I recently acquired a 1943 WM20 that has a two letter “RW” designation accompanying the serial number on the engine. It reads: WM20 69379 RW. The RW is located directly below the serial, it is the same size of lettering.

I am looking for any information on the meaning of this two letter addition. Could it stand for “Royal Wolfhound”, signifying that it was made for a dog? Perhaps it stands for “Rear Wheel” signifying that it is not a motorized unicycle? Or maybe it stands for “Really?! WOW!” Which is obviously the reaction of the person who stamped the letters.

Please post your guesses so I can have a laugh, and if you have real information I would greatly appreciate that too!

email (option): Moses@folkhogan.com

I'm guessing "REME WORKSHOP" Ron

email (option): ronpier@talk21.com

Wow! Made is Singapore eh? It now resides in Utah, USA. Quite the traveler, this bike!

email (option): Moses@folkhogan.com

Where are you getting "Made in Singapore" from? Ron

email (option): ronpier@talk21.com

My mistake, I simply tried searching some stuff online and found some things pointing to the South Pacific. Do you have any further information on why that stamp was done or what it means for that to be included?

Thank you in advance!

email (option): Moses@folkhogan.com

I've not made a study of it, others have and hopefully someone will chime in.

But various stamping were added to rebuilt engines. Things like BW (Base Workshop) so I just guessed at REME Workshop (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers)

Ron

email (option): ronpier@talk21.com

This question has been raised before. Nobody seems to know... Do you have a picture of the "RW" marking? (You can send it to my email address if that's easier, I can post it here). I do have several pictures with similar "B" or "BB" markings, that I would like to compare.

An "anonymous" e-mail address? Will the mail be delivered ?

Oops, you can send it to me... 😊

email (option): wd.register@gmail.com

This is the picture that Moses sent me:


Here's another "RW" marking:


And I've seen several similar markings with a "B" or a "BB" just below the engine number:





I don't think this is a rebuild marking, as we should also find them on other makes and I've only ever seen them on BSA engines (B and BB markings sometimes also appear on Royal Enfield engines, but the "style" is different). They also seem to have been stamped with the same set of stamps as the WM20 number (look at the "W" in "RW" and "WM"), always in the vicinity of the engine number. This makes me think that these must be the engine fitter's initials ... Can't think of anything better I'm afraid.

email (option): wd.register@gmail.com

I can't see WM20 69379 in the post war keycards, if you give me the frame number I could look it up.

WM20 85045 is in the keycards and ended its Army life with the BAOR in Germany or Belgium and has the extra title "C59" but I don't know what that means either.

A lot of WD M20s in the States seem to have arrived via Belgium or Germany after the war so maybe "RW" originates there?

Rob

email (option): robmiller11(a)yahoo.co.uk

Hey Rob!

My engine and frame have different numbers. From the information I received from Jan, the engine left the factory 24.10.1942

My frame number is 76381.

I am fully engrossed in the mystery of what these letters signify; and I am excited at the prospect of learning what it may mean. I really appreciate your help!

Cheers!

email (option): Moses@folkhogan.com

Hey Rob!

My engine and frame have different numbers. From the information I received from Jan, the engine left the factory 24.10.1942

My frame number is 76381.

I am fully engrossed in the mystery of what these letters signify; and I am excited at the prospect of learning what it may mean. I really appreciate your help!

Cheers!

email (option): Moses@folkhogan.com

Hi Moses

Sorry WM20 76381 isn't in the post war key cards

We don't know exactly when the cards were created, probably some time around 1948 to 1952, but this just means your bike left the British Army before it could be recorded. There are over 22,000 M20s in the post war key cards, and there are alleged to have been 126,000 BSAs in military service, most of them M20s so it appears about 80% didn't carry on in service for various reasons.

Rob

email (option): robmiller11(a)yahoo.co.uk

Apart from the British Army of the Rhine Reserve Depot sources of M20s that arrived in the U.S., the other although smaller seems to have been travellers / expats working in South East Asia. The 1970s saw quite a lot of wealthy Westerners importing from the Far East. I'd venture to suggest that it's probably possible to differentiate these origins. The BAOR bikes generally have quite a few post-war British supersession parts (controls, caps, lamps etc.) and those from further afield will have been kept running using local ingenuity (and strips cut from old oil cans ! :grinning: ). A large proportion of the Far East bikes were transferred to foreign governments prior to 1948 and the only Key Card entries from the region will relate to where British forces still retained a presence. India for instance had already gained independence and adopted large quantities of Commonwealth equipment.

I'm sure we've discussed in the past that BSA don't generally seem to have had the substantial presence of Ministry inspectors with their M^ stamps and that this may have been because as long-standing Government and arms suppliers they had some sort of self-certification procedure.

The "BB" and "RW" stamps do seem to be slightly grouped. Perhaps they are simply random approvals by a BSA quality control inspector or alternatively, maybe the first of the line with a small modification or alteration that had not yet been noted in the spare parts lists ?

Whatever they are, I can't think of any British Army terms of the period that they might apply to and any documentation seems to have been lost.

Fanscinsting! Perhaps we will just have to imagine RW stands for Runs Well, and BB stands for Beautiful Bike. I’m hoping someday some information can be gleaned from some untouched resource; but I won’t hold my breath.

The grouping is interesting. I would love to try and compile a list of number that include these additional stamps, and see if perhaps there is a trend.

email (option): Moses@folkhogan.com

As the stamping seems to be much more uniform than BSA factory stamping and done in exactly the same font plus stamped to the same depth and all in a nice strait line, I will add another suggestions
RW = Re Worked as in replacement crankcases
As the club registrar I have noticed that most faked numbers are stamped far better than BSA factory stamps & always suspect stamping where all the impressions are the same depth , in a strait line & evenly spaced
Usually the model number , "wm20" in this case would be done with all 4 dies in a single tool holder as this means it is a 1 hit job so saves a lot of time
On latter engines I have also noticed that the first 2 or 3 numbers seem to be held in a single tool and the final 2 or 3 seem to have been done freehand
Like everythng BSA this is not universally applicable , just some thing I have noticed over doing hundreds of registrations in the past 30 years
Back in the high BSA thieft days it was common to slip an extra digit between the serial & model numbers to rebirth a stolen bike .

The “Re-Worked” theory is something I had considered. I wasn’t aware there was a lot of theft in the past; but it’s certainly not hard to imagine.

This particular specimen was fairly stripped down when it was discovered in a chicken coop, by my father in 1983 in Goshen, Utah, USA. At that time it didn’t have the following parts:

Fuel tank
Oil tank
Mudguards
Toolbox
Saddle
Battery or battery case
Headlight
And much more


It had been turned into a chopper, with the original girder forks being extended and welded, and it appears many of the original parts were long gone. My uncle is a motorcycle mechanic, and set to getting it as back to normal as he could given the available resources.

email (option): Moses@folkhogan.com

I think Trevor is probably right, a later war or postwar replacement crank case, the two examples shown above are over 15,000 apart so very unlikely to have been done in the factory in such a similar way.

Rob

email (option): robmiller11(a)yahoo.co.uk

Has anyone seen this before. It's a Flea that Mark Mumford is restoring for a friend. I think it's from the 1000 from the last batch that were canceled by the WO. Ron

email (option): ronpier@talk21.com

Very interesting. The REME WORKSHOP was posted about above.

email (option): Moses@folkhogan.com

We still don't know what the RW abbreviation stands for, but I have now found four data plates (3x1959, 1x1960) referring to this RW, which must have been a military workshop. It is currently still unclear where this workshop was located (BAOR - West Germany or UK).

email (option): wd.register@gmail.com

I have run some of these numbers through the keycards and the numbers on the rebuild plates appear to be engine numbers rather than frame numbers as the rebuild dates often seem to be after the disposal of the machine?

For the following numbers the key cards show

92934 02YE58 sold off (Allies CR?) 1953 Engine rebuilt 1959 (card 560b)
96377 05YE28 sold off Antwerp 1971 Engine rebuilt 1960 (card 568b)
108654 10ZC39 sold of MELF (Middle East Land Forces) 1955 engine rebuilt 1959 (card 467a)
85610 not in the key cards but rebuilt 1959 after the key cards were created

email (option): robmiller11@yahoo.co.uk

I have just been reading this thread, and my feeling is it could be Rhine Workshop.

It could be...37 Rhine Workshop ran from 1948 until the eighties...Ian

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

Here's a commemorative medal...Ian

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

That sounds very plausible, thanks for your input Gentlemen!

email (option): wd.register@gmail.com

email (option): kocaho8941@nasmis.com

The post by Andrew seemed a serious reply, but it contains a spam link.

What the hell is going on with the internet these days and what remuneration model is causing all these posts with wanky links ?