Mas Classics |
Manufacturing |
Updated Oct 27th 2006
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The story ..........
Our first product developed is a replica of the model 441 "Indian" four cylinder frame. It consists of 23 separate castings and 11 steel tubes. A very ambitious product to reproduce. It challenged our engineer and our master pattern maker in many respects. This began in May 2003. We took a lovely original 1941 Indian Four frame along with chopped up 1938 Four frame, studied them carefully and began the reverse engineering process. We were stunned at how they made the castings in the good old days. Lots of time went into the best way to reproduce this frame. We wanted to make it faithful to the original.
here are a few shots of our Argentinian crew working on the 441 project.
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our crew studying the plans |  |
the plans |  |
drawings and a pattern |  |
our crew with the patterns |  |
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a few shots of the frame casting patterns ready for the foundry.
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Here is a shot of our frame jig and an original 441 frame resting in it. This was a very challenging frame to reproduce and we hardly could have picked a trickier product to introduce to the market. |
here are a few more images the frame jig with the frame resting in it.
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here are a couple of shots of our raw frame castings |  |
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In late 2003, we set out to begin development on stock type Harley Davidson UL 11 fin & ULH 13 fin Big Twin Flathead cylinders. The 74" cylinders were contracted to our guys in Argentina but with the challenges from the 441 frame development and budget constraints, I later decided to halt the 74 inch UL cylinders overseas. I looked into putting together a second team together.
This time, the team would be one that was local in Southern California. I met with a local pattern maker, John, who was also a friend of the family who convinced me to start with an easier initial product.. He wasn't interested in the ULH 80 cylinder pattern job. I presented him with a Schebler 1 1/4 body and he looked it over and gave me a price for the patterns. I made a decision to change the project instead to the Linkert 1 1/4 casting He got the job and 5 weeks later we were given a name of a foundry, El Monte Alloys in the, Los Angeles area who would test out our pattern board. On March 19th 2004, I had my first 4 prototype castings in hand. We had to make a few corrections but we had essentially sound castings. We made 4 more. We used a Silicon Bronze that cast well and was harder than the red brass used on the originals.
a few more pics of the Linkert carb body patterns, core box, the foundry and our first castings.
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I also met with a CNC machinist in Santa Ana who had sold me on the efficiency of CNC machining over old fashioned conventional NC methods. He presented me with some initial figures that I could work with, I went forward and pressed on with the Linkert project. It sounded like it was quite possible. I gave this shop the job and told them I'd be back in March with the first castings and an original for comparison.
I ended getting a pair of original 1940 Indian 4 crankcases loaned to me for patterns and I brought them the next time I met with the CNC machinist and we looked them over alongside the Linkert bodies. This was back when I was seriously considering manufacturing these crankcases here in the states. I knew of the efforts in Australia in regards to new crankcases. We had spoken with those folks and let them know what we were doing.
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This CNC shop ended up being a waste of time and after repeated phone calls and delays, this fellow either didn't want to hassle with all the work or wasn't capable of machining our finished bodies. He tried to arrange for some colleagues also in the trade to look over the project. This is when I got my first real negative impression of machinists. One by one, we were met with closed doors. It was at this time, I decided to find another pattern maker who was interested in taking on the ULH Flathead cylinders project. My previous patternmaker wasn't sure how made them back in 1937 so we were back out there. When I took the Linkert machining project back from the shop in Santa Ana (thank you very little guys!) I was on the phone with my manager at the foundry who referred me to a conventional machinist in La Puente, in the Los Angeles area, a small shop who had done a lot of work for my manager through the years. On my drive back from Santa Ana, I was already headed for El Monte to meet this new machinist. I gave him the job.
The new pattern maker delivered on both of the Schebler Deluxe body molds and the foundry cast several prototypes and I was very pleased. We soon had several aluminum prototype castings of the 1936-40 oil pump bodies but had a hard time trying to get anyone to cast these out of cast iron. I decided to go ahead and begin working on the 80 inch ULH Cylinder patterns. It was risky to divide my resources but I went ahead with it.
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our first Schebler carb body castings, a DLX 38 and a DLX 112 one inch. |  |
our first 1936 to 1940 Harley Knucklehead oil pump body casting prototype in Aluminum. |  |
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The pattern maker would complete a stage of the cylinder pattern, mold or splash of the 1st core of the cylinder, (there would be three core boxes for each cylinder) and then he got paid. We did this several times. He would bring me the mold and the plastic pattern made from the mold. I didn't quite understand how we was going to make the tricky 3rd cores to tie it all up, placing the last of the fins and the exhaust and intake ports in the right place. Little did I know, he didn't understand that part either. He didn't know what he was doing. All the while, we were waiting for another foundry to cast aluminum patterns from our temporary plastic master patterns. Our pattern maker didn't understand the shrink factor involved in another step of casting aluminum from our plastic patterns. These ended up with a little bit of shrinkage in several areas and I was unhappy about that. All the while we were paying out every step of the way. After many other broken promises and not getting phone calls returned, and a 48 hour grace period I gave him to return my phone call, meaning "when I call you must call me back within 48 hours, I prefer bad news to no news!", I ended up having to fire the Gabriel the pattern maker. I had thousands of dollars invested in 75% complete cylinder patterns that needed corrections made before they would be of any use. We were back on the hunt for a pattern maker to hopefully salvage the project..
I met with several pattern makers who had the masters, the molds, the original 13 fin ULH cylinders which had been cut in half and each time it ended up being the same story. They were afraid to get bogged down in trying to fix the previous guys mistakes. I had pattern makers who wanted to start from scratch at a price tag of $15,000 to $18,000 to start it all over again. That wasn't going to happen. I was willing to pay good money for someone to make the effort and make my patterns work. We were still still nowhere getting these to the foundry and I could imagine what was going to happen when we started pouring these things out of cast iron. After that, machining these was going to be tricky. I was having plenty of challenges just on the Linkert bodies.
Not long after that, the machinist in La Puente delivered on one mockup and 4 Linkert body prototypes which had a few critical corrections to make but so far they were the only machinists we'd met to even bothered to try to finish one of these things. He got paid and I told him of the corrections we needed made and I would order 25 to be made. These guys were slow. I was getting very frustrated with them. My projects were getting worked on. They had my raw castings for several months and after repeated phone calls and getting jerked around going nowhere, I realized I needed a safety in place, a second shop, a CNC shop instead of a conventional shop where all the specs were in only in the owner's brother's head. It was the beginning of the end for my dealing with this shop.
I met with an old man from another shop and brought them the Linkert castings and showed them what I needed done. This was at the request of the manager of the foundry who was still interested in helping us out. He was not a reliable man either and after a half hour with the old man, I was very unimpressed, soundly discouraged and I responded to the old man's reluctance to try to machine these with a agreement that "we were done with this meeting and thanks for your time....I'm out of here.......NEXT!".
This brought us to another highly recommended shop that worked for my colleague who had some experience in reproducing some vintage cams for some specialty models. At the time, this shop wasn't quite set up to handle the 4th or even 5th Axis CNC work we needed done so we got referred to another shop who specialized in motocross and ATV performance parts and had big facility with 18 CNC mills and lathes and I was optimistic. These guys were too busy so we got referred to a small shop in Stanton, very close to us who could handle the project and weren't afraid to take on a challenge. After a couple of weeks, I got the proposal for what it would cost for tooling up, 2 prototypes and prices for 1-25 units, 50 units price and 100 units initial production run. I thought it was a typo!!!! I just about fell out of my chair and called the guy to find out what the deal was.
| 2 prototypes | qty. 2 | $5,700 each = $11,400 + EDM charges |
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25 units |
25 |
$696.00 each + EDM charges |
50 units |
50 |
$648.00 each + EDM charges |
100 units |
100 |
$624.00 each + EDM charges |
first run 100 pcs |
TOTAL |
$73,800.00 less EDM charges |
No wonder all the work like this is getting sent out to India and China. I actually laughed at the guy and asked him if he knew how to speak Chinese since all this work was headed there. For these prices, I could actually buy a used CNC mill and lathe, rent a shop on the other side of town, hire an operator & set up guy to make my own products and still have money left. Not only that, but these carb bodies would have to be sent out to a Wire EDM facility to have the tiny .0010 slot cut in the idle passage for them to work correctly. No one was quite sure how they did it in 1941 before all of this fancy technology was around. There was still no firm price to how much more that would cost. It this point it didn't matter. I picked up my stuff from the "take your business elsewhere/screw you" shop and then was referred to a friend's shop in Washington state who actually worked on Indian and HD parts for people in the industry. We had to start the Linkert carb body project and none of the previous prototype work would us out.
one of our first Linkert M-51replica prototype carburetors ready to go.
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A customer referred me to a pattern maker in Tennessee who had done good work for him. I was hesitant to ship out my work across the country but we were running out of options. We spoke several times and I decided to take the risk and ship out the patterns and molds out to him. He agreed to work on my ULH cylinder patterns on his spare time (where had I heard that before?) A few months later when the shop in Washington wasn't getting things done I sent another raw casting and an original Linkert body out to him to show to a machine shop in his area to see if we couldn't find someone else to help. After a few phone phone calles every few months turned into a year, I simply asked this pattern maker to return my equipment and a few months later he did so.
Late in December 2004, The shop in Washington delivered on one first article, a pre prototype and got paid for the fixture and work. It was a sloppy, rush job and It took a few months for me to have the stomach to measure their work against the original and the other prototypes from the previous machine shop. I was really discouraged. Eventually, I sent them the correction sheets I drew on greyscale printed photos I took of the actual body along with an original. I ended taking a few semesters of CNC machining classes in ROP in the spring & summer of 2005 to get a better idea what was going on. Machining was the biggest challenge we were facing since everything we were working on required machining. No one was really helping us get along. Eventually, I was told that another outfit was working on the same Linkert replica carburetor and they were no longer interested in buying our finished bodies when we had them available to the market.
Late in September 2005, I was informed that the same company that was reproduced an inexpensive 45" Flathead cylinder set overseas were now working on UL replica cylinder sets. These guys would deliver. The price per set was going to be devastating to everyone. My colleague has already commit to 100 sets. He told me to move quickly before these hit the market. The domestic Flathead cylinder production was now dead. There is no simply no way to compete with the 3rd World industrial machine. It was a heavy heart we pulled out of the race.
The Swedish company who had the only replica UL type cylinders on the market were plagued with production problems and serious financial issues. They moved shop to the Southeast U.S. but their prices on their product only went up and were not available. We were not taking advantage of great opportunity to get all this business. It was tough to turn the business away from the eager customers who needed new UL cylinders. We had none.
Early this year, I called Washington and I was frustated that I had heard nothing from them for half a year. I found out my Linkert project was once shelved due to a misunderstanding. I was not happy about that. "Do you want us to resume making these things?" I responded with a "YES! as long as you can make them correctly and they work". I haven't spoken with them since. It was 6 weeks ago when I found out that my supplier in New York now carries a complete replica Linkert M-51 and other models and they actually had a few to ship out. I ordered one and looked it over. We had been beaten to the punch yet again. I ended up selling the replica Linkert to a customer and have them for sale on the website for a price comparable to what we were thinking.
In the last few months, we've been involved in the process of returning the reproduction Indian 441 frame project to the US from our South American facility. There is discussion about resuming these and that's what the plan is now. We shut down the initial 11 fin UL cylinder project with South America a long time and scrapped the project. It was a noble effort. It will take years to pay off the losses but we are a whole lot wiser now and familiar with all the energy involved in the manufacturing process. Most of the tooling and patterns are in house now. I've given a few "tours" for my colleagues who can see how far we got in the race so far. In June, we decided to make the raw castings available for sale to the public in limited numbers for the time being.
To be continued.....