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Re: Sporting a Tommy Gun

Fair enough.
I know little about any other company other than BSA and it subsiduries.
Down here we got flooded with ex military motorcycles.
I am fairly sure that the War office exported a lot of ex-service motorcycled down here.
There is a conversion to put teles on girder M20/21's that has the holes in the lower fork clamp off set slightly forward so the front wheel cleared the older long frame.
I have seen so many over the years to come to the conclusion it was either a factory modification or a distributor modification.
I was told but can not substantiate it was done to give the BSA dealers something to sell by refurbishing military bikes & fitting them with telescopic forks.
It would also have soaked up a lot of military surplus.

Interesting that Indian, which was a substantially better motorcycle than just about anything available post WWII could not sell but there we have it, history is a facinating subject.

email (option): bsansw1@tpg.com.au

Re: Sporting a Tommy Gun

Yep it was a common occurrence for a chap to revitalize his 1938/9/40 Tiger 90/100/ Speedtwin after the war with the new fangled 1945 tele's and throw those old girders away......Now worth up to 3 Grand if you can find any......Got that T shirt:flushed: Ron

email (option): ronpier@talk21.com

Re: Sporting a Tommy Gun

A friend has just bought a 1938 Matchless model X that has been in a barn since the early sixties...It's fitted with Vincent girdraulic front forks and a pre war AJS tank from an R7 racer!!!!....Ian

email (option): ian@wright52.plus.com

Re: Sporting a Tommy Gun

Aloha,

About the Indian left hand throttle twist grip.
I was told by a very, very, very knowledgeable guy who restores vintage Harleys and others for a semi-living (and who did the cylinder work for my M21) that one of the very first Indians to have a motor on a cycle had the ignition timing on the right hand grip. The reason for this was that this was the only rev-adjustment that there was.

When Indian soon enough developed their constructions to have a throttle as well this ended up being on the left since they already had a working construction for the timing and saw no reason to alter it.

Sorry I have no source or reference for this, I know the guy to be someone who knows what he's talking about but realize that you all don't know him (or me). Some more research may need to go into this...

/simon

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