Introducing: The Leafspring-Forked Knucklehead
W&W CYCLES has always been about resurrecting and riding as fast as possible ancient Harley-Davidson machinery. A few of the dudes here have owned and ridden springer forks of all types. We even tried using ancient Indian springers on a 74 frame. Which proved to be less than satisfactory, as far as ride stability was concerned. The Harley and Indian frame geometries just don’t match up. So we decided to have our own forks exclusively built, combining interesting looks with state of the art geometry. The maker is situated in Italy; when they aren’t making our forks those guys are building replica frames for classic European bikes, which means they know what they’re doing.
The first prototype of the forks was tested under severe conditions. We had it on our rigid framed "Wrecking Crew" (which is a kind of W&W SpecOps) Shovelhead, and ran it in icy Finland, on a Canadian ice road and on Florida’s sandy beaches (big deal!).
The next step was to build a chopper using as many of the way cool products that live in our catalog and warehouse. Apart from the forks we used a 7Metal West fender and oil tank. The frame is OEM; this is the only way to get a legal vintage registration in Europe. Engine used is a S&S Knucklehead.
Most of the remainig parts come from small or medium sized fabricators in Europe, Japan, or the U.S. of A.: Baker N1 4-Speed K-Tech Handcontrols, Fork Air cleaner and exhaust guards, our own chain guard, race gas tanks, oil cooler/filter and experimental mid controls were used by our head wrencher, Paul.
Based on the experiences made with the two bikes, the production of the "Cannonball" springer was launched.
By now the forks have a German TÜV certificate, which makes us offer them with confidence and pride to riders who are looking for something different.
