From:Bob Nicholas e-mail:bobheci@hotmail.com
Subject:January Meeting Minutes Posted to the Exchange Date:Mon Jan 25 18:54:41 2010
Guys,

This is the last thing Hodge wanted me to post to the Highlands Exchange. You probably already received January's Meeting Minutes. If not, here they are:



Highlands Chapter AMCA
Meeting Minutes


Date: January 2, 2010
Time: 1 PM
Place: New Baltimore Garage


Attendees: Hodge, George, King, Richard, Tom Holter, Rollo, Long Shanks (Dave), Chip, Frank, Bob, Uwe, Jeff and Friend


The Meeting

George generously hosted the first gathering of 2010 at his shop in Warrenton, VA. This was a technical hands-on meeting. Many thanks to George for sharing his shop, tools and knowledge.

I’ve spoken to George and Hodge and received permission to post some photos of the meeting on our website. They should be up shortly.


Getting Things Started

We met at 1 PM at Georges shop in Warrenton. We had a great turnout including 14 members and friends of the club. I brought along chips and beer to get everybody in the mood for our first meeting of 2010. Chip had pizza delivered around 2PM. By then we’d worked up an appetite. This was typical Highlands Chapter fare and it was consumed quickly.

We had the normal bull session to get things started. It was good to catch up with what was going on with the Highlands brothers.

Just for some diversion, Richard brought an antique Christmas tree stand that was in need of some repair. Sadly, we didn’t get Richard’s project completed.


Jeff and one of his buddies showed up in a very cool hot-rod car-carrier.

Nobody rode their bikes to the meeting, as it was freek’n cold that day. By the time Hodge and I left George’s shop at 6 PM it was well below frigid.


Tech Talk

George spent some time with us explaining the finer points of honing cylinders and reassembling a crankshaft and flywheels. George wanted us to learn by doing, so he let us do the hands-on work, while he supervised.

Frank worked tirelessly on honing a number of H-D cylinders creating a nice pile of metal and stone dust. The cylinders came out great with no taper and a fine finish. Kudos to Frank. Job well done.

The rest of us spent three hours or so working on Hodge’s lower end assembly. This was a complete reassembly of the crankshaft and flywheels. Truing up the components proved to be difficult for us novices. We used George’s monster 1905 metal lathe as a holding jig in order to torque the crankshaft nuts to the proper 150 ft-lbs. The assembled parts were moved to a more modern South Bend lathe that was being used as a truing stand. We were able to measure amount the crankshaft was out of align by rotating the assembly by hand. We attempted to reduce the misalignment by applying pressure to the flywheels. At first we used heavy-duty C-clamps. This had marginal effect upon the alignment. George suggested we move on to beating the high side of the flywheel with a dead-blow hammer, supporting the assembly on a wooden block. This whole process is done by trial and error. The assembly was checked for trueness, removed from the lathe, adjusted (by beating the crap out of it), placed back on the lathe and checked for trueness again. This process happened over and over until we got the assembly about 8-10 thousands from true. George told us that this was not good enough, explaining that it has to be within 2-3 thousands before it could be installed in the engine cases.

Our participants started leaving around 4 PM. By 5 PM, Hodge and I were getting tired and our progress had slowed to nil. We decided to leave the final truing to another time. (I understand that George and Hodge met back at the shop on the following day and got the crankshaft assembly trued to dead-nuts).

Hodge, George and I sat down at a 5:30 to discuss the meeting and to start planning February’s meeting. We all agreed that the first meeting of 2010 was a great success. I know I learned a lot, thanks to the tutelage of Tech-Guru George. It was a great way to spend a freezing Saturday in January.

We didn’t have enough time on Saturday to have a sit-down meeting to discuss Highlands business with the members. This will have to wait until the February meeting. We’ll need to hold our officer’s elections as soon as possible. I believe that Hodge will be hosting the next meeting. He will send out an e-mail listing the date, time and place. As you probably know, Hodge has recently moved, so the clubhouse in his old neighborhood can no longer be used for our meetings. Keep on the lookout for the next meeting’s announcement.

The Close

Hodge, George and I closed the meeting at 6 PM. I think I speak for all of our club brother’s in expressing our appreciation for George’s efforts in hosting the first meeting of 2010. We all had a great time.

Looking forward to seeing all of our members at the next meeting.


Best Regards,



Bob Nicholas, Secretary – Highlands Chapter AMCA


January 13, 2010