Monday...

I'm working ridiculous hours, am trying to get some stuff sorted out, am waiting on stuff to finish putting the Shovel back together (long story) and am working on setting up a shop...that combined with some kind of inner ear infection that's messing with my balance and giving me vertigo. As an old timer told me once though, "I can't complain...and even if I could, no one would give a shit."

With that being said, I'll go on to a random thought and some cutaways of a Shovelhead versus a Panhead...and yes, that's a generator Shovel, not a PanShovel like some of you retards want to call the '66-'69 models.

Here is what I wonder. The head design on a Shovelhead is more modern in approach, but a reason that I can't understand, they ditched the simplicity of the rockers being open for adjustment without completely removing the rocker box itself, which is necessary on the Shovelheads. I understand the idea of making the rocker box separate from the head itself and that's something that they maintained on the Evo, but with the Evo they went back to allowing access to the rockers by removing the top of the rocker box. With Shovelheads, the rocker is all hidden and a pain in the ass to work on since it's shaft-mounted inside a half-enclosed box. From a mechanical point-of-view, it would make sense to have a Panhead style setup, as you could check valve lash at the rocker/valve spring contact point instead of the common "zero lash" method or through the seemingly retarded "back it off and then turn it six flats." Yes, it's nice to have a motor that any Joe Blow can work on without specialty tools or the knowledge of how to set valve lash in a performance engine, but still...that seems kind of elementary.

Okay, I love Shovelheads and have two of them, but I just wanted to put that thought out there since I have no pictures or progress of my own to contribute.