The Knucklehead: A Tribute
THE KNUCKLEHEAD: A TRIBUTE
The Twin Cam 88's great-great-great-grandfather
WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS heroism in two acts. Act One begins in 1931. Cutting Charles Dickens in half, it was the worst of times, period. By the end of World War I, the motorcycle had become sport, something people didn't need to have, so during the Roaring Twenties, sales boomed.
When the world's economies collapsed in the Thirties, so did the sport of motorcycling. By 1931, Excelsior was dead, killed by its parent company, which survived making bicycles. The workers at Indian began looting the plant, literally, as there was no need to preserve the machinery for making motorcycles nobody was buying.
In Milwaukee, perhaps the only reason the HarleyDavidson workers weren't acting similarly was that the PHOTO © HARLEY-DAVIDSON ARCHIVES bOSSCS, William Harley and his boyhood pals the Davidson brothers, had taken the biggest pay cuts while putting in the longest hours.
The founders knew they had the best dealer network, and that they were the best when it came to building the product and delivering value for money. What they didn't have was the most exciting motorcycles.
So, in 1931, when things looked like they couldn't get worse, the founders voted to invest what money they had in the best motorcycle that could be made.
As the cliche predicts, things did get worse, as in sales slumped even more while the government did the wrongest possible thing-blocking imports so other countries got even and killed Harley's exports, for instance. But the founders didn't flinch...well, they did consider abandoning the project several times, but they kept their courage and their faith.
The project was a little Big Twin, so to speak. It retained (a hint of the future here) H-D's classic 45-degree fore-andaft V-Twin layout, and kept the American-classic 61-cubicinch (lOOOcc) displacement, but while the dull Harleys were flatheads, this new project had overhead valves.
This wasn't radical. You could call it state of the art, in fact, assuming you knew that the term really means What Everybody Is Doing, rather than the cutting edge or the stretched envelope. Harley-Davidson did have experience with ohv, in earlier racing Twins and Singles, and a tour of any aircraft museum will show that what the new engine really did was combine the classic V-Twin configuration with a slice of air-cooled radial aircraft engine.
They put the engine and a four-speed gearbox in a new and stronger frame and somehow-the credit for this has never been given to any one person and it would be interesting to know just who did the design-the fenders, tanks and all the components came out simply terrific.
The proportions were perfect. The lines and clearances and paint, Art Deco-style as seen on the new streamlined locomotives, were exactly right.
Never mind that the new machine was supposed to arrive in 1935 but didn't because there were bugs, or that the factory warned dealers not to place too many orders too quick in case the production line had to be stopped to make running changes...
Suffice it here to say that when the dealers saw the 1936 Model E, known as the Knucklehead instantly, one shop owner from Texas was so delighted he drew his six-shooter and emptied it at the ballroom's crystal chandelier. We can bet other dealers felt the same way, but had for some reason not tucked their Colts into their tuxedos.
Act Two began about the time the chandelier hit the floor. The founders knew they had a classic, but that it wasn't perfect. The E-model 61 became the F-model, enlarged to 74 inches (1200cc), also a classic displacement. An alloy cylinder head, dubbed the Panhead, replaced the cast-iron Knucklehead top end in 1948, then the lower end was improved, so the Panhead could be replaced by the better-breathing Shovelhead in 1966, leading to the all-alloy V2 of 1984, the Evolution engine that kept the Big Twin in business and in compliance and regained H-D's international reputation, until, well, here we are.
And it all was made possible because four men with a lot to lose bet on their product. And their customers.
Allan Girdler
