Interesting information about the 1936 EL from William S. Harley

[Chris Haynes]

This letter has been for sale forever on eBay. I doubt anyone in their right mind will pay his price. But something interesting comes up in it. Talking about the routing of the front brake cable. It appears that Mr. Harley is stating that the front brake on the EL was like the VL with the cable coming up from the bottom and the lever on top. This is contradictory to what is shown in factory photos. Also discussion about the MoCo making extensions for the footboards, which did appear.
http://cgi.ebay.com/William-S-Harley...d=p3286.c0.m14

[Rubone]

Chris,
I don't read it that way. I read it as the 61 cable routing from above was a new feature as opposed to what was the earlier practice as on the VLs.
Robbie

[Chris Haynes]

In the first paragraph he is talking about recent changes and changes on the new (1937) models.

[Erdos]

The first paragraph states some changes are already made and more are to come in October. The second paragraph states that the cable comes down from the top because of freezing and rusting problems. The word that gives it away that this is the current arrangement of the brake cable is the cleaver use of the word "now".

[exeric]

I have always heard that H-D had stict territorial boundries for their dealers but Orlando has had dealer overlap on two occasions. Gene Walters was the original dealer for Orlando, and Puckett's H-D opened their doors in 1936, and were located about 2 miles south on S. Orange Blossom Trail. I believe Puckett's gave up their franchise in 1966 but Dick Farmer was already established and he was about 3 miles north of Puckett's on S. Orange Blossom Trail. I guess they worked those things out in Milwaukee. Gene Walters inventory haunted bike collectors for years. The first I heard of it; it was at a bike shop in a little town on the Atlantic coast called Titusville. I can't remember the owners name but he was a miserable old bastard and his shop was a mess. He had a few Indian Chiefs and that's about all I remember because you did not feel welcome or comfortable at his shop. When he died, the Titusville shop inventory got scattered to different sources and a friend of mine was asked to assess the value of the Gene Walters stuff. He asked me to help him but I blew it off because I thought all of the stuff I had seen at the Titusville shop was worn out junk. Later, I found out that there was a large amount of early to late NOS J and JD parts, including many parts for twin cams.