Can We Bring This Panhead Back to Life?

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]What's up y'all? It's Jake and Mitch from Prism Supply and uh here we are with this 1950 well it's a 1950 drive line and 1958 chassis uh this beautiful pan head and our goal is to get this bike running today. Going to start it back up.

[00:00:16]He's so serious today. Oh boy. Grab some match here.

[00:00:22]Oops. Can't beat that timeline. This is a really really cool bike. I actually got this from um sweetest lady ever up in I believe is Iowa. Her her name is Ruth. She came down and delivered the bike and we got to spend some time together. It was was really sweet and she dropped off this book and it has every single receipt that she's ever spent on the bike as well as uh printed off photos and we got a full photo album. This is kind of an interesting bike because it's got a it's got an early pan head tank on this side which is tank shift but again it's a 50 drive line the rest 58 chassis then some early tank. So, it's a custom stock bike.

[00:00:59]>> It's a 50s period bike.

[00:01:01]>> Yeah. This is just a really cool experience. That's one of my favorite things about buying these bikes is getting to meet these people and um and them believing in us to to get these things running again and back on the road. We we went through and ordered everything or bought everything that we think we're going to need to do the carb conversion as well as throttle cable.

[00:01:21]That's kind of a big one. We want to go back to stock style. We'll cover that in a bit. Um, so I'm a little nervous that we don't have all the components. First things first, charge our battery. See if it takes a charge. If it doesn't, we have another one just in case. Um, then probably seat tank cuz there's a lot of stuff we got to do underneath that tank and that's going to take a minute to get off. So, this bike is still 6V. 6 volts usually hold the charge pretty well.

[00:01:47]Yeah, the batteries seem to last a while longer for whatever reason. Now, I got the battery on charge. We're going to see if it holds charge at least.

[00:01:55]>> Got it hooked up to the charger. Um, in the meantime, we're going to we're going to pull off the dash and then work on pulling off uh the tanks and we're going to try to leave the seat on and just take the whole tost off. It's mounted to a tost and um we may I think we can do that and then from there we'll be able to see what's going on with the intake setup and what we need to change there.

[00:02:21]>> Wrong way. Easy guy.

[00:02:26]Where did that come from? The way that the fuel is connected between the two, it's actually two separate tanks. So, the way that the fuel is connected is there's a hard line that runs from the bottom of uh the right side tank to the left side tank and vice versa. So, we got to pull that off as well as the three mounting bolts and the hard line going to the carb. Oh boy, that was done of me.

[00:02:47]There's gas in there.

[00:02:50]Uh, grab something quickly, Mitch. So, before you do any of that, you get your bucket. You make sure you drain your drain the fuel out of there.

[00:02:59]>> Well, this side's empty until we get this. Pull this bung out.

[00:03:03]>> Well, we can take this side off. Oh, that looks like some pee with a lot of vitamins in it or a lot of dehydration.

[00:03:10]One of the two.

[00:03:11]>> It's kind of making me have to pee.

[00:03:13]>> What are we working on?

[00:03:17]>> I can't believe you just did that. He's so serious today.

[00:03:22]>> A little bit.

[00:03:23]>> It's called being focused.

[00:03:26]>> Right off the get. Gross. There's a a rubber washer in here, like a a gasket deal that seals this, and it looks like it's in very, very rough shape, cuz you can see it coming out this way. Um, the other thing is I'm a little nervous that they cut this stock line shorter to put the rubber line on it.

[00:03:47]My hope is that this is still long enough and can be bent to go directly to the strainer on the linker carb, but I'm not sure that's going to be the case.

[00:03:55]Worst case, we can still run a rubber line to the linker.

[00:03:57]>> I think that'll >> thread right to it.

[00:03:59]>> Yeah.

[00:04:00]>> But I mean, if if this was stock, it would have had that same >> Yeah. At some point, it's been replaced.

[00:04:05]>> Yeah.

[00:04:06]>> But so is the petcock. Really?

[00:04:07]>> Yeah.

[00:04:08]>> So, we don't know what's replaced, >> what's not, but I think the tanks can come off now.

[00:04:15]It's pretty cool. Um, I'm going to go set this in the bathtub.

[00:04:21]Come into my bathroom. Uh, since we have the time, I'm just It's really pretty clean in here, but since we have the time, I'm going to get flush out all the old gas out of it. Um, I'm probably just going to put a little Dawn dish soap in here and let it sit. I'll probably even spray like a little bit of WD40 just to keep it from flash resting after we get the water out of it.

[00:04:41]Big old seat. So, when we got this bike, it had an external snap style throttle on it, but we had this grip. Um, right now the grip's just slid on and there's no internals throttle cable inside. So, we're going to have to pull that off and reroute the throttle cable. We were concerned that the throttle cable housing, like the sleeve, um, wasn't even in here. And then you have to reroute it all through the bars.

[00:05:06]It's locked in in the bars right here.

[00:05:08]just like a little top hat and then set screw locks in the in the throttle cable outer cable. Throttle outer cable. But anyway, all that's there and so we we hope we can just like push the inner cable through and route it through to here which will then go to the linker carb.

[00:05:25]>> Yeah, but that's a huge win.

[00:05:26]>> Basically, good news.

[00:05:28]>> Huge huge win.

[00:05:29]>> I'll struggle trying to get the cable routed in here rather than try to struggle getting the housing through everything.

[00:05:36]>> Mhm. Man, Mitch, look at this wiring.

[00:05:38]>> I know. That's why I said the wiring looks good.

[00:05:40]>> It's immaculate. Even the frame, like none of this is cut. It's beautiful. I don't know if it's original. It's so good.

[00:05:48]Got it. I got her. Look how new it is.

[00:05:52]Probably bought it new to get it working and never got it working. It's definitely been ran.

[00:05:57]The manifold needs to come off. So, we have a linker manifold, but at some point they switch to from plumber fittings on the manifold to O-ring fittings, and this O-rings can be tricky sometimes. And there's not a lot of room, and the O-rings are tight. So, I'm just trying to get it off right now. And everything's kind of dry rot, so it's better than it should be. By no means are we uh engine specialists here, so we're doing the old eyeball measurement here.

[00:06:24]>> Sure there's a right spec on this. And you're supposed to loosen your heads up and get everything right. and blah blah blah. Raw cable carburetor first probably.

[00:06:33]>> Do we have a fil cover? The original cover. Our our plan of attack here is put the clamps on first. We're going to lube the O-rings so that we can slide them over the intake and then eventually slide them back. So, the head and the intake manifold has like a little lip on it and that's where the O-ring sits.

[00:06:51]We've been looking for these parts and Jake found them in a parts cave. I didn't think we had him cuz I didn't see him forever, but Jake found it all. So, there's a little tiny hole down in there that the cable needs to go through to pop out there. So, I'm hoping I can hit it. Luckily, the cable's pretty stiff, so I can uh try to thread the needle, per se.

[00:07:15]So, what I was doing over there is somebody had cut it with a pair of side cutters, so it was like at an angle and sharp. I'm just trying to blunt the end so it doesn't catch on the inner side of the cable because when I'm going in it's catching on some of the something. I'm just trying to blunt the end and make it round so it kind of smoothly goes through. Still much easier than threading it through the handlebars with the sheathing and everything like that.

[00:07:37]We're about an inch and a half from where it needs to be and we're real close to where it needs to be down here.

[00:07:42]So it might not be long enough. We won't really know to get the car all set up, but it's close. I'm worried somebody cut it off the carb originally.

[00:07:51]And then we have to use a different one.

[00:07:57]Little update for you. Uh Mitch got the throttle cable inner wire uh routed through the outer sleeve and uh now we're working on putting the linker on.

[00:08:08]The what we're running into is the stock choke arm. It mounts to this piece and activates the choke. Then there's a lever on this side underneath the gas tank that you can reach. stock stock setup. Um, but it's really kind of finicky getting that rod in there and we had a couple of them, but they're already bent and hacked up. So, we're just trying to fix it and get the choke working as it should.

[00:08:31]>> Um, right now the the choke is kind of closed. So, what you do to open it up or you open it up like that, this is on the motor mount. This is on the intake. And this connects it to the left hand side of the bike. And then there's your thumb choke lever here. And then it just actuates your choke over here. But that wasn't that simple. And to get this to work correctly, everything has to be perfect. We had the same issue with a Brian's bike is trying to get this arm just function normally. I always struggle with them cuz even see there's a little kink in there, but then if you go just bend it, the kink comes out.

[00:09:10]It's just like it's too thin of a bar to do what it needs to do.

[00:09:16]First of all, this is an earlier tank.

[00:09:17]Uh, this would be 48 dead 51. Yeah. Um, well, 48 to 50, I believe, with these badges.

[00:09:27]Anyway, this early, this is an early panthead tank. It shouldn't have came with that 58 chassis. Um, but it looks like they wanted tank shift, which is which is cool. But typically, this arm is is bent further this way against the shift gate. So that way when you bring it back, like if you're in gear, third, fourth, or whatever, you can just go straight back and go to neutral. Here's a perfect example uh where we want this shift arm to be bent. Right now, it's in the resting position against this far edge of the shift gate. But the way it's bent right now, it's too far that way. So if you go back, it goes all the way to first. I want to rebend this arm so it's to the outside of the shift gate. It defaults to this this position right here.

[00:10:23]>> So now when you pull it back, goes straight to neutral. Hits that stop. If you need to go to first, you push over and then back. You're in first. Second.

[00:10:32]Pulled that way. Second. That way.

[00:10:34]Third. Fourth.

[00:10:36]>> I think Mitch did it. I did it. Choke works. I believed in you, Mitch.

[00:10:40]Actually, it feels really good now, though. I'm going to go through the brake system. Something feels off here.

[00:10:45]So, just kind of figure out what's going on. I just pulled the cap off and the master cylinder is empty. There's no fluid in it. Um, it looks a little gunky in there. It's not terrible. Hopefully, this just feels like this because there's no fluid in it. We'll see. Uh, I just pulled it pulled the plunger out of the master cylinder and it's rusty. I also removed this boot so I can see directly the master cylinder and it looks like it's pretty locked up. So, here we go. If you watched our last video, let's see if we learned anything.

[00:11:11]Seriously, this is like such a dumb little thing. It all just came through at once. Uh hopefully this rebuild goes faster. The one that we did with the uh late70 shovel head, not so much. All right, for the master cylinder, there's a little washer and snap ring that goes in the top, but then I couldn't get the piston out. And so I put a little air here and it just popped right out like that. So now I can pull the piston out and then clean everything out inside. So this guy, this tool right here is a hone. It's an expandable hone, adjustable hone. And um we ordered this forever ago when we were working on we made a custom master cylinder for our Evo chopper build. And so we needed that after we machined it, but it worked perfectly for me to clean the rust out of this hole. So the plunger that was in here was pushed all the way back and then it was just filled with rust on the surface. So all I did was just kind of run this in here like this in and out and it cleaned it up.

[00:12:07]Look at that.

[00:12:09]So fresh and so clean. Clean.

[00:12:13]Oh, I did not know. I was opening this up expecting to see a bolt right here, but they're pinned on with like a little spring, which is kind of cool, but I wonder if it rattles. Feels like that rattles a lot. Needs a washer or something in there. It is now 2:00. We got 3 hours left in the day. How you feeling?

[00:12:34]>> Okay. I'm glad it's coming along smoothly. I still not sure about being finished by the end of the day cuz I >> think we'll be cutting it close.

[00:12:42]>> Yeah.

[00:12:42]>> But we haven't ran into any issues of >> nothing major. Everything's kind of going smoothlyish.

[00:12:47]>> Yep. We're doing everything the way it should be doing, which I like. While Mitch is buttoning up the front master cylinder, brake setup, foot control deal, uh rear, >> the rear master cylinder, foot control deal. Uh I'm going to top it off with oil. One less thing we got to worry about later. Roughly 3/4s in. Um that's typically what they like, which something I never understood is if you look at the dipsticks here, again, this is a stock dipstick.

[00:13:16]says danger is way down there. Well, yeah, that's like no oil in the tank at all. And then if it's at you want to refill to that line, that is like way way way too low. What we always do, just eye it up to make sure that the oil line, I'd say, is like right here below your return.

[00:13:36]Oops.

[00:13:42]Oops.

[00:13:52]as he hands me the gas tank.

[00:13:56]Sorry, >> man. I wonder how rough all this is in there. That's a big project.

[00:14:05]I'm hoping we can just I'm hoping we can take this off, flush it through.

[00:14:08]>> Yeah. And just everything everything comes Everything comes out the nipple.

[00:14:11]See, it's >> still flowing over on this side.

[00:14:16]I'm blowing in here. It should be going out there just as easy. Tell me if it works, Jake.

[00:14:20]>> Yep.

[00:14:23]>> It works.

[00:14:26]>> Okay, we're spinning.

[00:14:30]>> Nothing.

[00:14:30]>> Nothing. Wheels coming off. Wonder if the piston seized. There's a piston in here that pushes the the pads out against the drum. And it looks like it's seized up cuz water or fluid squirts, but the wheel will never stop turning, which means something inside of the drum is seized up, which means we need to take the wheel off, which is a lot of work. That's supposed to be round. What is that? The adjuster spacer. I don't know why it's like that.

[00:15:08]When I go like this, they should compress, but they don't.

[00:15:17]So, I found the problem. It was this.

[00:15:20]Normally, you can like press on this and it'll move in and out pretty freely, but as you can see, it's full of sand. The brake fluid has turned to Cheetos, dust for the most part. So, either this needs to be replaced or majorly rebuilt. So, I'm going to go and replace and see if we have another one floating around. At some point, they cut the stock fuel line and put this rubber piece to connect it to that SNS that was on it. We don't have another one, unfortunately. What we're going to do is put the rubber piece in the middle of this.

[00:15:55]>> I like that idea the best, >> but do we have the ends that we need to connect to the carb?

[00:16:02]Oh, hey.

[00:16:04]Fancy seeing you here.

[00:16:07]>> We're going to put soft line in the middle. So, then I need another hard fitting connection on the other side.

[00:16:13]So, I found an O-ring. I'm not sure it's going to work. We'll see once we get it on the bike. That's really the only way to be able to tell, but I think it'll seal. I use this strap to compress everything because every time I do one of these to get this spring from here to here, there's some trick and I don't know it and I struggle every time. But I got it. Here we are. Now I got to put everything back together.

[00:16:39]So, what we've been doing is we put the tanks on finally. We kind of modified the fuel line to work. Eventually, we'll replace that. And uh we topped off all the fluids, put the seat on, put the windshield on, and now we're going to try to start it. There's no gas leak, so that's a good thing. There's gas in there, oil in there. We'll see how it goes. I almost fell.

[00:17:03]Before I even turn the ignition on, I'm going to make sure I can get fuel sucked up through the car with the choke on.

[00:17:18]Oh yeah, I already see fuel.

[00:17:25]There we go.

[00:17:53]We'll see if she runs.

[00:17:56]Don't slip on the oil.

[00:18:15]Uh, this linkage needs a little adjustment, but we kind of knew that Yeah.