Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/128208
1936 Harley-Davidson EL By SCOTT ROUSSEAU PHOTOS By BLAKE CONNER 'm not sure who first coined the phrase, "the more things change, the more they stay the same," but I'm fairly confident that he or she must have ridden Harley-Davidsons. Impetus for that thought began after a rare opportunity in which Harley-Davidson's house publication, The Enthusiast, asked me if I'd mind venturing up to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, to swing a leg over Bruce Chubbuck's vintage 1936 Harley-Davidson EL and then jot down a few notes about it afterward. Sensing, at the very least, a great opportunity for a future Cycle News story, I agreed. After all, I had seen the Chubbuck machine several times before. As the former manager of Harley-Davidson's West Coast Fleet Operations Center (the guys who give guys like me bikes to ride and test), Chubbuck, who hails from Pasadena, used to ride the machine to work on a regular basis. I had also watched him put it through its paces with the Victor McLaglen Motor Corps, a precision motorcycle stunt team of which he has been a member since its reformation in 1978. I 38 APRIL 9, 2003' cue I e But even more than that, I was intrigued by the chance to ride a motorcycle that represents a very significant waypoint in Harley-Davidson's first 100 years as a motorcycle manufacturer. The 1936 EL is immensely significant because it brought the Harley-Davidson Motor Company out of the industrial dark ages, so to speak. Prior to the EL's introduction, Harley-Davidson had been slugging it out with rival Indian in the U.S. motorcycle market. Both firms had developed competent-for-the-day 74inch (1200cc) flathead V-twins, with the Indian Chief having a technological if not outright advantage thanks to its recirculating oil pump. That was destined to change when Harley- Davidson introduced the 61-inch (1000cc) engine, which would come to be known as the Knucklehead and would be the forefather of all modern Harley V-twin incarnations after it. Although f1atheads would play a significant role among Harley-Davidson products into the 1970s, the smoother, speedier Knucklehead quickly outdistanced the best-running big flatheads almost immediately, and this engine, combined with Indian's refusal to develop a suitable replacement for its own flathead, contributed to Indian's demise in the early 1950s. As for Harley-Davidson, well, you already know the rest of that story. But, I had to wonder, how different would the EL really be? There are, of course, differences between modern Harleys and their siblings of yesteryear. Getting Chubbuck's old Knucklehead started is half the battie, the trick being that you must absolutely make sure you boot the big twin all the way through, as the kick-start mechanism is designed to disengage at the bottom of the lever's stroke. Half-hearted attempts have been known to result in a nasty whack that can deposit the offender on the dark side of Pluto. When cold, the starting drill includes turning on the ignition switch on the EL's tank-mounted instrument cluster - same as any modern Harley, setting the choke and then retarding the igni-