Old School Chopper Frame Fabrication - Knucklebuster

Steering Necks
For some unexplained reason we have had dozens of emails over the past few days concerning steering necks and where to
buy them or how to build them so we decided to add this little section to clarify what seems to be the most mysterious part of
building a frame of your own creation.
To begin with there are four basic types of necks that you’re likely to encounter. The first and by far the most common of
course is the old factory stock cast neck (Figure 1) found on a variety of bikes and not just Harleys.
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In the early days the races for ball bearings would have been machined right into the thickened rim of this type of neck
casting but as production numbers rose somebody had the bright idea of machining a separate part to contain the bearings
thereby making the entire assembly less expensive to produce.
These separate parts are usually called neck cups, frame cups or steering neck cups and are shown along with the bearings in
figure 2.
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Neck cups such as these are available from a variety of suppliers and usually run around $25 to $30.00 per pair bare, or
around $60.00 with the bearings and races included. If you plan on using this type of neck cup buying them with the bearing
races already installed will save you a lot of hassle if you don’t have an arbor press handy.
These steering neck cups shouldn’t be confused with the bearing races, which are often erroneously called cups or bearing
cups from the old days when ball bearings were used in steering necks.
Figure 3 illustrates a typical cast steering neck with the separate cups installed.