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Finishes on K/KH Parts - Phase I

PostPosted: Wed Jan 20, 2016 10:11 pm
by hennesse
Hi folks,

The correct finish on parts is one of the most important parts of motorcycle restoration. It's pretty easy to do for a Knucklehead or Panhead - just refer to Bruce Palmer's book, How To Restore Your Harley-Davidson. He lists exactly what is cadmium, chrome, nickel, parkerized, painted a color, black, silver, etc. for your Big Twin year and model. Unfortunately, Bruce's excellent book does not cover the K or Sportster models.

So WE are going to write our own book on finishes.

I've created a new Technical section called Finishes. I've started with the K-models - once we've got that totally done, we'll progress to the Sportster. I am going through the 1956 Spare Parts Catalog, and creating a chart of all the external parts that require a finish.

We need YOU to identify what finish goes on each part. Please post what you think is correct, either directly under this topic, or via email to me (click on my username, then click "Email user". I've put in a link so you can download an Excel spreadsheet if you're inclined that way. You can fill in the spreadsheet and email back to me if you'd like. When we reach consensus, I'll fill in the chart with the accepted results.


Please confine yourself to the first five sections - Motor Mounting, Valves, Pistons, Flywheels, Crankcases.

My "value-add" to the OSKRG is organizing our collected knowledge, and presenting it nicely on the web. There is a tremendous amount of knowledge coming out in the forums, but unfortunately, it comes out in dribs and drabs, and then in major brain dumps. It's tough to locate all the dribs, and sift through all the dumps, and then put together a well-organized article on a single subject. Too much information in too many places!

So my plan is to "divide and conquer" - thoroughly do one section of Finishes at a time, and then move on to the next section. So post/email/pm your considered opinion on the finish for parts in the first five sections - Motor Mounting through Crankcases. While you're doing that, I'll be prepping the next five sections. With luck, we'll have the whole thing done by spring 2016.

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Each section in Technical:Finishes has an "abridged" parts illustration. The illustrations in the Spare Parts Catalogs often show parts from multiple part-number-listing sections, and so I've edited the illustrations. All of the Spare Parts Catalogs from 1953 through 1956 are available for download in the Literature:Spare Parts Catalogs section of this website.

Re: Finishes on K/KH Parts - Phase I

PostPosted: Fri Apr 29, 2022 10:05 pm
by Magneto Sportster
I'm not sure if this is the correct place to post this, but under the "finishes" section for forks, 4372w (lower tree pinch bolts) is listed as cad plated. I know Sportsters better than Ks, but on the early sportsters this bolt was cad plated, and Harley tends to shift FROM parkerized TO cad, so I would assume they were also parkerized on K models. The lock washer under this bolt is cad plated on the Sportsters, but the bolt itself if parkerized.

I'm just throwing this out there because it said comments were requested....

-Magneto Sportster