Mechanic Deconstructs a 1974 Harley-Davidson

[garage door opening]

[heavy rhythmic techno music]

[Matt] My name is Matt Dawe.

I live in Brooklyn, New York.

I've got a shop in Greenpoint where I work on motorcycles.

We're gonna be deconstructing

a 1974 Harley-Davidson Shovelhead.

Shovelhead's a nickname actually for the model.

It's kinda like there is different eras.

There's a Knucklehead, the Panhead, the Shovelhead,

and these are all nicknames that were given

by different motorcycle riders because of the way they look.

So the top rocker boxes on the motor,

which are the very top chrome pieces with the two nuts

look like shovels.

The Panheads have like a more rounded shape,

they look like pans

and the Knuckleheads have two very distinct nuts at the top

with a contoured cast rocker top.

We're gonna strip it down bear, as minimal as it can

with the motor and transmission staying intact.

Everything else disassembled completely.

Before we started this process,

I've drained all the fluids already, the oil and the gas,

to make sure everything is dry.

When removing the gas tanks,

you want to make sure there's no gasoline inside.

You want to make sure the engine

and the primary is free of oil

because otherwise you're gonna have a mess

when you take everything apart.

Once all that is cleaned out and dried,

that's when you start the process of dismantling the bike.

I pull from my toolbox as needed

and reset at different intervals

throughout the deconstruction.

Right here, I've already got my Phillips head

screwdriver out, taking out the rear screw on the seat.

There are two tongues in the front

that slide under the frame

which keep it secured in the front.

It's an aftermarket seat,

kind of a little sleeker design than the stock.

After removing the seat, you have access to the battery

and electrical area.

What you want to do then is disconnect the battery.

And the reason you want to disconnect the battery

before you do anything else

is because when working on the bike,

you're using metal tools, your hands are everywhere.

You don't want to accidentally ground something

or engage the starter by accident

or really give the bike any reason

to have electricity running through it.

I'm gonna disconnect the ground terminal,

then the positive terminal.

I was very determined to find a bike

that I was gonna ride as opposed to take apart

and I found the bike in Albany.

The guy was asking a fair price

and borrowed a van and put my dog in the back

and drove up to Albany.

He got up out of bed at midnight,

helped me push the bike into the back of the van

and that was it, we drove back that night.

This right now what I'm taking off

is the air cleaner cover for the carburetor.

Underneath this is an air filter.

This is kind of a classic, it's called an S&S.

It's a teardrop style.

It's an aftermarket performance company for Harleys

and it's their iconic air cleaner.

Next we're gonna start taking off the gas tank.

Normally there is a speedo right in the center

where my hands are at this moment.

That will give you your mileage reading,

your speed, sometimes there's a tachometer involved

which takes a RPM reeding from the motor.

Generally necessary for inspections

but also flies under the wire for a lot of guys

who want custom bikes.

Harleys always had and probably always will have

a very cult following.

It's very much more organic

and like the following is much more organic behind it,

you know, and there's all the myth and the ethos behind

of Harley being American

and there's not quite the same thing for any other brand.

As much as there are extremists

and purists for every other brand,

it doesn't carry the same kind of culture around it.

There's plenty of other companies that have nicknames

on motors that people make up but nothing sticks,

nobody's gonna call this an FXE.

Most of the time, it's just a Shovelhead.

I started workin' on bikes when I was 18 years old.

Got my first bike, couldn't afford

to have anybody else work on it so I had to learn from there

and I was kinda bummin' around and gettin' information

where I could and hangin' around the shops

and pokin' my head places it didn't belong.

I opened up my own shop at one point in Newfoundland

in Canada which is where I'm from.

After closing up shop there for an opportunity in New York,

I've been here working on motorcycles

doin' custom fabrication ever since.

Those three points, on these specific gas tanks,

where the hardware is mounted,

so you got the two top mounts

then there's one at the bottom of the frame

where there's a little tab.

These specific ones are two pieces

that are connected by lines in the center for venting

and gas flow.

Billy's here with me assisting me today

and everything that I'm taking off the bike,

he's taking off camera and organizing, labeling

and making sure everything stays together

where it should be.

The one side of these tanks is vented, the other is not

which creates a positive pressure flow

which is what creates all the gas going

from one side to the other.

There's only one outlet to the carburetor

which is through what was called a petcock.

The petcock is a valve.

There's three settings, there's on, off and reserve.

The reserve is at height level.

It saves you from being stuck on the side of the road.

The best way to do it is to run it on

and if you do happen to run out of gas,

that reserve will get you another 15, 20 mile,

depends on the size of your tank.

Now that the tanks are off,

we're gonna go over and take off the carburetor,

start from the manifold and work our way out.

This is what feeds the engine.

This is your first line.

The fuel comes in, it's very specifically designed

to give it a certain air-fuel mixture.

What I just did there was remove the throttle cable.

The throttle control is on the right-hand side

of the handlebars.

You twist it, the cable pulls, it opens the carburetor.

That's what controls how much air and fuel

goes into the engine at any time

which is what controls your speed.

This is an S&S Super B carb.

This one has an interesting aftermarket part

that has an accelerator pump

which wasn't common of the era.

The accelerator pump, basically when you crank the throttle,

shoots a little bit extra gas into the motor first

so on start up and first initial acceleration,

it kind of makes you go a little bit quicker.

Right here I'm removing the top motor mount to the engine

which connects the two cylinder heads

to the top of the frame.

Throughout this process,

we're gonna be using standard hand tools,

wrenches, ratchets, sockets, screwdrivers

and various Allen keys.

The reason you use hand tools on a bike, it's just efficient

and also it's really important in a lot of circumstances

to feel, to actually physically get a sense of feel

for the bike so you know if you're going to strip a bolt,

if you're gonna shear something.

Whereas if you had a power tool,

if you were tryin' to remove something

with like an impact gun,

you wouldn't be able to actually feel the tension

on the bolt and you could end up breaking something

and it turns into a whole other process

of like bolt removal and huge problems.

There's three mounting points, traditionally,

on most Harleys.

You've got your front and your rear motor mounts

and then your top motor mount.

I'm tryin' to remove the clamps from the manifold

so I take off the motor mount first

and then have access to the clamps.

The motor mount, it actually makes the engine itself

a structural member of the whole chassis.

In this model, it's rigid mounted.

There's no buffer or dampening system

between the motor and the frame,

it's all hardware, metal to metal full contact

whereas in later models, you have high rubber dampers,

a lot of like, poly.

The bike itself is pretty standard.

It's almost 45 years old.

It's as close to stock as it can be

with some bolt-on modifications.

This model in particular is the FXE

which is the Super Glide,

that was the denotation of the era.

The E stands for electric start

where you could get them at the time

with kick start only or kick and electric start

which was a new introduction for Harley

of this era of like the 69 up Troubleheads.

Here I'm removing both clamps

and then it, just a little bit of a wiggle

and a pull and it's out.

Now I'm gonna get in

and start taking apart the exhaust pipes.

Basically the whole process here

from the air cleaner now to the exhaust pipes

is you're stripping everything off of the engine

so you can have access to the engine to remove it easily.

That's your main goal,

it's a big milestone to taking apart the bike

is getting the motor and transmission out.

These exhaust pipes on the Shovelhead,

they have one bolt on each manifold that hold them in

and then the exhaust leads to a bracket

which is attached to the frame

and then attached to the rear of the exhaust as well

so it's mounted on multiple points.

These are an aftermarket pipe so they're not baffled

so they're very loud.

They don't add performance in any kind of way.

Because there's two cylinders,

there's one exhaust pipe for each cylinder.

In this and most road motorcycles,

with street motorcycles are four-stroke.

There's four different movements of the piston

to make the bike move.

One sucks in the air, the other pushes up

and creates combustion in the fuel

then it drops down again.

Then on the fourth stroke is when it pushes out the exhaust

so it's all in rhythm

and if you have something that's out of rhythm,

your bike's not gonna run right

and the one thing that's important

and that is the back pressure in the exhaust.

So if your exhaust is escaping too quickly,

the whole system is thrown out of wack.

It's kind of like music, you know?

Another way to think of it is like a pulse.

So there's like a, say like every two seconds

a pop, pop, pop, pop.

But if it can't produce that right rhythm,

the rest of the engine is gonna run bad,

the motorcycle's gonna run off.

One of the main stylistic features in custom motorcycles

is custom exhaust.

You can get aftermarket mufflers

but build the rest of the exhaust from scratch

or build straight pipes like these with no baffles

and you just build the whole thing.

These are what came on the bike.

They wouldn't necessarily be my choice aesthetically

but this is what came on the bike

and high-end exhaust systems can be very expensive.

Now that I have the exhaust off,

I'm working on taking off the hardware.

This specific exhaust system has slotted hardware

which actually slides into the back of the exhaust.

It's a really common system for most aftermarket

and stock exhaust brackets.

Now I'm taking off the forward highway pegs.

These are an added accessory,

not necessary to riding it whatsoever.

It's more for comfort on longer trips

when you can like stretch your legs out.

And this here, the kickstand,

is also attached to the left side of the highway peg here.

The kickstand obviously is what holds the bike up

when it's not mounted on a lift somewhere.

So many varieties of kickstands and different operations.

This is a very common one for Shovelheads.

I'm taking off the voltage regulator

which controls the flow to the battery.

An alternator creates AC current

and the AC current goes to the regulator

which converts it to DC and sends it to the battery.

The output of the alternator

depends on the RPM of the motor

which sends so much electricity to the regulator.

The regulator basically takes all that and says,

here's 12 volts.

It regulates everything so the battery's not gonna explode.

Right now I'm removing the right side

break pedal and foot peg.

This is a standard break mount setup for this kind of bike.

It mounts to the transmission and tab on the frame.

So this is just he bracket that holds the foot peg

and the break pedal on.

Here I'm taking off the bolts for the exhaust bracket.

The reason I'm doing this because the exhaust bracket

is holding the master cylinder.

The master cylinder is what holds the hydraulic break fluid.

The way these have a disc break setup on the bike,

it's run by pressure.

There's a plunger on the end of the break pedal

that engages the plunger system in the master cylinder

which on the other side, translates to fluid pressure.

And now that I've got everything disconnected,

I'm removing the break pedal and the foot peg from the bike.

Just continuing with the break system,

taking off the exhaust bracket

and then taking off the master cylinder.

They stopped producing the Shovelhead in 1984

and switched to the Evo

which was nicknamed a Blockhead

but that didn't really stick.

A lot of the old bikers thought Harley

lost its spirit in that era

so these are still like the nostalgic bikes,

the Panhead, the Knucklehead, the Shovelhead.

I'm removing the starter solenoid which engages the starter.

It's part of the electric start system.

Electrical is kind of the biggest mess you'll see

on any bike, especially an old bike

because everybody thinks they have the right idea

and nobody really understands.

There's a lot of electrical tape and zip ties on stuff

that shouldn't be there.

There's a lot of like snipping and picking.

When taking a bike apart, there's a certain amount of room

to change the process but you need

to stick within certain confines

like you can't take out the motor

before you take off the gas tank.

There's also a step-by-step process to follow

that you need to stick to fairly rigidly

to get everything apart the right way.

So right now the battery tray's coming out.

Underneath, mounted to that battery tray's the starter relay

which sends the signal to the starter solenoid

which then sends the signal to the starter motor

which is just an electric motor

that engages a gear system

and literally pumps the engine over till it starts.

I'm removing the left side shifter peg.

And here I am just removing the foot peg as well.

Just one bolt that holds it on, really simple,

it's really basic, normal foot peg setup for this bike.

Here we are removing the inspection cover on the primary.

This is, the inspection cover itself,

it's called that because when you're doing maintenance

on the bike, you can remove this cover

and check the primary drive, chain tension,

just kinda see what's goin' on in there.

You pop it open, you look inside,

you check your chain tension.

It's minimally invasive to do the maintenance

that you need to do.

Here I'm removing the derby cover.

Once removing this,

it gives you access to the clutch basket.

It's what transfers the power

from the engine to the transmission

then transmission, after going through the gear ratios

in whatever configuration sends the power to the rear wheel.

Now I'm removing the full outer primary cover

because again, we're fully dismantling the bike,

you need to take off the primary cover

to get access to the inside of the primary

to take off the inner primary

which then gives you access for removing the motor.

There's Billy cleaning the parts

as they're coming off the bike.

This is a parts washer.

It's a 45 gallon drum of kerosene and a pump

and this is a housing that sits on top of the drum

and the pump, it's just a recirc pump.

It sucks up the kerosene, shoots it out that nozzle

and then goes back down the drain.

Just does that over and over and over again

and what that does is it cleans all the grease

and gunk and whatnot from engine parts.

The one thing that's really important

is that every nut and bolt, every piece of hardware,

everything that comes off should all be bagged

and organized, labeled because when it,

time comes eventually to put it back together,

you want to know what everything is.

You can't put all the nuts and bolts in one box

and figure it out later.

So when everything comes off the primary,

everything gets labeled primary hardware.

When everything comes off the foot controls,

everything gets labeled foot control hardware.

Every single unit on the bike

that has its own specific hardware

has to stay or be labeled.

I've had the shop here almost two years fully on my own

but I've had a workshop now privately for four years.

I mostly deal with Harleys but any background,

any kind of custom fabrication at all

is kind of welcome in the shop.

High-end motorcycle fabrication is kind of the specialty.

The most integral thing that you need

before touching your motorcycle

is getting the factory service manual.

Every single motorcycle has a book.

If you bring your bike to a mechanic,

the mechanic has that book for your bike

because you don't want to adjust anything,

you don't want to change anything.

If you don't know what you're doing

and you won't know what you're doing

until you open up the service manual for the specific bike

and you go from there.

Every instruction you could ever need

to work on a motorcycle is in a service manual.

Here is the clutch, clutch basket, clutch hub.

We'll remove that.

The adjustment nut on the clutch

is through a threaded rod or a threaded arm

with a flat head adjustment to lock it in.

The flat head screwdriver fits into the threaded piece

and the locknut is how you tighten it up.

So you take that off completely,

completely remove any kind of tension system

and then you put on a washer

that sits around the ring of the clutch springs.

And when you tighten that up,

what that does is because the washer is there,

it forces the springs tight.

That gives you the opportunity to loosen all the nuts

that have pressure on them.

So you take all those nuts off completely

and then you back off the clutch adjustment screw.

And you back off the clutch adjustment screw

is when you remove everything else.

All the springs come out of the clutch,

you can remove the clutch basket

and there's a million little pieces in there,

all the pressure plates for the clutch.

The basic thing that you start with

is you remove the chain tensioner.

The chain tensioner is the unit there

that's in between the two sprockets.

It's a polyurethane slide basically

that you adjust the height up and down

because over time, your chain's gonna stretch.

What the tensioner does is keep it within spec.

Once the clutch is fully removed,

we'll do the front and take off the compensator nut.

The one thing to note about this

is that it's reverse threaded.

The reason it's reverse threaded

is because of the motion of the engine.

If it were moving in the same direction

as a classic right-hand threaded thread,

which is standard for everything, it would loosen itself.

So what it does is the opposite,

it actually tightens itself.

This is one of the specific times

where you use an impact gun on the bike,

everything else is not really necessary.

Most engines, especially outside of Harley-designed,

they have what's called like a unit construction

so the transmission and the motor are all in one case.

This is completely separate

so the motor and transmission

are completely separate from each other

and this is how they're attached.

Once you get the clutch plates out,

you need what's called a clutch hub puller

which is a specific tool for this job.

It mounts onto the fingers of the clutch hub

that you just removed the nuts and the springs from

and then there's basically just a big bolt

and you crank on that.

You can do it by hand if necessary

but it's kinda difficult.

The right way to do it is with an impact gun

and you just crank it and what it does,

is it just forces that bolt in,

pushes against the transmission shaft

and then pulls the hub of the clutch off

so it comes off as a unit.

There's different ways to stop up the clutch hub

from actually moving.

There's a very basic way, I've got like a hefty screwdriver

and you shove it in between the forks

and you just kinda go to town.

What's actually happening is it's forcing the clutch hub

to be pulled off of the shaft.

This clutch hub puller in particular,

you can see there's a bunch of holes in the faceplate

and it's because this one's actually set up

for multiple kinds of clutch baskets

and different kinds of bikes.

It does almost every single kind of removal

because of the hole layout.

There's like multiple different hole layouts

on that one plate.

And then you just remove all the inner primary hardware

to remove the inner primary itself.

We got a pry bar, it's got a little rubber foot on it.

It's something that you incorporate as necessary.

You don't want to have metal on metal as much as possible.

That guy's got a little rubber foot for leverage.

It's again, it's by feel.

A lot of times, if you need to use a pry bar,

you want to put a wooden block

or some kind of rubber, some kind of buffer

between the metal so you don't scratch it.

Not always necessary, I just used it 'cause it's efficient.

We're almost down to the bear motor and transmission,

that's the turning point in taking apart the bike.

Once the motor and transmission out,

but you've already done all the hard stuff

and it's just kind of taking bolts off

and you don't have as much to worry about after that.

I'm just taking off the shifter arm from the transmission

that was attached to the shift lever

that we removed earlier.

The shift lever that we removed earlier

is just linkage that sends a direction to that

and then the shift drum changes this, gears in the,

inside the transmission.

The transmission itself is a four-speed,

later models, five-speed, six-speed.

Six-speed is generally an overdrive gear for highway riding.

Here what happened when removing the shift arm.

One of the Allen-head bolts that were holding the shift arm

to the drum and one of them is stripped

and so what I did is I took a similar sized

torques head socket and hammered it in

because the bolt afterwards isn't salvageable anyway

so you basically force something in

that is a similar shape but the torques head

has almost a spiked or star pattern

so it forces itself in

and then you can hopefully get the bolt removed

fairly easily.

So what I'm doing here

is I'm just popping a couple of the bolts back in

to keep the cover on the shift drum there.

Once all the hardware is removed

and we've already removed the carburetor,

any kind of sensitive equipment,

once these four bolts are removed,

you can just slide the motor out from the side.

In other bikes, there's different ways to do it

but this is what works for the Shovelhead.

I would say the engine's around 150 pounds

off the top of my head.

It's definitely not light.

I'm taking off the right side

of the rear motor mount hardware.

There's four mounting points

and you just kind of work your way around the bike

to get it all out of there.

Right now actually what I'm doing

is removing the oil lines that feed the oil pump

and return from the oil pump.

When removing the oil lines,

everything is attached by hose clamps here

which are engaged with a flat head screwdriver,

flat head worm drive.

One of the lines itself had become hard and dry

and so the best thing to do

'cause all these lines are gonna have to get replaced

in an old bike like this anyway

is just to cut it and it makes the process a lot quicker.

I'm making sure all the oil lines are disconnected

and all the hardware's removed from the motor mounts.

We're gonna go ahead and pull the motor out of the frame.

There's mounting hardware on the top

that keeps those rocker boxes attached to the motor

and everybody wants to put their flavor on their bike.

What happened here is that there is acorn nuts put on

which are basically a blind nut

that have a little crown on top.

They're not through, you can't tighten them,

they're decorative.

The problem with the acorn nuts in this scenario

is that they were too tall

and we couldn't pull the motor from the frame directly.

So one of the acorn nuts on the rocker box

had to be removed to get the motor out of the frame.

Here we're pullin' the engine right out of the frame.

This is the first time this bike's ever been

fully disassembled since it's been mine,

we're discoverin' a lot along the way

as we're taking everything apart.

The transmission itself is mounted to a plate

and the plate is mounted to the frame.

The transmission plate is fixed to the frame

in a fixed position.

The slots that the transmission's mounted to

can move back and forth, forward and aft basically,

and what that does is it give you adjustment for,

at the primary tension if necessary,

what it's really for is alignment.

Here I'm actually removing the chain from the bike

and that's just to be able to pull

the transmission out easier.

'Cause removing the chain from that sprocket,

otherwise it would get caught up in kinda, kinda tangled.

I'm using a chain breaker here.

The chain breaker drives the pin through the side

and out the other side

and so it removes one of the pins

so you can break the chain.

Basically your engine is creating whatever RPM,

whatever power that you're giving it through the throttle

which comes through the carburetor and the gas.

So that then has to be transferred through something

because otherwise, if you had it directly hooked up

to your rear wheel, your rear wheel would spin

at exactly the same rate or whatever gear ratio

you had set up, by sprocket, as the motor.

So the transmission is the go-between.

So you've got four speeds at different ratios

that translate it into smooth power to the rear wheel.

So if you didn't have a transmission,

it would literally be a single speed

and that single speed would be determined at,

by the RPM of the motor.

Something I ran into is this piece of hardware

that's actually preventing the transmission

from coming out of the frames

so it's just something to pop off really quick

to make sure you've got clean access

to get everything out of there

without having again, without having to force it.

You never want to force anything

in like dismantling motorcycle at all

because if you're forcing it, you're doing it wrong.

Now the transmission's comin' out of the frame.

Just kinda got to wiggle it around a little bit

to get clear of everything.

This is a electric start model but for this era,

what it meant is it had electric start

in addition to kick start

so it transfers electrical power into mechanical power.

But with a kickstart system, it's straight force,

like physical force.

So you use that kickstart as a lever

to physically turn over the motor with your leg.

So that's what creates the cycle in when using a kickstart.

What we're doing here is removing the sissy bar

from the fender struts.

This is an aftermarket add-on

and basically all it is,

it just mounts to the fender struts.

It's a unit that you can like mount

any kind of like, baggage.

Again, it's not something that comes standard on all bikes

but it's something that is kind of like iconic to the era.

After we get the sissy bar removed,

detach the rest of the hardware that holds the fender

to the fender struts

and right now, the way that I've done it

is I've left the rear tail light attached

and all the wiring

just 'cause whenever this goes back together,

it's just easier to plug and play all back in.

Now that we have the fender off,

we're going to remove the rear wheel.

Very basic, it's just a rod with a threaded nut at the end

that goes through it like the axle.

You take of the nut on one side

and have to drive the axle all the way through the hub

to get the wheel out.

Once you get the axle out,

you just pull the wheel out, it's super easy.

There are spacers on either side of the hub

that keep the wheel centered where it needs to be

in line with the chassis.

So those spacers are rally important,

they can't be loose or they can't be too tight,

especially on early style

or Timken-style bearings like this.

Now that we've got the rear wheel off,

I'm removing the rear brake caliper.

I'm taking off the rear brake caliper as a unit

with the brake arm and the brake line.

The rear brake caliper is the housing

that holds the brake pads.

The brake pads are around the rotor.

What happens is, the plunger that we discussed earlier

that goes into the master cylinder

transfers the pressure and then the fluid pressure

is actually what pushes the little pistons

inside the brake caliper to engage

and all it is is force

so the brake pads literally get pressed up

onto the rotor and that's what stops the bike.

Right here, I'm removing the rear passenger pegs.

These pegs in particular are some aftermarket passenger pegs

that mount directly to the frame with a clamp style system.

You'll see a million different kinds of these.

Now that we've got those removed,

I'm gonna go ahead and start removing the rear shocks.

Basically this is the rear suspension system

so when you're riding down the road,

this is what provides the comfort.

The way that I learned and the way that I came up

in this industry is just by hard work and problem solving

and that's kind of the way that I tackle every project now

is it really, it's the passion behind it

that lets me use my creativity to develop something

but it's about problem solving along the way.

It's part of the hurdles are what you have to get over

and it's all part of the fun.

Once you remove the rear shocks,

you can drop the rear swing arm

and then you can take off the rest of the fender struts.

And here we are removing the headlight on the bike.

Now I'm taking the hand controls off the handlebars.

Right there I removed the clutch lever and the line.

And now I'm removing the throttle

and the throttle cable as well.

And right there I'm removing the front break lever.

Once all that's removed,

I can take the bolts out of the handlebars

and take the handlebars off of the triple tree of the fork.

Now I'm taking the front axle out

and so we can remove the front wheel,

exactly the same process as the back

except for the fact of these pinch bolts in the fork

so you take off these pinch bolts and this plate completely

after taking the nut off of the left-hand side

and then you just tap the axle out

and the wheel comes out.

A lot of times, if you're just removing the front wheel,

depending on the setup,

you might want to remove the front fender first

before removing the front wheel,

this just happened to be easier today.

Again, same system as the back.

There's front and rear disc brakes on this bike,

just removing it from the fork leg.

Now we're down to almost the bare frame,

it's just a matter of popping off the front fender

and taking off the front fork

and the bike will be completely disassembled.

So here I am removing the front fender.

Again, when you're doing this,

you want to be careful to make sure

you don't scratch anything and careful of all the paint.

That's the main thing when taking apart a bike

is you don't want to scratch anything,

don't want to damage anything that's not gonna be replaced

and the paint is definitely something

you don't want to have to do again.

Right now I'm moving the top nuts of the fork tubes

so they can slide out of the triple tree.

One thing to be very careful of as well

when you're removing these,

it's a hardened chrome slider, it's a hydraulic system.

You don't want to break a seal

or give it a reason to break a seal anywhere.

Here I am just removing right side fork tube.

The triple tree is the clamp that holds the fork tubes

and which lead down into the fork lowers or fork legs

and that's your whole steering system right there.

This particular system, it's really common.

They're called wide glide trees.

It's denoted by the spacing between the fork tubes

and you pop the top caps off

and then you take off the pinch bolts

on the lower part of the triple tree

and just slide them out.

And now that the fork tubes are removed,

you're gonna remove the stem nut for the triple tree.

Once the nut's removed,

you're gonna drop the bottom tree out,

take the top tree off.

I don't know when the last time it was ever removed

so it had to take a couple of blows

with the deadbolt hammer.

The deadbolt hammer's nice because it has a force behind it

but it's also soft faced so it doesn't do any damage

to the part itself.

Now that we're stripped down to the bare frame,

the one thing that was left on was the swing arm

which can be removed and swapped out if need be

but generally there's no need to ever remove the swing arm

unless it's being replaced with something else.

And that's it, this is a fully deconstructed

Harley-Davidson Shovelhead and it's all laid out here

so you can see the inner workings of the motorcycle.

[heavy rhythmic techno music]

[upbeat techno music]

[Ryan] My name is Ryan Jewell.

I am a SAWTA and CW21 certified watchmaker

working in New York City.

Today we're gonna break apart these two watches.

[upbeat techno music]

This is the side where the magic happens for the watchmaker.

This is where, we're doing the majority of our work.

The thing that people really like about watchmaking

is it's kind of the incorporation of art and science.

It is a craft and there is creativity involved

but then there's also times

where there are very strict guidelines

that you have to follow.

Here are the two completely disassembled movements

side by side.

[upbeat techno music]