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Today these bikes sport 1937 or '38 frames but are 36ELs just the same. High-numbered 36ELs may have come with 1937-style frames.

We know of a 36EL in California with what's believed to be a '41 frame, fork and front fender. Is it less a 36EL because one of its first owners apparently bumped into a wall, or hit a moving car or something with it, and his dealer repaired it with off-the-shelf Harley parts in 1941 or '42?

Other bikes just led hard, 9 to 5 lives, and things were replaced when they wore out. If it was an improvement, so much the better. Many of these bikes logged hundreds of thousands of miles over many years.

They were some of the same ones, everyday runners, that the chopper guys bought for a song in the 1950s and 60s and completely "Improved." Lots of these are still on the show circuit, collecting trophies.

We know many individuals who are endeavoring to re-make a 1936 EL exactly like it was when it rolled out of a dealer's showroom in 1936 with its first owner. More than one of you already has accomplished that. A bunch more would like a share of your luck and/or perseverence. Not many 36ELs survived over five decades with their "Burgess Battery Co. "-stamped muffler still on.

We here in the present and from now on will probably have to depend more and more on reproduction parts, "Repops," and the consideration will be not be whether a certain part is NOS or Repro, but just how accurate a Repop it is.

In judging the bikes it's pretty simple: If the repro part is indistinguishable from the original, it's good enough. We're not taking x-rays out there, guys and girls. But things like sheared-off edges on stampings that would have been originally finished off, and rivet and screwheads of the wrong shapes and sizes are what lose points if you're trying for a serious restoration.

Then there are slapped together pseudo-restorations. "Ten foot" restorations. They look good from ten feet away. A couple of different good examples of what I mean are depicted in some of the Ha'ley-Davis' commercial Calendars available across the country right now., (It shure' is a good time now to be in like with Harleys) -

The photos are beautiful, but close examination reveals 1936 or 38 engines in 1941 or 46 dress: with beehive taillights, chrome-trimmed gas tanks and later fenders. There are Knuckles, Flats and 45s of all years, all mixed up. It's a shame, really. Is that really a Thirty-six in that Forty-one disguise? Or, tell me that 36EL doesn't have a '37 oil tank, crashbar and '41 speedo!

I guess people have bolted together almost any combination of old parts (1936 to '48 in our case, but '50s and '60s bikes are being done the same way) and plating everything in sight. Some just to sell them off to the highest bidders.

The buyer acquires a pile of parts: an engine with a title, and one each of every other part required to make up an old Harley. More or less. But is it a restored Harley-Davidson?