[vincent]

Nothing to do with Flatheads so forgive me but here is what I did in desperation. In the days when money was tight as we just had bought our big house and the kids wanted a dirtbike I bought a non-running twostroke. After lifting the barrel we found a very worn piston that was seized-up heavily and probably several times as the seller told me: "it will only start when you pull it with a car". The thing had almost no compression so the kids had to clean out the aluminum from the bore before I cleaned it up with sandpaper on a wooden dowel in my lathe. The piston was welded up on all important faces, I welded up the broken ring lands as well. After measuring the cylinder bore I turned the piston to 4 thou less diameter on the lathe and as no rings were available in my shelfs, I cut them from steel tube and cut the ring grooves on the piston. Drilled the piston for the neccessary ring location pins, mounted the rings and put the whole thing together again. Kids were grinning ear to ear when the engine responded to the kickstart for the first time. Finally they had a proper dirtbike to spend the holidays on my local track - those were the days when we had no money but a lot of enthusiasm and nothing could stop us.