2001 Assembled PanHead Rigid by David Fontenot This is a motorcycle that was built by someone who apparently was looking to learn a lot of special Information about fabrication, riding, painting, bending, saving money, and kick starting !!! I had acquired an S&S Knucklehead case, 84ci stroker and i decided going to a panhead was better suited to my taste. I went Panhead..... Now money was getting tight and patience growing thin, I sat down and figured out what I had to do to get the Pan heads on the S&S knuckle bottom end. I did the reading and found that the knuckle and pan bottoms are the same except for the lifter block screws. I mounted the lifter blocks and redrilled screw holes. I bought new Gary Bang STD Pan heads. The heads fit great with all the pan parts like the cam , lifters and pushrods. The next thing to do was to drill the oil return holes for the pan head down into the side of the cylinder wall on the case. S&S had a great instruction article on doing this, i followed the directions and it all worked perfectly. I did this very slowly and made sure I measured properly more than once and everything worked perfectly. Now I had to get the motor to fit in the knucklehead repro frame. I found out that the frames are different heights. I did this by flattening the backbone a little to fit the pan covers . It fit perfectly.... The next thing I had to deal with was using a front fender. I hated every front fender I saw except the british style. One problem was dealing with a springer fork. I needed a fender that rode with the wheel and didn't look like a dirt bike fender. I started drawing up styles and after a couple tries I came up with the style I have now. The fender would be suspended by two small leavers that hang from the rear fork where the old fender mounts are located. Next , this would keep the fender from moving side to side. The fender struts would connect to the axle and brake drum to support the fender. I found that Harley had this same type of movement on the new springer models. After some small adjustments it worked perfectly. MORE>

Seems lotsa folks are trying their hand at building bikes these days. We see everything from the so-called "Pros" on TV to the guy in the garage down the street making do with what he's got. Who does a better job? Who builds the real working-man's chopper? Anybody with heart, soul and the guts to just jump feet first into a project of their own design. David Fontenot is that kinda guy. He just sent me his story and all these great pix, so I felt I had to share. While not a radical chopper - this bobber shows a whole buncha class and style. And one thing is for sure, this is Davis's bike through and through. I published his story for you all to read just as he sent it to me. He took the pix. Enjoy! -Warren Fuller