Buffalo's Road King Rebuild - Spring 2011

OK, so following the survival of being rear ended by me a couple of summers ago in Arkansas, then a liver transplant, while healing up from the transplant, it seemed like a perfect time to repair the Road King from the effects of a close encounter of a Bobbi type.

So Buffalo stripped the sheet metal and fiberglass of the bike first. One of the saddle bags was pretty much split in half from the rear and his fender was toast. So we took a trip over to Granny's Cycle in Warren, OH to try to hunt some parts. Stitch, owner of Granny's, turned us on to a swap meet vendor who had a used bag and fender and all the parts were taken to Wizard for a custom paint job.

While waiting on paint, Buffalo went for new brake rotors by Brembo, a new tail light and license plate bracket, and took on a major detailing job while the bike was stripped down.

When we put the tank back on we realized that the quick disconnects on the braided stainless steel line wasn't sealing properly ... after we filled the freshly painted gas tank! So we wound up running over to Summit Racing to pick up some braided gas line and just doing away with the coupling. Buffalo had drilled out all of the rivets on the tour pack in prep for the paint job. Now, you think there aren't that many rivets on one of those things, think again! So when he got it back, he went in search of very small hardware to re-assemble the thing. And there is alot of work in re-assembling a tour pack! I helped with it and it definitely required two sets of hands to get it together.

So he completed assembly about five months following his liver transplant and, disregarding doctor's orders, took his first ride on her some time in May. But before the ride, Buffalo wanted some photos taken of her in all it's glory. And when we were done and ready to take the ride, I pulled to the end of the driveway and waited...and waited...and, well, turns out we had staged the Road King in one of the many wet spots on the front lawn and he was literally stuck! We buried his back wheel up to the rear fender in mud
before I finally pushed him out, getting covered in mud myself in the process!