Vintage Motorcycle Show Introduction with the '36 Knucklehead & '37 Flathead UL

Hey, Kevin Baas here, Baas Metal Craft Vintage Bike Addiction. Again, we're walking through my show. Wild Turkey Customs, Bass Metal Craft Vintage Bike Show, Daugherty's Tavern, Prior Lake, Minnesota, second annual. Holy cow, did we get a turn out of old bikes. There are so many cool bikes here. Panheads, flatheads, knuckleheads, you name it, they're here. Old sports, there's ironheads. And we got British bikes, man, we got metric bikes, we got drag bikes, we got everything you can think of, shovelheads. And we're kinda walking around looking at the different variants of these bikes. What makes things cool. And this bike here caught my eye right away. This thing is an amazing, amazing bike and it it's amazing for a number of reasons. The owner Jerry, over here, I got Jerry taking a look at your 36 here, my friend, my friend. So Jerry owns this 36 and what's crazy cool about a 36 knuckles. The first year of the overhead valve Harley did. They're very collectible, very hard to find parts for all the big dollar bikes you see are you know, pre-war knuckles. And the 36 is the creme de la creme. And to see one like this Polish cases and a chopper, how cool is that? Like, this thing gives me goosebumps, man. It does. It does. So why don't you just tell everybody like a little bit about the bike when you built it point out some of the things you made and just give us the story of this thing. I worked with a guy in the 1960s his name was TM and he was gonna go out to California and but he was selling off some of his stuff and I said, what do you got? He says, well, come on out to my shop. He says, and I'll show you something. And this was, had been laying on its side for 10 years in a chicken coop and it had all the trimmings with it. Yeah. And so I picked the thing up and I I just really fell in love with the old knucklehead. So I says, DM, I says, how much you want for it? He says 150 bucks. Oh man. That was a lot of money back then. Yeah. And okay. So went back and got a trailer and slid it in the back of the trailer. And I took it home and I took it where I worked sprayed it down with solvent and cleaned it up good enough. Got all the chicken poop off it. Yeah. Cuz I headed my dad's garage and he kicked it out. So I cleaned it up and I took it apart and I started on it and cleaned up the frame and started on the engine and took the lower end over to Belmont Harley. And there was a guy named Dick there, an old guy and and I brought the lower end in and set it on the bench and he come out and he says, where did you get that? I says, that's my 36. He says, I know what that is. He says, I had one of those new and 36. Wow, cool. Wow. He says, you want that rebuilt? He says, yeah, you come back in about a week. And he says, I'll have it ready for you Only a week huh? Boy that's service. He, he really took a liking into the 36. So I brought the soldiers in and they board it and I do the head work on him, myself. So I fixed up the heads. Then I had it ready to go over to the painter and I forget the painter's name right now. I'll think of it. But he did a lot of custom work for rod and custom magazine. So I give it to him. I went in the military and I spent a tour over in Vietnam. And then in other places in the orient, when I come home he had it all painted. Oh for me. Beautiful. So I took it. And so I started putting it together. And about 1971 I kicked her over. Nice Took a few kicks to get it going. It's beautiful. You know, there's a lot of custom pieces on this one. I can tell, like tell us a little about what you did to make some of this stuff. A lot of this stuff is all handmade. Tell me about this cool brass headlight bracket This is all made from straight round brass stock. And I would heat it and bend it. And I learned how to weld brass. It's kind of like welding, aluminum. You, you gotta watch the temperatures. But I made that cuz that was kind of the style back then. And That thing is amazing. I love it. So what about these front sprayer legs here. Tell me about that. Just as an experiment, I took some copper water pipe and split it in the back and it snapped over that perfectly. So it's a cover. Ah, very cool. And I like, I like the color of grass and coppers. So it was an experiment and I put them on there. So how many years have you owned this bike? 55 years. 55 years. And this thing looks like it's brand new right off the, the chopper, you know, showroom. Like you kept it so pristine and so nice. How do you do it? What's your secret? I rebuild it every year. Every year. All right. I love it. I love it. Well we can't thank you enough for bringing out here, man. You're a good man. We're talking about how this is a brotherhood of of old bike lovers. Appreciate it. To see a 36 Nu chopper like this gives me goosebumps, man. So thank you. They're fun. Yeah. And we're at the wild Turkey custom bass middlecraft vintage bike show. Amazing lineup, old bikes. We're walking around. We're looking at stockers choppers, man. You name it. And man, sometimes a bike just stands out and it just catches your eye. And like this 37 UL, look at this thing unrestored beautiful original paint bike. It's amazing. And I think a guy that owns it might be right here. Jason Shilver. Yeah. How you doing buddy? How you doing man? Good. Good. Thanks for bringing the bikes. He's a beautiful one. Absolutely. Absolutely. Where do you want me here? Over here? Well, you know what? Sit on the back. Yeah. So Jay and I have ridden together for many, many years. We had a lot on road trips under our belt. Lot of road, trip trips, lot of good times, lot of memories. We've been building bikes, swapping parts swapping lights, making, making history. But this is a bike that Jay just put together, man. And it's it's, it's an amazing, amazing bike. You're gonna see some really rare unique things he's gonna tell you about on this bike. Yeah. So we can start off up here. We got what's odd about this bike in 1937 it was a competition with Harley and Indian and they came out to challenge with Harley or Harley to challenge with Indian. They wanted to come up with the right side shift. So this is unique to all the other original bikes here. We have a right hand shift, left hand throttle, not a bike you drink a lot of alcohol with and ride home but it it's a fun little bike. It's got rare little beauty spotlights on it. An accessory buddy seat that was from the twenties. This went all the way up into the fifties but you don't see a lot of these. You barely ever see those. These are very neat. Little thing deep there. Very neat little thing. You got an up sweep exhaust on it, solid bike. I found this bike in town about two years ago and had to put it back together and new neighborhood, new new houses being built and guy wanted me to restore bike for him. And I ended up working deals out and ended up with this basket case and put it together Man, you got so many cool things, man. I mean that right side tank ship blows my mind. But like even like the exhaust, like tell us about the exhaust and that center stand like that looks rare It's, you know, it's an old police style up sweep exhaust. You don't see much of them out there. And you know, I found it and I thought it was a really unique piece to this machine. That's awesome. You don't see these hanger straps like that too often No Rear stand is a really kind of a rare thing. It's a 36 37 only. And what you see here is it's a round tube. Oh yeah. Rear stand compared to a flat press stamp steel one. Really cool. Alright, man. You it's a beautiful bike chain. I know you and I we're gonna take some road trips. Oh absolutely. This is one that needs to go. Let run these down to Milwaukee or something. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Ride 'em don't hide em Ride 'em don't hide. That's where it's at Absolutely. Yeah.