on the sticker on the back of the roll of mig wire. It was cutting into the sticker exposing the glue behind the sticker and momentarily jamming it up. I applied a bit of vinyl over the sticker and a small dap of white lithium grease..all better.

Hopefully get the plate this week and get the rear done, shock mounts, gussets, everything....hopefully.

I will hit you up when i get off work today thanks.

No problem bro.

So I finished the cab corners and my buddy finished my upper bag plates.


The inners were bad on the rockers as well so I spent awhile cutting patches for the rot.

I'm going to try and get the back wrapped up, shocks and all by Wednesday.

Looks good bro.

What an eventful couple of weeks. Jeeeeze!

My buddy Jamie had a good friend pass away a couple weeks back. His name was Schuler.




From what I heard about him thru my buddy he seemed like a kool dude.

Well the story is I think something was wrong with his heart and at 44 he died. So the story goes something like he wanted to get creamated and buried in his gas tank, of his bike...or to put put into the bike, and buried with the bike. Anyway the cremation and Harley tank part I know is correct.

So he tells me she's looking for a sporty tank to put his ashes in. Kool where is she getting it from? Online he says.

I say, "have you no respect for the dead man!?
What the fuck, you put your bro's ashes in a used-who knows where the fuck it's been sporty tank? Shit man bury the fucking guy in a col-sanders left over chicken bucket if that's the case. Don't plan my buriel you sad sack of...

Actually no I didn't say that now that I remember it, it went more like..."I can prolly get a new tank for the same price as youll find used". And he said "ya, it's prolly better being new". And I said ya, it wont smell like gas...and he said ya...and I called my buddy Jay and he hooked that up on the quick fast.



Jay is like Morgan Freeman in the shaw shank redemption, Cept he's been known to find Harley shit. Not just the regular stuff either, the shit you'd cut your left nut off for.




Ok so that last picture isnt Harley related but it's still badass...so back to the sporty tank.

So I get the top plates tacked up. Then I stuffed the bags in to make sure they would stop a smidge before bottoming out...and that they were straight.

Worked out ok.





I got the shock mounts and gussets made too so I'm going to get on those when I get back into the shop...well that was the plan.

So, I get the tank new from Jay and while I'm driving home I'm like...WTF!

I can't give them this tank without some kind of stand. What happens if it slips off what the set it on at the funeral? Or if it falls over at home? No sir, there will be none of that!

So this is last Sunday and the funeral is on the following Saturday. So I got a week...kool, no pressure. Whole buncha sleeps between now and then.

Hmmmmm stand, I need a stand. I call my buddy Jazzy. He runs this big ass machining shop that makes all my crazy fab parts and makes me look all rockstar on the Internet. So I ask him to grab the tank and hook it up on the quick cause I know he needed the tank to fab up the stand. He promised one on the quick.

Now this is killing us cause with more tine we could have went insane, as we like to do. But with a day job and more projects than I can deal with, I gotta finish the sporty tank nice...and not lose time on other projects.

So Monday morning I get a text and Jazz tells me he'll swing by my work and the tank and stand off. Great news cause now all I have is 4 days to prep and paint it.

This one kinda hit close to home, so I'm not going to let failure be an option. Anything short of an accident isn't going to stop me from getting this done!

...and then I got in an accident.




This is what happens when someone in a rush to pick up her kid at daycare stops off for a Starbucks and is so delighted in the hot roasty toasty flavor they're completely oblivious to the world around them. They fall into some kind of momentary orgasmic bliss and fail to stop and plow into you at 25kms.

The force actually lifted my back end up off the ground...but back to the tank. After talking with the police and reporting it and realizing MY insurance wasn't going up, I was elated to find the tank had survived the crash.




However I was still kinda shook up and just wanted to lay down...but figured I'd start on some bodywork.

After talking with Jamie I realized he and I were in agreement on one thing, she would have to tell me how to paint it, and with time slipping and my back and neck acting up, I better get to the paint part real soon.

So after listening to what was wanted on the tank I set to work.

She wanted it to resemble his bike. Fire engine type red, bright bright red with Harley logos on the side. His name and years on mother earth on the top side. No flake, no kandys, no crazy flame job...not even an outline or striping, just simple like his bike in the picture.

She figured I would paint it red, then put Harley stickers on it, and maybe stencil out his name on top...what?!

Nope, all paint, can't be putting stickers on there. I'll use them as stencils for painting though.

So Tuesday night I had a lot of pain, and got it into primer.




Two bodywork sessions and it was ok for final prime and sand.



This was Wednesday night and I packed it in. Still ok, plenty of time till Saturday, and the pain wasn't so bad.

So I'm thinking this tank HAS to be Kosmos red, brightest most pure red I could think of, with cool looking Harley logos painted in two shades of silver. I also realized I couldn't paint the stand at the same time as the tank, do my buddy Cary hooked up the semi-gloss black powdercoat.



So now it's Thursday night and I set to work. I can't screw this up, cause I'm running out of time. My buddy Doug is nice enough to let me use his booth upon request.

So I cleaned up the tank, turned up Sabbath and figured I'd go till I dropped.

First the background color, dark metallic grey. I let it dry for about 20 mins and masked it off.



Then I shot a light silver in between the letters with my airbrush.



After masking all the inner letters up to protect the silvers, I shot the red.



Then peeled all the letters off and luckily no bleed-thrus.
Now I could give it a quick tack and shot a couple coats of clear.




I was pretty done by now. Think I was done here at 2:00 am. I hung the gun up and left before I got a run in it.