Brilliance in a one stall garage

[andyvh1959]

Perhaps some of you know of Allen Millyard's fantastic motorcycle builds. If not even just to view this video gives a glimpse of his genius, his truly hands on fabrication skills, his understanding of engineering, materials, machining, seemingly everything. All done in a one stall garage.

I have seen many of his bikes, on display at the Barber Museum in Birmingham AL. On many of his builds you can see just enough of his actual hand machining (hacksaws and files) to see where he spliced the crankcases together.

 

[joey1320]

Great looking shop.

 

[Stuart in MN]

"And it fit just perfect." I've followed his work in the bike magazines for 20 years, so I was glad when he started putting out videos. He's such a mild mannered, unassuming guy, and then he cranks out those amazing bikes.

 

[andyvh1959]

I like the part,"here are all my wrenches" looking at the wall above his workbench is what 20 wrenches? Knowing vintage Brit stuff means a bunch were likely Whitworth too yet. His crankcase build for the 5 liter V-twin Flying Millyard, his camshafts for the Kawasaki V12, his admitting that he cut the crankcases with a hand held hacksaw, amazing. On his video about making the V12 camshafts he even admits his mistakes and starts over, cutting the stock cams apart with an electric 4" hand grinder outside his shop. In his shop he opens a drawer to show a collection of hand files.

Made me think of my dad. He was trained as a journeyman mechanic in Holland back in the 40's. I recall him saying part of his training was to take a block of steel, and with hand files only, produce a square, flat, all sides parallel piece of machined steel to a specific micro-finish on all sides.

Millyard is a true fabricator/builder/rider, not like those parts catalog welder builders at OCC that maybe fabricate a fuel tank or handlebar on a useless piece of **** jewelry. Remember the Chrysler Tomahawk V10 Viper? Ever see a video of it being ridden? Probably not cause I've heard it didn't work. Allen built his own Viper V10 motorcycle, from scrath, built his own front forks from hydraulic cylinder components from a JCB excavator, and has nearly 10,000 miles on it, and ridden it to 189 mph! His one offs are MEANT to be ridden and he is a rider of 10's of thousand miles per year.

 

[firebirdparts]

he is the master of "careful filing" for sure.