In most cases yes Ron this is the situation with the distance piece - but on 1940 forks the “ trumpet “ was cut short & the distance piece was used with a dished shaped washer
I have a set of blades here & a full original June 40 deluxe rolling chassis with the short fork, cut off trumpet & distance piece
The fork at some time in production then reverted to the full trumpet & the distance piece was deleted - only to reappear with introduction of the longer fork blade which we now think is sometime mid contract in April / may 1941
Why they cut the trumpet beats me
Jo’b
Re spacers & cut off mudguard trumpets; could there have been point where they felt the need to raise the mudguard to get more clearance to prevent clogging in bad conditions? I've seen many a pic of bikes blathered in mud & it was an issue with off-road trials / scrambles of the era. It would have been simple to just shorten them at production time to use up earlier stock. Was the same part also used on other models that had shorter trumpets - so they just used them to maintain production? They were pretty hard pressed to produce sufficient machines for military use.
Short of deleting my previous post is it possible to remove my email from it? I assumed it would be stored offline.
That is of course entirely logical Ian! I am not an aficionado of fork stay lengths...:-)
It does seem odd to produce a part only to cut some of it off, then add a spacer! Were they actually produced like that or was it simply a common problem with them snapping off, so they are all in fact workshop repairs? I have seen quite a number of forks with either the trumpet missing / broken off or repaired, as with mine; the trumpet snapped off half way & welded back in place.