Wednesday, August 3, 2011

AEE's Big Twin Lives...

...well, sort of.

I thought I had read somewhere that it still existed.

Blog reader Stu, sent an email to let me know it's on freewh33ler.blogspot.com explaining that it's for sale on ebay right now. Item#170675591779. Note the outboard wheel is just placed here for the photo since it is both unbolted and inside out.


The replaced fork and front wheel assembly totally sucks and betrays Ed Newton's original elegant design. It originally showcased a narrow AEE Springer (which is how it looked the best). When AEE repainted it to this color scheme, they replaced the springer with a rigid girder style fork (not the current forks). You'd think that if anything would have been pirated, it would have been the engines.


Someone had the brilliant idea (NOT!), to modified the frame to accept a blower.


Besides the fact that they shouldn't have modified a classic show piece, the blower mod kind of ruins the effort of the reversed heads of the left side. The original intention was for the pipes and carbs to be a symmetrical mirror image of each side. The listing mistakenly states that machining of the flopped heads was done by Harley, it was actually performed by AEE's own machine shop. Good God, what happened to it's seats?!!


Note that it was licensed and tagged up to June 1980, meaning it was likely driven on the streets.


My vote would be to put it back to it's first incarnation's paint and forks.

I guess it's better that it has survived in this shape than not at all. Now all that is needed is for a rare individual who has the means and desire to rescue and restore it to it's former glory.

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