Not common.

[hoodeng]

Not a lot of V4 Indians around.

[hoodeng]

It's a beautiful thing!

[Geoff2]

Second pic looks like heads are Knuckle head Harley, two fronts used.

I put a 38 knuckle head engine into a Norton Feartherbed frame, had twin 35mm Dellorto carbs.

[hoodeng]

Yes, part of a private collection.
I did similar with a Pan, not too hard to do, bit of weld cut and shut.
In the eighties i did a number of two front head Shovels,, I got Jim Lienweber to grind the cams for me,,, when i asked him to do a couple of two rear head cams he got back to me and asked if i was sure i hadn't mixed things up, I told him, no, it was two rear head cams and then told him that i had a number of rear heads left over after the front head projects. They went just as good as the front head engines, they were all 98"'s.

This is a 127"

[Kingbee]

Very cool! What’s the advantage of using two front or rear heads?

[PackardV8]

Very cool! What’s the advantage of using two front or rear heads?

IIRC, ease of using two carburetors. The stock H-D angles both intake ports toward the center, using a Y-manifold to mount a single carb. Two front or two rear heads will have parallel intake ports, easier to fit two carbs.

[Kingbee]

Very cool! What’s the advantage of using two front or rear heads?

IIRC, ease of using two carburetors. The stock H-D angles both intake ports toward the center, using a Y-manifold to mount a single carb. Two front or two rear heads will have parallel intake ports, easier to fit two carbs.

That makes sense and now that you mention it many of the XR750 flat trackers used that head set-up.

[hoodeng]

As Jack said, straightening up the inlet tracts was the primary goal, which worked on some engines not all. Those shovel combos revved hard and quick, were they really better than a well set up single? i'm not convinced of that. Mind you, these were in the days before chasis dyno's became common.

A trip to the strip would tell you if the work was worthwhile, street racing really was the realm of the guy that would hold it on the pin the longest.
Recently a guy that has kept one of these old twin carb engines we built back then has got interested in LSR so we are actually getting to test this thing on the dyno.
That later Evo engine twin carb ended up with a rather tortuous inlet tract, what it went like i never found out,,the owner got me to do it because i had done these before, he came out of nowhere and went back to the same place never to be heard of again.

[jed]

Bonneville Indian racer. Perth cool.

[hoodeng]

How did you work that inlet manifold? did you cut and shut the ports to the right?

Cheers.