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Mine is dialed in. Straight up is 180 like it should be. Chris Connors (on the directory page) walked me through calibrating my gauge. It’s a process of bending a part. I did this quite some time ago, so I do know that my gauge is pretty accurate.

Absolutely wonderful, your father looks extremely pleased and Birdie is gorgeous. Well done!

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Thanks, Don. It was a good day.

I did finally get to go for a drive this evening with my wife. She’s a major reason the car is done. We’ve always been a team and no one has been more supportive through this process.

We drove for about 30 minutes at an average of about 50mph with outside temp of 88 degrees and Birdie did great and hung in right at 180. Then, we drove home after a stop for ice cream!

I also wanted to revisit my running boards. There was a lot of discussion a while back since new rubber mats are not available for the 138CD. I decided to go with spray bed liner and I am REALLY happy with that decision. It was $500 and they look great!

One more item. I HIGHLY recommend the turn signal kit from Electro-Tech, inc.. They work great and were very easy to install. They include Hazard light functionality and even have an auto-cancel feature. It’s just a great set up. You can use either a column mounted lever/switch or any momentary switch mounted wherever you want it if you want to keep it concealed. I went with the column lever.

Let me know if you have any questions. I don’t always plug products, but this one deserves it.

Yesterday, I heard a couple of stories that I’d never heard before regarding Birdie. My Uncle John (on the right in the picture, talking to my Dad), told us about how he used to ride “wedged in the middle” of the front seat between my mom and dad. He was about 14 at the time, so that had to be a tight fit. It was tight enough that he had to do the shifting! He said, Mom was pretty small and that he and Dad were quite a bit “narrower” back then.




Also, my Aunt Marion (on the far right in this picture) is my dad’s youngest sibling. She mentioned how she and the other used to fight over who got to ride in the jump seats. She would have been about 12 then.

That’s a great story! When I was still too young to ride behind my father on his Harley-Davidson, I sat in front and shifted for him as it was the earlier type motorcycle with the tank-mounted shifter, aka suicide clutch.

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