Pan Cylinder nut lock washer

[Robert Luland]

Brain were the head bolts also cad 49 and up. Bob L

[bmh]

Yes Robert, it appears that the head bolts were also cad plated for 49 and up. The washers that go with them seem to have started out parkerized and changed to cadmium. Factory photos for the 50 models show cad washers on the head bolts but it looks like the change over on production machines may not have occurred until later in the year.

[T. Cotten]

Are we really to believe that if a MOCO worker reached into a bin for a fastener and it wasn't the finish spec on paper in the office, he wouldn't use it?

"Correct" is a mythical ideal that we beat our heads to achieve, even though it is most probable that at the time, nobody could have cared less.

...Cotten

[bmh]

Cotton, you are absolutely correct about the factory worker using what was available at the time. Just start looking at the jamb nut on the hand shift clevis in old photos. Most of the time it is cad as I am sure was spec. But often enough it is parkerized because this was the only application of that nut in cad on a big twin. When the guy putting them together ran out, he grabbed some parkerized nuts from another bin and kept on working. Also we know that the prototypes were often not assembled exactly to engineerings specs either. And while factory photos and ad copy may have stated or shown something as new for the year, the factory did not scrap the inventory on hand, they used it till it was all and then started with the new part, sometimes a few thousand units into production. Sometimes they ran out before the prior years production was finished and next years parts wound up on last years bikes. So while I agree that nothing can be said with absolute certainty, I do believe that through careful examination of the evidence at hand such as original bikes and period photos ( lots of guys took pics of themselves on their brand new bikes) we can start to roughly extrapolate at what point certain changes actually made it to the production line.