The good news: The How to Build a Bobber book is finally at the printer,and we should have finished copies ready to ship by July 5th. Like allour books, this one was a long hard pull, but we can finally put itbehind us. In addition to three assembly sequences that author Kevin Baas did with his high school shop class, there are chapters on things like Frames, Engines and Choosing the Best Primary, 144 pages of Bobber-Building advice from Kevin Baas.

Kevin is hard-core old skool, so the book is mostly Pans and Shovels,with a few Knuckles (and Evos) thrown in for good measure. Once again,it's amazing what people are manufacturing so that the rest of us canbuild some really cool old two-wheeled hot rods. Things like a 120-inchKnucklehead. An old design with a modern left side case and sprocket shaft, which makes it easy to mate the oversized motor with a modern primary, clutch and transmission.

Of course, if what you want is a genuine Panhead with a real four-speed,there are plenty of ways to do that as well. The aftermarket makes wish-bone and straight leg frames with narrow back ends and conservative dimensions. And eBay has plenty of listings for genuine old H-D parts, though experts in the field tell me prices are definitely on the rise.
If an old-skool Bobber is like an itch that just won't go away, this book will definitely help you scratch that itch.

The TV deal
We were on TV again recently. Specifically, on Speed TV during Mike Corbin's Ride-On show, May 16th. Being somewhat shy by nature, it's hard to watch myself on TV. The reviews, from friends at least, are good. So this is a good thing, right? Looking back at my sometimes miss-spentyouth, I gotta say: "who would've thunk it?" Back in the day when I was putting ball joints in a Chevy or a clutch in a Saab, I sure wasn't thinking about publishing books or promoting those books on TV. More likely I was thinking about the women walking through the shop, or how long until I could get a tall cool one at the local watering hole. Perhaps what's most interesting about my publishing venture is not the publishing itself but all the places it's taken me.

And one of those places is into new relationships. In this case it's a relationship with a man I've known for years, Keith Ball from Bikernet.com. We've agreed to become a sponsor on Bikernet, which means Keith will display our logo and provide a link with our web page. Bikernet will also provide information on Wolfgang Publications and Wolfgang products. Keith will also display a monthly tech article that we provide.

Projects
For summer entertainment I have the blue 250 soft-tail bike. In fact, I was entertaining myself, and anyone else nearby, the other day and had a little mishap. Seems the starter button stuck, but as the engine caught I was too busy ripping out of the parking lot to notice. I did notice when the motor went "CLUNK" and quit. If you haven't had a starter drive assembly out lately, the drive is supported by a larger bushing in the inner primary. In my case the drive was supported in this fashion for a couple of blocks. Long enough that the spinning drive spun the bushing out of the bore in the inner primary (where it belongs) and into a tight spot between the clutch hub and the inner primary (where it doesn't). The bad news includes the embarrassing call to Mary to come and pick me up, and the fear that I'd done something really BAD and really EXPENSIVE. The story does include good news, however. First, a couple of bikers stopped to see if they could help. Second, I didn't break anything expensive. After a complete disassembly I cleaned everything up, installed a new bushing in the inner primary (with green Loctite), some new seals and reassembled the whole shebang. No new starter or drive assembly and no new transmission shaft or clutch hub. What's that old line: it's better to be lucky than good?