A number of questions have started cropping up again about building strokers.
It brings up a very good question -- just where can someone find good information about building an all new 900-based stroker from scratch? If you search XL Forum and the stickies, you'll find pieces of this information. Some from threads like Dr. Dick's excellent 84" tear down and some from more recent builds by members such as RKN.
To provide a type of archive of "old" knowledge; back in 2019, Dr. Dick, myself, and several others known to this forum began working together on one of my project bikes -- a 1964 CH. We documented the entire build on the Antique Motorcycle Club of America's forum. The final series was featured in the April 2020 AMCA electronic newsletter. The whole series runs to more than 150 posts and contains some 500 photos of the work
as we did it. The posts capture several years of conversations at swap meets and hours on the phone; which I then typed up and we edited during COVID times. Some of the work took place in my shop and some in Dr. Dick's -- so you can see how two different people go about the work. You will also see where I needed to call on the good Dr. to save me from myself.
In the series; we cover everything from finding project bikes to stroker pistons and cylinders to just about everything you've ever read from Dr. Dick on this forum.
This includes:
1) Full on Magneto rebuilding and machining; including modifying OEM bases.
2) Rebuilding a L Series S&S carburetor right down to making new throttle discs and your own intermediate tubes
3) C-ratio dry clutch conversion out of a '71-84 4th gear set
4) Dr. Dick's unbreakable kicker shaft
5) Big boring 900 cases
6) Flywheel building/truing on original CAST S&S wheels
7) Chassis sorting including hub building, wheel lacing, and big twin rivets on the rear sprocket.
8) Head work, including guide replacement, valve seats, r-length valves, and valve stem protrusion
9) Living with smallish big bore Alloy Cylinders on a 900
10) Building your own roller starters
11) Chrome removal
12) Painting at home, including how to bump metal and solder fuel tanks
13) Dealing with shipping bikes; missing paperwork; and all that jazz.
14) An actual accounting of what it cost in parts to build this bike and where we bought parts
Here's the direct link to the whole series:
https://forum.antiquemotorcycle.org/...dson-sportster
The downside is that you have to be an AMCA member to view the photos and drawings. The annual cost is minimal and the club is a fantastic resource. So, if you're serious about seeing photos of this work being done and want a good 30,000 foot overview -- pony up to the AMCA overlords and take a gander.
We quite literally took this crate of crap:
and in less than a year turned it into a 78" stroker with all the early 1970s goodies you've read about over the years:
One Way to Build a Stroker -- if it was 1972
Linear Mode
