Vl wheel paint colors?

[NCriding]

I'm restoring a 1936 VLD and will paint it either Venitian blue/cream or Sherwood green/silver. Was black wheel paint an option for this year? I do intend to show the bike so need to get it right, but I'm not wild about painting the wheels cream or silver as I'll also ride it and those colors will show dirt and paint damage must faster than black.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

[Rollo]

I have a 36 VLH and the wheels are Croydon cream. I don't think they show that much dirt and I do ride mine. My 33 VLD does have black wheels and they seems to show just about as much as the cream wheels. The slinging grease and oil from the hubs and chain are really pretty easy to simply wipe off. I really don't see it as that big an issue. Not 100% sure but think that with the color schemes you outlined that the wheels were either cream or silver. Steve????

Tom (Rollo) Hardy
AMCA #12766

[Steve Slocombe]

Yes 1936 was the only year Harley painted the wheel rims as part of the colour scheme and you can see why. With both 18 and 19 inch wheels available, and five colour schemes plus the export one, that's a dozen different rims to stock. The rims would indeed be cream and silver in your chosen paint schemes. I've seen an original paint 36VFD in Norway with the Olive Green/Black export scheme with black rims, and black rims must have been a no-cost option for the domestic market, but you lose the full-on Art Deco look of these great bikes. It's like black handgrips, again a no-cost option compared with the deeply impractical white ones fitted as standard. You were king of the hill if you had a new VL in 1936, which is why you see them loaded with accessories and tricked out with dice keys and eight ball shifter knobs. My 1936 Police bikes also have black rims and did not get dinged by the judges, but I guess we're talking practicality here rather than points-bike minutiae.

[NCriding]

Very well put, Steve. Thanks for putting this in perspective - I'm going to come in off the ledge now and go home to the wife and kids like nothing ever happened......

if practically should be our main concern we would have every piece of our bikes powder coated black. I wasn't that far out on the ledge, but the significance of the Art Deco features was lost on this 59 year old kid. I should have taken that art history class in college after all, taught by Professor Slocombe.

[Steve Slocombe]

Thanks for letting me sound off about Art Deco Harleys. The period is named after the Exposition des Arts Decoratifs in Paris in 1925, where the US did not exhibit, but where what we now call Deco features started. Harley did not have a Director of Styling then, but we see a couple of Sunburst tank designs in 1931 (like Clarice Cliff china), the 1932 optional 'swirl' tank designs, the first five color paint schemes in 1933 with the one-year 'bird' decal, the new fenders for 1934 with the one year hi-flo muffler and the two-year 'flying diamond' decal, the forward tank panel added in 1935, and the new 'winged ball' tank decal in 1936. The 1936 VL is even more full-on than the knucklehead in the same paint scheme, and in my view represents the high spot of Harley Art Deco design. 1937 brought the Chrysler Airflow but the new Harley Big Twins were more restrained then. With 'Modernism' arguably dating from the 1939 Worlds Fair and war soon to come, Art Deco was over. Surely all of us with these Art Deco Harleys from the Depression years will want to show them off as the cultural icons they are!