Piscataway, NJ • “When we restore a Harley, we bring it back in time. We make sure every inch of that bike is exactly the way it was when it came from the factory.” Those were the words of Marty MacCollum, and this motorcycle man wasn’t exaggerating one single bit. All you have to do is comb over any one of the dozens of Harley-Davidson’s he’s worked on over the years to see for yourself. In fact, look close enough, and you’ll see exactly how serious MacCollum is about bringing Harley-Davidson motorcycles back to the day they got their first taste of octane.
“Yeah, that engine and trans were a mess before we got our hands on this bike,” explains MacCollum. “We took it all apart, put everything in a tumbler with some ceramic media from Kramer Industries, and got it all right back down to bare aluminum,” says MacCollum. “The castings in this motor and transmission didn’t have any finish or polish on them when this bike was put together,” he explains, “so why should they be anything but bare aluminum now. It’s the natural finish we want, and the media we got from Kramer helps us achieve that.”
Looking for a means to get down to that bare aluminum, Marty MacCollum went online and not only found Kramer Industries, but found they were willing to run a few tests for him, just to see what cleaning method, in combination with what cleaning media, would work best to restore Harley-Davidson motor and transmission parts back to their factory finish.
According to Steven Schneider, sales manager of Kramer Industries, the New Jersey-based company was happy to help. “We told Marty to bring us some parts and we’d do some experimenting,” says Schneider. “We found that our ceramic media was best, and after seeing the samples we presented to him, Mr. MacCollum bought himself one of our tumblers and enough ceramic media to last him quite a while.”
“Yeah, they’re good people over there at Kramer,” says MacCollum, “I may not be their biggest customer, but they treated me like I was. I guess they like Harleys, too.”
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