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I just arrived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and have been fielding a number of suggestions, offers, and comments regarding the crankshaft failure I experienced. If you’re not interested in gory details, this message isn’t for you, but I thought I should take a moment to explain the history of my engine and why I used the original crankshaft when it was rebuilt.
Loring Hill was with me when my crankshaft failed south of Council Grove, Kansas. He was surprised because he only knew of one other such failure. But the flange at the end of the crankshaft, where it connects to the flywheel, is an extremely high-stress area because all changes in engine speed are translated to the flywheel through that integral flange: A flywheel wants to keep doing what it was doing before the power change and, after 100 years, my crankshaft told me clearly... “enough!”
My bike was bought new in 1919 and shipped to India. Shortly after I got it from my father (his friend had found it in India and shipped it home), I was working in California as a machinist in an automotive machine shop. While we did not have a way to grind crankshafts, we had a good supplier, so I sent the crankshaft to them to be worked on. Within a year, I put the bike parts on the shelf coated in Cosmoline where they sat for almost 25 years before I made my first attempt at getting the engine rebuilt. I won’t bore you with the details of that disaster, but after eight years, I didn’t have a running engine, so I took it to Mark Hill at 4th Coast Fours who was, even by 2011, well on his way to becoming “the” Henderson shop he is today.
I often recall the random meeting between Mark and me at the 2007 Rhinebeck Meet, where Mark had photos of all the equipment at his disposal, showing me what he could do with my 1919 Henderson engine. It seemed to me that he was extremely knowledgeable on the subject of four-cylinder motorcycle restoration. If I had not believed that, after four years, my own engine should be complete in months, I would have immediately “changed lines” and had Mark do the work. His knowledge, vision, demonstrated results, and patient kindness with me convinced me he should have been my first “partner” in this engine restoration all along. But I was certain that mine was almost done, now four years in, so I thanked him, took his card (as well of the business card of his 10-year-old son and associate, Loring, who had a budding business restoring bicycles on the side of Mark’s vending spot).
Four more years later, in late 2011, I finally got my “restored-but-not-quite-right” engine back. I took it to Mark Hill for assessment. He told me it should be about 40 hours of work and it would run great afterwards. That was before he cracked the case and began finding serious problems that would prevent the engine from running or ever being safely operated without major rework. Because he knew we were now talking about well in excess of 40 hours of work and the associated cost would not be inconsequential, Mark wanted to know what I had in mind for the bike’s use. That is when I told him of my dream of riding it across the country in tribute to C.K. Shepherd. At the time, only one Motorcycle Cannonball had been run and the art of restoring these old four-cylinder engines for transcontinental endurance was yet to be perfected (as Mark has now done), but Mark told me I should invest in modern parts for reliability if I planned to run it cross-country.
Mark showed me that my upper case had been badly damaged in the first restoration attempt, so I gave a “green light” to Mark for radical surgery and reconstruction needed to ensure my cylinders did not break off the deck which had been milled down dangerously thin. As the work progressed, and as new problems were found, Mark kept me abreast of developments with photos, videos, and phone calls. Pretty early on, Mark told me that the rod journals on my crankshaft were out of balance... the stroke of each cylinder would be different. Eight years ago, I didn’t know anyone was making new crankshafts for 1919 Hendersons, so I made the fateful decision to have Mark take extraordinary steps to restore the existing crankshaft to bring this one-of-a-kind engine back to life with the original parts if possible, paying for extra welding and grinding to put the journals back to true.
The crankshaft in the headline of this note from my “parts pile” in 2003 before the first restoration attempt was set in motion. There was light rust (the Cosmoline was mostly gone) but it seemed to be otherwise in good condition. I do not know if my shop in California had already incorrectly ground the journals in an imbalanced way, or if that was done during the first restoration attempt, but by the time it came out the other side of that, they were out of balance.
To be as clear as I can be: There is no “blame” to be directed to Mark Hill or 4th Coast Fours. It is metal that is 100+ years old! I made the best decisions I could at the time and I know that Mark Hill did as well. Now I will get a brand new modern high performance counterbalanced crankshaft and will bring the engine back to life as soon as possible. Even though this failure was NOT his fault, I have an idea that Mark will never again turn out a restored engine without replacing the original crankshaft with a modern one. I understand that he feels badly this happened to me, and we agree it was not his fault, but it is clear enough to me that he still wants to have his “product” always stand up to the challenge no matter the cause.
Thank you Mark and Loring for hanging with me, for all of your help, advice, guidance, and creative problem solving over all these years. I would not have come even close to this far without you!
What will follow in terms of this bike’s future operation is yet to be determined, but I want to get it running, and look at it over the fall and winter and see what I feel like in 2020.
Thanks again for all your support, offers, and advice. |
