Justin brought this 47 down today. It used to belong to his dad, who unfortunately passed away. His family took it apart eight years ago so that they could rebuild it and restore it, but they never got around to putting it back together. They actually brought the bike down with the tanks, and back fender off and the motor and transmission out of it. I just spent a half hour loosely bolting them back on for storage purposes.
So basically this bike is a 47 el, with a really high serial number it is 47el116xx which almost puts it into 48 production. The dash cover and gas caps were replaced, but it still has the correct speedometer and ignitions switch
Check out the sticker on the tail flap, Also notice that the fender flap and tail light are not correct for 47, they came off of a 51 to 54 panhead.
The original m35 carb and aircleaner got misplaced sometime over the years, the oil lines were switched out too
Here is the front view, its a little banged and tweaked up, but it is all fixable stuff. The headlight is an original cycle ray light, it just had the sealed beam car light fixated to the original bucket
I wasnt really sure what the blue thing on the handle bar was, upon closer inspection, Jesse and I discovered that it was an old roll of electrical tape that had been put on the bar that shrunk down into nothing. Justin told me that his dad bought this bike in the early seventies and rode it a lot, he finally parked it in the eighties after one night when he filled the tank with race fuel and broke some tabs on the heads while trying to keep up with some import bike. I love old stories like this.
I posted pictures of this 47 for sale a month or so ago. We sold it with in 2 or 3 days. It was set up for a sidecar and had a three speed with reverse transmission, The new owner did not buy the sidecar so consequently he wants to put a regular 4 speed gear box in it. We are in the process of switching out the gears and also building up a set of 18 inch wheels and tires for it. I will post some more pics later.
and finally I figured since it is saturday night I would post a pic of Duke getting wild.
