I'm trying to help a friend date his XM20 and Henk sent me this list from the engine number pages of the BSA ledgers. Henk emplaned that these post war machines didn't have matching frame and engine numbers, the engines were just fitted at random.

My friends engine number is 4620 which is shown on this page as fitted to 'TWO' different frames on two different dates and supplied to two different dealers???? Neither of which is the frame that the engine is now in.

After some discussion with Henk, he then sent me a page from the XB31 ledger which shows this "engine into two frame" anomaly several times??

Anyone got any idea what it's all about. Ron

email (option): ronpier@talk21.com

Engine replaced under warranty, engine rebuilt or repaired and fitted to a new frame???

BSA did this all the time, going back to pre-war Gold Stars and all sorts. The early WM20 contracts are unbelievable..Duplicate engines and frames supplied all over.

Often one for the home market and one for Copenhagen or similar. Then we have the puzzles about two entries on the same line - one to the Dutch Army and one to the War Department but long before 10th May 1940 so not returned bikes.

I can't believe that a huge modern company like BSA couldn't keep a simple machine register (even though they used that daft system of one frame prefix applying to various models but each model group having a separate number sequence).

I can't avoid the suspicion that BSA were attempting to hide part of their production. Was it a tax fiddle ? Did they tell the authorities that they had made, say 20000 machines in a year when in fact many of the overseas sales were cash in hand ?

Anyone got a better idea ? The gold plated Daimlers had to be paid for somehow !

Thanks Rik. I was thinking it was me, missing something. But if you and Henk can't understand it......There must be something strange with the system. Ron

email (option): ronpier@talk21.com

I know this doesn't help directly but Royal Enfield also did this but in later years when they were operating from the underground Factory at Westwood. They built Interceptor engines for sale to outside parties (Rickman, Clymer,) and stamped them with the same numbers as complete bikes from their own sequence but added an X at the end. This has puzzled Interceptor fans for quite a while too!
REgards, Mark

Would the government of the day been offering tax credits to companies exporting products overseas?

Hmmmm, a conspiracy.

How quickly things fade from oes mind.
Remember the Ministry of Supply ?
One of the arcane burocracies that Prime minister Thatcher consigned to the garbage bin of history , about 30 year too late.

In order to get stuff like steel aluminium, copper actories had to prove it all got used in their products and the numbers had to add up.

different amounts of resources were allocated to factories depending upon weather the items were for export or home consumption.
There is a theory along those lines about the .Y and -Y A65's that appear on the back cover of the despatch books and were the wrong year for the engine numbers.
Theory goed BSA got the numbers wrong, or sent in the paperwork before all the bikes got made so a year latter had to go back and make sure the books tallied.

BSA was a massivily profitable company, no need to hide things particularly as they were running one of the stupidist tax evasion schemes ever invented.

In order to get money flowing into the economy dividends were not taxed but retained profits were so BSa paid out every penny in the bank account every year then borrowed every penny needed to build next years bikes as the money was required. This is one of the reasons why parts can have several part numbers depending upon the state of completion because floor stock was owned by the banks a security against the loans borrowed to buid them.

It was also the prime reason why there is no BSA today.

A cursory look t the entries can see the one on the line was the original and the one above it was done much latter. And the most likely reason is as previously mentioned, bike was returned for some reason then the engine reissued at a lotter date.
Remembe that the DESPATCH book is just that. A record of every thing as it left the gate. how it came to be inside was another thing all together.

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

I can imagine that there could have been some sort of fiddle at high management level. But surely it couldn't have been passed down to any old 'Joe Soap' at ground level.
Ron

email (option): ronpier@talk21.com

I am less suspicious than Rik. If there are corresponding engine and frame books you will notice the difference in hand writing between the 2 books. I guess that each book was edited by different persons at different times since there also differences in hand writing within a book (often depending on the date of registration in the book). It just was a complicated system in which (pre war) the lowest in the range of motorcycles sharing the same cycle parts was the frame number sequence and the engine then determined the actual model. For instance in 1936 quite a lot of models were fitted in the same frame as the W6 (500cc SV) do the frame number was D6. The engine that went in there were D6 (i.e. W6), D7 (Q&), D20 (R20 Blue Star, D21 (Q21 Blue Star). The same goes for the M series except for the M24 Gold Stars and the M23 Silver Stars. So in 1937 it was HM19, in 1938 JM19(JM24 for Gold Star), in 1939 KM20 (the M19 was no longer in production, KM23 for Silver star and KM24 for the Gold Star) and WM20 in 1940. Trying to figure that out almost certainly would lead to mistakes. But that is BSA logic for us to figure out nowadays.

Regards,
Leon

email (option): leonhop3_at_planet_dot_nl

Engine No's are in sequence. Frame No's are listed randomly, as are dispatch dates. One would expect at least the dispatch date to be in sequence. Also note the blanks where engine numbers were not used. This looks very much like a recon list or an attempt at one, compiled after the events.

email (option): pvlietstra at gmail.com

How little you know about The BSA.

BSA commonly shipped bikes with no engine or the wrong engine or for that matter 1/2 the parts missing or wrong.
If 30 bike were due to be shipped that day then come hell or high water 30 bikes got shipped. Ready or not

If you ever get to see an original book it looks exactly what I would expect a pre computer age dispatch record to look like.
Frame numbers went onto bikes before they were painted, in the sequence that they were made, engine numbers got stamped after the engine was built.
WM20 engine numbers got stamped after the engine was fitted to the frame.

The despatch books are exactly that, a record of what passed through the despatch department door ,litterally as they went through it.

Twenty five bikes sitting in despatch , truck turns up but the last 3 are still in mechanical rectification so you leave 3 spaces for them to be recorded.
BSA got paid according to what was written in those books so the entries will all be boni fide, not just what we in the excell spreadsheet days would expect.

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