From:Mutt e-mail:pigstye13-A-aol.com
Subject:RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Chainguard Date:Mon Aug 17 19:03:04 2015
Response to:20700
here is the NOS chain guard picture

----- ORIGINAL MESSAGE FOLLOWS -----
Joe,

A little closer up photo.

This is actually a Jim Garrett repaint, but it's awful darn
close to the original. (Jim is the most meticulous restorer
I've ever met).

This is an amazingly hard thing to take a really good photo
of. Or I'm an amazingly bad photographer. (Probably the
latter.)

You can plainly see the over-spray on the "3".

On the "2 0 1" you can see that the paint is very light -
the "3" is really like that also. The factory really should
have done a second coat - as these came out pretty terrible.

Today, Harley employs computer-controlled robot painters,
that do a perfect job every time.

But we're talking 1950s factory technology - in a mass-
production environment. They probably used a cardboard-like
stencil with the numbers cut out, and bent it to match the
curve of the "numbers pad" - just like you and I might do
today. Whatever. Then they painted it in one pass, and
tried to strike a balance between good coverage and minimal
over-spray. They got neither...

[Begin Soapbox]

Most restorers today over-restore bikes. Paint jobs were not
77-coat hand-rubber miles-deep lacquer - they were do-it-once
baked enamel, and had mild orange peel. Frame parts often
contained noticeable runs. Polished aluminum parts were
polished, but not to the mirror finish you often see today.
Engine cases and covers were sand-cast aluminum. Engine
covers may have been smoothed a bit, but they definitely were
not polished. Today you see mirror-finish engine covers
(which admittedly look pretty good), but they were never
polished at the factory, so they really shouldn't be polished
now.

Harley ran a production line - "get 'em out the door" - they
weren't building priceless antiques. Restore your bikes to
production-line standards - and then you'll have a priceless
antique...


[End Soapbox]







JOEP->Plus my numbers are 3201 (not 1023 as described on the
website chainguard page) but mine is a replica so this
could have been done on purpose of course

DAVE-> You are correct - from left-to-right, they are 3201.
However, most of us start out in 1st gear. (OK, that's
pretty weak, but I gotta try and save face here.)