Fork cover question?

[Hog54]

I have been bidding on a couple fork covers and was wondering,arent these supposed to be stainless steel?Or is that just the 49?It seems to me thier not since they have rust on them. http://www.ebay.com/itm/HARLEY-PANHEAD- ... fresh=true" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Panhead Ed]

They came both ways,, stainless or steel.

[Robert Luland]

As far as I know they where all stainless except for police bikes that were tin and painted. Bob L

[Hog54]

So what im trying to find out,if thier not stainless,thier not oem?And are these just a poor quality of stainless if they have rust on them?

[Cotten]

Hog54!

They've been chromed.
I don't believe '49 had the script.

.....Cotten

[Robert Luland]

Like I said. The tin ones that are chromed came off police bikes and were orignaly painted. As Tom pointed out, there are a few differant tins over the years. Bruce Palmer makes refrance to all of them in his book. Bob L

[4pans1man]

Hog54,

I posted 2 photo's of Hydra-Glide front tins in misc photo's. They came both in stainless and chromed steel. The first in line, "55"-"59" is stainless, the rest are chromed steel or painted. Low grade stainless will rust, and a magnet will stick to some grades of stainless. Good luck!!!


............Tony

[FlatHeadSix]

good information from everybody! Tony, thanks for posting the pics, everyone should note that the right-hand cover in Tony's pics has a magnet stuck to it.

The bottom line is that the cover in the ePay listing in the link that was posted above is either a plain steel OEM cover that was poorly chromed a long time ago, or it is a repop, either way I would leave that one alone and let some other sucker buy it.

The horizontal stripe stainless OEM covers were used from '49 to '54, the '49 did NOT have "Hydra-Glide" stamped on the top. If you need one for a '54 you should keep looking, there are still plenty of them out there, in stainless, not that rare.

mike