Today I felt like the old Iron Horse's Chopperman! For the first time I used both a hacksaw and a cutting torch on my Harley (on the girder front end, at least). I installed the front end (with bearings), and then measured three times to make sure I had the right fork length before doing any cutting. The forks compressed 1.5" under load, so I set the frame level, measured to the center of the axle hole in the 21" wheel, and then lengthened the cut by 1.5". I made the cuts with a hacksaw using hose clamps to guide the cut and make sure it was square. The fork legs were 3/4" solid stock, so it took forever with a hacksaw!
I then needed to bend the aft leg so the bottom wasn't too wide and looked hacked. The original space was 1" between legs on the bottom, so I set up a jig with a 1" piece of pipe as a bottom spacer to bend the legs together.
Then all I had to do was apply heat to get a nice smooth bend where P&P orginally bent the leg. I was VERY carefull not to touch that oxygen lever, as this is the cutting head for the torch (you'll see what that can do next). Never mind the pile of junk in the background - I'm also working on my boat. This really is relevant to Ducatis, as the tube I'm using to radius the bend is a piece of Ducati fork tube!
None of the local steel suppliers were open on the weekend, so I decided to reuse the original axle plates and cut them out with the torch. It was getting dark and I figured the neighbors would kill me if I started running my angle grinder all night, so fitting the axle plates to the legs will have to wait for tomorrow.
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