Speedo cable, I have two oem and picked up a repop. The repop isn't terrible, better than the skinny ones they offer. Im going to have the oem ones cad plated and see how they turn out. Ebay has junk ones for for $400???

The oem cables have two different styles of nut at the speedo. I'll look into that.

 

We cad the real ones and use the inside cable from the fake one and fill the thing with granite < nice move auto correct ba$tard

 

I'll hold off on the granite. The fake inner cable is captive in this one but I have a few original inners.

 

Fenders are ready for mockup this weekend. Need to rivet the brace and hinge on.

 

No drama fitting the fenders and tanks, no swearing or persuading much to my surprise.

I'll be swearing when I do the rivets on the rear fender Im sure.

 

Nice! Have you picked a color yet?

 

Black for sure. With the lack of chrome in 46 and painted tank emblems it should look......like a blacked out Twinkie (Hi John )

It'll look really cool but looking at it the wrong way will probably scratch it

 

I think I settled on a build date range for the restoration after a lot of reading, looking at sales orders with dates and vins and picking Eric's brain behind the scenes. I could flip flop again, I have time still and I may find more information that helps decide but for now this is my thought. Being a 46 basket case is a difficult choice because 46 was an unusual year for Harley with a later production start date (Oct 45), GM going on strike (Guide supplier for lights), a short strike at Harley, the end of the war still affected Chromium supplies, a production run that ended in Oct 46 (6.5 weeks later than normal) and so on. Those factors plus the fact most of these bikes are ancient now, didn't stay stock when new, Harley has no info on the vin, therefore its history is lost so the best I can do is pick a date using an educated guess based on other bikes and build from there.

Looking over invoices with a vin close to mine, ten bikes away give or take, an order date in Jan 46 and a delivery date in June 46 I can narrow things down a bit. There are 4 other bikes ordered the same day by the same dealer with vins that are much different and delivery dates that are a month later in some cases. No way to know why or what the relation is with the vin selection and dates. Did the factory tell the dealer these are what's available so the vins were put on the sales orders? Or were the vins added to the orders later? Some sales orders I looked at had no vins.

Going with the one example that's very close to mine I'll go with the date range Palmer lays out regarding chrome and trim availability between May and July 46. Wide fender braces are a big factor in this as well, they showed up in June 46 which puts me in the "was it a narrow or wide brace bike?". If I bought narrow fender braces I could back the date up a bit, run less chrome and use an inline front end but then the frame might be wrong, maybe. I would need exact dates for the assembly and what frames were used at that time (Bull neck or not), basically I would need to stand there in 1946, watch and take notes unless someone can show me other examples in and around my bike? So by that time in production (May to July) this means a chrome air cleaner cover, spirals, switch covers, pushrod tubes, shifter / gate and screws, gas caps and the headlight bezel. But the horn cover is black painted steel which I have, painted tank badges with stainless trim, no fender light, no fender trim, black foot clutch cover and black rims but I could get chrome fender tips. I would need to chrome the air cleaner cover that came black in the pile of parts with the bike, I have everything else in order with one exception. The front end is an inline, should be offset by this time which I believe was in April 46. I prefer the look of the bike with an inline front end. The 3 degrees of rake they take out of the front end on the offset springers is really noticeable in how it tucks the wheel closer into the frame. If I toss and turn too much I could always get the later front end and bars and put up with the look.

A challenging build for sure, the 48 is easy by comparison.

 

The cover looked really nice on the outside, it pained me to strip it and at the same time I was worried I would find dents or other damage that would complicate chroming it. It's pitted but Im sure the shop can make it look right.

 

Last year of this tail light (and dash, emblems, shifter gate).

Test fitting, had to enlarge the holes but the holes were in the right location.