barn find 1918j army?

[Ric Bolduc]

If I remember correctly, it sold for $18K but this was 5-6 years ago.

[joebiker]

if you look closer you can see the faded olive green. or i guess it was olive green. one book i found had 3 color options, olive green,pea green and another shade of green . the bike was painted without any dissassemby. the bottom and inside of tank still have a lot of paint on them.

[duffeycycles]

WW1 military had more Indians than HD,I doubt if your bike is USA military,as stated Olive G was standard civilian color.Beautifull bike.I do see they are going up to '29 for next Cannonball,hope to see this in the mix.They stopped using the USA stamping on parts after WW1

[exeric]

if you look closer you can see the faded olive green. or i guess it was olive green. one book i found had 3 color options, olive green,pea green and another shade of green . the bike was painted without any dissassemby. the bottom and inside of tank still have a lot of paint on them.

Olive Green was the only standard color offered to the public. Coach Green was the broad stripe, Pea Green was the border stripe, and black was the center stripe. I have no doubt one could order a special color through a dealer in 1918, but I have never seen that in writing from H-D. As for USA stamped on all military H-D parts; I have heard that was done, but I have never seen a part with USA stamped on it; but then there are many things I have never seen Mark Masa can enlighten us on that.

[Chris Haynes]

1918 Military models had flat fenders.

[exeric]

I don't think the flat fender is a hard fast rule for Military bikes of 1918. The flat fender was an option for civilian '18s and I think it was something that just came about because of muddy roads, and not necessarily a military specification. Again, I could be wrong.



I can't say if these bikes are 1918s, but they are at least '17s, and could very well be 18s. America went into WW1 in April of 1917, and we were done in Nov. of '18 so we were in it for about a year and one half.

[gsottl]

I think what joe means is the olive green overpaint of the original paint?

I would suggest to very carefully clean off the olive green overpaint to get the original paint out.

An original paint like this will be is very fagile and will maybe suffer a lot from doing the Cannonball and from modifications like most participants of the run do on their bikes. That hurts if a bike is that good from the beginning. I think it is better to use a bike not that good as a start for a CB bike (but this is my very personal thought)