I love this bike. I had a question what is the distance between the bottom of the upper fork and the bottom of the axel tabs, either 5 1/2" or 7 1/2" . Some bikes had longer forks and some shorter can't find any rhyme or reason to the ones I,ve come across. Thanks.
I had two E models, where I disassembled the forks for chrome. One of them had the fork tubes crimped at the top. The other set were round. Both used the welded on rings, which had to be removed for chrome. (To get the springs off) When you removed the rings on the crimped version, you could not remove the springs due to the crimps.
Based on serial numbers, I assumed the crimped version was the newer, improved idea. I do not recall this causing a difference in fork length, but you certainly had to cut the ends of the fork tube to get springs off. I welded them back on with slugs. If someone did not reweld them after spring removal, they would have been 2 inches shorter.
Just a guess here. No idea if this applied to other models.