Racing 45" Flathead exposed. Notice a few things; the bottoms of the tappets are flat, this is because the tappet bores are not parallel to the cylinders. The bores angle slightly inward. This is to make the combustion chamber smaller and thus raise the compression ratio. As a result, the tappets had to be flat on the bottom and ground at an angle to the cam, otherwise you would have needed a tapered roller on the tappet. The valves are huge, by flathead standards. Racing flatheads were a balancing act between compression and airflow, generally to flow a lot of air you needed good clearance volume around the valves, good clearance volume resulted in lower compression and less power. Notice the huge chokeless Linkert carb. To start the engine you had to cover the carb with your hand to suck enough gas up to choke the engine, hopefully it would not backfire and engulf your hand in a ball of flame. Yes, it happened to me, more than once. Eventually I made a choke plate that bolted to the front of the carb, thus also allowing an air cleaner to be installed. The carb was one and one half inches in diameter, fully twice the size of a regular G model 45. Remember, this is only 45 cubic inches and 750cc, at the time 74 cubic inch motors were using carbs that big. Also notice the engine sprocket, as I seem to recall it had 33 teeth, a stock 45 had just 19. The Wico magneto had a rotating distributor, making it a true single fire ignition system with no electronic gizmos needed. Take a look at the four cam design, shared with the earlier VLs and with the later K, XL and XR engine. The cams were directly under the valves allowing for direct valve actuation, just like an overhead cam engine, except, of course, the valves were on the side. On overhead valve engines (XL and XR) the cam is directly under the rocker arm, allowing for better valve train geometry than the single cam big twin design (also one of the reasons that your Sportster, generally speaking, can walk all over a big twin at a stoplight drag.) What you won't see here are the ball bearings that the four cams usually road in on a WR engine or the drilled connecting rods. This engine was detuned a little for street use and also had a generator drive gear installed. Speaking of street tune, this engine would do better than 85 mph, most 45s were lucky to see 60 or 65 mph. And finally the deeply finned aluminum heads, the stock 45 has cast iron heads with fins about half as long. Just enough performance to make sure Harley kicked Indian's ass on the dirt ovals.

These photos available in several sizes, enlarged and framed they make nice wall hangings, the 16” by 20” is especially impressive.

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