Ron, Looking at the despatch records and the arrivals at Chilwell, it would seem that the bikes left Bracebridge Street in the evenings...My suspicion is that lunch is likely to have been a Cheese and Onion sandwich with a Thermos of tea. :grinning:
It surprised me when I looked at this a while back, but the change seems to have occurred quite early and in fact occurred under contract C5612 while the BEF were still in France, although probably too early for any to have been delivered there...If evidence came to light that 2nd BEF had one or two with offset brackets though, I wouldn't dispute it.
Most of the photographic evidence that I have comes from use by the Corps of Military Police in Iceland. It is consistent that all machines up to and including C4153287 (W8119) had centrally-mounted instruments and that all bikes from C4153905 (W8737) have the off-set bracket. Delivery under C5612 commenced at W7000 on 4/3/1940 so this would put the changeover some time in mid-April 1940.
This is a nice clear image of a machine soon after the change..C4154277. It shows New Zealand troops in the UK during the second part of 1940.
Muthu, in order to make your images visible in the thread, you need to use the HTML Full Image link.
The frame number that you've shown is not a Norton stamping and looks to have been altered. I've certainly never seen a Norton factory stamp that extended beyond the lug onto the frame tube. The frame has both pillion footrest and field stand lugs so is broadly later than 1940.
The engine number was not applied in the factory either. Norton seem to have changed their casting practices around 1942 and this type of smooth but textured finish is normally seen on later engines. As far as I can tell, later spare engines left the factory with 79x100 bore x stroke markings but spare crankcases didn't. They are probably a replacement for the original W84809 but as well as the 'D', there are clues in the font such as the equal sizes of the loops in the figure '8'.
This is a number from around the same period.
This is an engine built from New Old Stock crankcases. As you can see, the same textured finish and no 79x100 marking.
