There’s a rumor that over one million Swingarm Shovelheads still roam the highways. I say, “Bullshit.” Let’s count ‘em. That’s beside the point here. Ben Kudon, the marketing directors of Rivera/Primo came up with this hair- brained scheme. “Let’s fix all Shovelheads,” Ben said. “We can do it for a decent price and give Shovelhead riders late model starters, a 6-speed tranny with a spline shaft and a state of the art Rivera primary and clutch system.” He was right. River/Primo could offer all these upgrades to Shovelhead owners for the price of some primary drives alone, less than three grand. Ben began to look like the Shovelhead Moses.

So we went to work finding a local suspect, Roger Brown, who was tired of his old 4-speed tranny and the starter that only worked occasionally. With this system he lost his kicker, but Primo has kicker systems designed for their 6-speed transmissions. We jammed to Larry Settle’s shop in Harbor City, California, near the center of Los Angeles and not far from the gruesome Bikenet.com Headquarters. Larry’s shop has been around longer than... He wouldn’t tell us. It’s in the back of an industrial block structure as far off the road as possible. It’s sorta an industrial strip mall. On the positive side, painters and pinstripers, surround him, and Yvonne Mecailis performs artistic magic on bike parts just up the lane.

Larry has been working on bikes since, well, you know. He’d rather not say. He was a good man to perform this daunting task, and immediately started asking Ben questions. “So, what do you want me to do with the speedo cable?” Larry inquired.

Here are a couple of other curious items needing attention: The old stock clutch cable wouldn’t work and a new one wouldn’t readily fit in the stock lever. Shift linkage needed to be reworked. Some starter relays might get in the way, but after you consider the hiccups, the benefits of this mod were substantial. We’ll go through each and every alteration and explain Larry’s solution. This bike also sported floorboards and Larry machined a bracket so the rider could continue to run them.

Let’s get started. Larry wouldn’t let me touch a tool, so I took notes like a mad dog and listened to the Rivera/Primo team bicker. “Don’t touch a tool, Bandit,” Larry barked. “You ain’t a mechanic here.”

He lifted the seat and removed the battery cables first, then started removing the massive battery box. “I have to cut on it,” Larry explained as he pointed at the supplied directions and template for cutting the back battery bracket that bolts to the oil bag. It needed cutting also.

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