Dang that nice!

George

 

Rear tail light and directional signals

 

Nice collection of original parts to make that tail light correct, nice job.

 

Thanks Architect. Been a long road collecting parts for this project and something I started doing just about from the day I brought the 65 home. started with swap meets (when parts were really cheap). As the internet came along my wife helped me identify sources for parts. I have a couple of ebay sellers that I will buy parts from and who are very reliable and stand behind the parts they offer. I also joined facebook and have about 6 places that I go to to look for parts. Some of those on Facebook tho are crazy on their asking prices. Some will negotiate; others think they own the Rosetta Stone. I also go to Dixon at the start of every summer (AMCA sponsered event). It is a hit and miss propostion. Goal this year is to make it to Davenport meet in Iowa. Kinda sucks that the majority of the big AMCA meets are east, far east of me.

I used a product called Novus to clean the plastic. It is basically like paint wax as far as grades. Works well tho. All my chrome (including the pot metal) is/has been done by Sherms out of Sacramento (100 miles one way). There are no shops left in the Bay Area that do a decent job on chrome and none that will chrome pot metal. The only downside on the pot metal directional signal housing is that some of the detail has been lost. Unfortunate, but can't be helped.

All my paint is being done by Renteria Bros out of Morgan Hill. They are the one place that is actually close to me (9 miles). Their work is excellent.

For my cad plating I use Van Nuys Plating services and for my parkerizing services I use Hot Flash Refinishing. They are both out of the LA area. Hot Flash is primarily a gunsmithing service for parts refinish. I had called several places before finding them. Seems no one wanted anything to do with HD parts for some reason until he said yes.

I know that posting pics of part numbers and identifcation of OEM/NOS parts is down in the weeds stuff and maybe too far down in the weeds for some. Guess I got hooked when I started on my 49 EL that came as a basket case, picked up Palmer's 1st edition (and now his 2nd edition) and realized how detailed MoCo actually got with parts identification, forging and casting numbers and the like.

 

It is fun down in the weeds, as long it doesn't stop a project looking for one little part. At the end of the day we gotta ride these damn things. But I agree, if I am going to replace something, I prefer to find the right part and do it right. Glad I am doing my Shovel now, 10 years from now the parts are going to be much harder to find and more money. Lots of it is still quite reasonable. Now try and find a part for my Flathead that is also for a Knuckle, and then you can see some sticker shock. A correct taillight is now in my budget, you can buy a nice running Sprotster for what they want. Keep going, digging your process.

 

One last thing on the rear fender. Yesterday I was fitting the rear bumper to the fender. Doing so requires removal of the fender tip in order to secure the lower portion to the fender. Just out of curiosity I was looking at the inside of the tip to see if there were any markings on it.

Found this..........


Up until yesterday I had alsway thought that ACME was just a by line for the Road Runner, Bugs Bunny cartoons. (Everything that Bugs bought to frustrate the Road Runner was from ACME.) So it appears that at one time, anyway, ACME was a real company that was producing the pot metal fender tips for HD.

Now it makes me wish I had retreived my front fender tip when it popped off and went dancing down the road on HWY 58 out of Bakersfield back in 1990.

 

Yes you should've! Mine say ACME on them as well and are being re-chromed at this very moment. Should have them back this week.

 

So I spent yesterday and today immersed in Acetone in order to clean up some sidecar components. They had been painted grey as an undercoat and then painted black

Front and rear frame components









U-bolts for springs



Still have to do spring shackles, windshiled support parts, sidecar brake parts. Going to try and get it done over the next week so that I can make a list (long list I suspect) and get the stuff to my parkerizing guy.

Mixed in will be the side car tub. Needs a lot of fixing and I have to get it to my welder before he gets super busy.

After that I can go back to the 65.

 

The sidecar when I bought it home form Dixon CA a few years back.




Seat was not stock, lower windshield frame is toast (from rust) on one side and will neeed to be fabircated (L& W sidecar is no longer around becuase the owner, Merle, got out of the business and no one I know of is making the stuff. I would sure like to know who bout out Merle's parts.)

Forgot to get pics after I had it stripped but there is a lot of rust on the base parts. Lots of oversize and hogged out holes. Probably went through an entire can of BP Blaster in order to remove rusted nuts and bolts.



Several of the pieces had been painted. Figured I would soak them in some Acetone to see if I could avoid the bead blaster. Actually worked out nicely on some of them.



So far the only pieces that require replacing is the brake cylinder (got it apart but the bore is pitted badly), the brake backing plate (uses the same 58-62 rear brake backing plate for sidecar and 58-62 bike) becuase the cam mechanisims are absolutely frozen solid, and the lower piece of the windhsiled (as well as plexiglass)



...and if anyone has an extra one of these bolts they want to part with. I need one please. It is part number 3946 and is a 7/16-20 x 2 in hex head bolt. Getting a regular size hex head is not the problem, it is finding one with the large head head on it. They are used to secure the sidecar frame brace.

 

the cuts in the oem ty bar we would braze to fill and finesse before paint - a Knick we would leave