Hi a friend of mine shipped out his wm20 from Ireland to Australia and is trying to register it there correctly. They have come back to him and recognise it as a 1962 super rocket, which I can assure you it is not, he wants to have it correctly registered have any of the Australian members of the forum had to sort this out and of so how did you do it? So far I have said to get a bsa factory dating certificate any further ideas grateful received.
Grahame
G'day Grahame,
I have not had to go through this process but what does his importation documents say the bike is?
All I can suggest is that registration or frame & engine number data is being confused somewhere in computerworld. In my experience registration departments accept the information you give them, especially since it should be verifiable by examination of the frame & engine. Which is not much help to you, is it? Which Australian State is the bike being registered in?
Grahame you haven't mentioned which state as each state have slightly different laws and regulations. The best bet is to join an approved club, which every state has, get the bike dated by the club official and present the details to the licencing authority of the state the bike is in. An approved club will also qualify for concessional licence fee as well.
I am in West Australia and had no problems except I had to fit a stop light. Mine is concessionally licenced and daytime use only so the black out hood was no problem.
email (option): tknalder@iinet.net.au
All of the East Coast states use a common data base.
It does not go back to 1940.
If you try to put full registration on the bike, the computer will look at the make (BSA) then look up BSA and attribute whatever model name is associated with BSA to it.
There is not central data base with engine & frame numbers on it for the computer to cross-refference to.
They use the VIN number and the data base only goes back as far as the introduction of VIN plates.
As previously mentioned, join one of the BSA clubs and put your M20 on Historic registration.
All states have an authenticity form that gets filled out by the club and the details from this are usually copied onto your registration papers.
Victoria & SA have log book systems, Qld has club only use & NSW has both.
All states will allow you to "upgrade" from historic registration to full registration and when that happens your bike details are just transferred from one piece of paper to another.
So at worst, you can get a historic plate then a month latter go back, cancel it & get a full plate, telling the authorities you want to use the bike more than the plate will allow you to & you do not want to abuse the system.
That gets a good response ( but no refund ) from the authorities.
UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES RIDE WITHOUT PROPER REGISTRATION
Most East Coast police cars are fitted with number plate cameras and if a vehicle is detected with no plates or out of date plates it is manditory for the police car to pull you over, and that goes for every police vehicle & officer from the Commissioner through to the horse washers.
all the BSA clubs have hot links from the National Rally web site
www.bsanational.org.au
For what it is worth, I have been the NSW Clubs Permits Secretary ( first scheme ) then Club Registrar ( second scheme ) & now Authorised person ( current scheme ) so this is not hearsay I have been handling the Clubs regos for 30 years.
email (option): bsansw1@tpg.com.au
Thanks for the help, what i will do is send him a link to this thread to prevent Chinese whispers and he can hopefully contact one of you who might be in his state. He is based near Adelaide, i restored the bike for him but didn't see the registration documents. It did still have it's original reg so the only other thing i could think of is, if it had maybe had a reissue of the reg documents and this was in 1962. Anyway it doesn't sound like it is the end of the world to get it sorted out.
cheers
Grahame
Graham, I live near Adelaide & could perhaps help. My email address is boballan883@gmail.com.
As I think Trevor said, in South Australia there's a logbook system for historic road vehicles. Historic rego is a good deal, essentially you pay about a quarter full rego & can use the vehicle 90 days a year. To be eligible you must be a member of a club & the vehicle must be sighted by an official of that club.
For conventional full registration, as I said in my first post registration authorities tend to accept the information you give them. As a vehicle imported from overseas they may wish to sight it, don't know. But the overall process shouldn't get too mired up & the local database certainly knows what an M20 BSA is.
Yep there is a BSA club in SA
A vintage club is SA and a Classic club in SA
The vintage club tend to be a bit more dot the i & cross the t than the other clubs
Too many ex bank managers I think.
In Australia we have compulsory third party personal injury insurance for all motor vehicles.
Because of the large number of pillion passengers who get injured, the rate for motorcycles is horrific.
The rate for log book vehicles is very modest because we rarely ever carry pillions and ever more rarely have an at fault collision.
Looking forward to seeing the bike at the BSA National Rally Handorff
email (option): bsansw1@tpg.com.au