When I say “engine builder” referring to Lock, I really, really mean engine fabricator. As in, Lock starting with a couple of cylinders intended for an aircraft engine and adapting them to the old classic V-twin architecture. That only came about by designing and fabricating just about everything else you could imagine inside-and-out of your beloved Harley motor. In other words, I think I could safely say that no Harley parts were harmed during the making of Icarus. Building an engine from the ground up around two aircraft engine cylinders will do that.

 

  Continental Motors Corporation (now Continental Motors Inc.), famous for light aircraft engines, was the inadvertently guilty party that caused all this motorcycle/aircraft engine hub-bub in the first place for Lock. Adapting a pair of one-piece cylinders and heads from Continental’s 0-200 flat-four air-cooled engine that powered many light aircraft like the iconic Piper PA-18 Super Cub that any person reading this has seen even if they didn’t know what it was. Adapting these cylinder/heads to a Harley engine block was four extra cylinder studs away from possibly making this a relatively easy job. Luck was with Lock as he had Delkron Manufacturing manufacture a set of one-off cases to his specs so that he could do the machining and adapting to maintain the beloved Harley 45-degree cylinder configuration.

 

   There is always the little problem of what to actually put inside those Delkron cases and it’s not some lightly modified version of an Evo crank and flywheels or anything like that. Nope, nope, nope. A brain trust combination of crank and flywheel freaks, Truett and Osborn Cycle, along with piston and rod maker to the stars, Carrillo, coughed up a combo of one-off parts to work around Lock’s little parts problem. The 4.125” bore x 3.50” stroke engine comes out displacing roughly 86 cubes according to my amateur arithmetic calculations. Hey, it might be 87 or maybe I’m all wrong, but who’s counting?   

Anyway, Lock got his correct mechanical guts inside the block with the cylinders now attached and things were looking pretty good. But, there were a million and one details that needed to be done to accomplish this, but I’m not gonna bore you with all the details.

 

   Unlike Harley cylinders with their in-the-V intake system, the Continental bits each had to have their own custom intake manifold and carb. Lock whipped up the manifolds for a pair of jet-less Lectron carbs like the ones Kenny Roberts used to endorse when he was still just a kid (and a champion) in ads in the back of motorcycle mags. I don’t have the tiniest bit of experience with them other than they always sounded like the greatest thing since sliced bread in the ad copy. But, getting back to those same-same cylinders, Lock had to come up with a cam with a couple of reverse lobes for the forward cylinder. Camshaft guru, Spiro Jannings, of Redline Racing Cams in San Jose, California, came through for Lock on this vital piece and all that was left was everything else from valve train to ignition to tuning to finish before it became Job 1 done.

 

   Acme Choppers in Meredith, New Hampshire, and Lock worked together on a clean and simple stainless steel rigid frame to house the new engine. No extreme rake, no over-the-top stretch, no nothing that would get in the way of Lock being able to easily scoot around the twisty Connecticut back roads. There’s not a lot of frame tubing or gusseting, but Lock says the bike handles nice and the video backs it up. Up front a set of cleaned-up narrow glide forks leads the way down those roads and looks good doing it.

 

   I should have known better, but at first glance I just assumed those were a set of store-bought wheels as trying to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, seems like it might be too much on the agenda. I should have known better. Lock machined up his own hubs and laced them to a set of aluminum alloy rims that allowed a decent set of decent-sized tires to be mounted fore and aft. The brakeless front wheel is luckily augmented by a Performance Machine caliper and what appears to be a Harley rotor out back. Obviously braking is not high on Lock’s list, but the hubs do look great even with the totally unexpected final belt drive. Makes sense I guess and somehow it doesn’t look out of place. I had to notice it.

 

   It’s not called Eastern Fabrications for nothing as Lock fabbed up bars, foot and hand controls (find the hand shifter), fender struts, oil tank, taillight, seat, suspension system for the seat and many, many more things I couldn’t begin to think of.

   But, there’s an elephant in the room that I haven’t mentioned yet, and it’s been one of those things that divides the crew of Barnett’s Magazine Online to either love or hate with no gray area. You know what I’m referring to? Yup, it’s that large, round, perfectly-handmade, shiny aluminum orb sitting on the stainless top tube that serves as Icarus’ fuel tank. I’ll admit that was the very first I saw on this bike was the tank and not the one-of-one engine. It’s an eye-catcher if there ever was one just sitting there in somewhat total incongruity to what else is going on or is it? It’s grown on me a lot to the point where I kinda like it. I know Lock does or it wouldn’t be there under any condition and that’s okay by me. He’s got his vision, he built it and he stuck with it so it must be okay to the person who really counts ─ Lock himself.

 

   You know, that about sums up the whole build. Lock Baker built this for himself because he could.  On his web site (http://www.easternfabrications.com/) Lock says,” I pride myself on not building the same motorcycle twice” and that’s usually pretty hard for a lot of builders to do. But, with the extreme amount of time, work, and brain usage that this build required, I don’t think Lock will have too hard a time duplicating this aircraft/motorcycle hybrid anytime soon. Now that I think of it, he probably had that planned out ahead too. Lock Baker ─ always one step ahead, but you never know where he’s headed.