classic motorcycle forum

Only one suggestion. Many of those Coventry Eagle models have a cast aluminium silencer which can require some effort to get right. The common trick is to make up a set of the Cov Eagle optional ‘sporting’ high set pipes and avoid the cast aluminium silencer.
This is sad because firstly those ‘sporting’ pipes tend to be rather inconvenient in use and secondly they tended to reduce performance rather than enhance it. A cast aluminium silencer is better in all respects.
Hopefully you will go down the trickier but better cast aluminium  silencer route.
Best of luck.

I’ve now received the formal reply to my AOMC Montgomery/Utility search. It adds a little more info to the first, informal phone call.
Although now definitely a 1939 Montgomery (1939 is UKVMCC confirmed) its first registration was January 1941. Why so big a gap I’ve no idea. WWII was well underway by then so whether that held up shipping it out or people stopped buying for awhile when war was declared or whatever I don’t know. It’s just another piece of the jigsaw. All I know is the date it was registered, what rego number it was issued with for it to then disappear from view until I got the hideous remains a lifetime later. I can track the remains back a few owners so I might try and back track a little further.
I do know what it is, I do have concrete evidence of it entering the Victorian registration bureaucracy so I know it is lifelong Victorian machine.
AOMC also advised they have some 75 or so Montgomery in the engine number records so not a big seller under their own name. I suppose I’ll now have to find out who the local agent was.
All this fora very ordinary little bike. But a bike with a local story which makes it so much more interesting.

You're so right Rex.
Anyway, Montgomery/Utiliity update. Had a preliminary phone call this morning with printed confirmation to come.
My 1939 Montgomery is just that and not a Utility. On top of that, there were NO 9D powered 125cc Utility. The 9D powered Montgomery wasn't sold as a Utility. There are none in the AOMC records. The smallest Utility recorded were powered by the 148cc Mk12C, engine prefix GY.
Montgomery did sell bikes powered by this engine in the early thirties but I have limited Montgomery information and don't know exactly what years these were. Nor do I yet know what years these particular Utility are. I only know they exist.
I was also interested to learn that AOMC have roughly some 300 Utility on record.  I don't know whether they were only sold out of their Melbourne shop and this is all of them or whether some were sent interstate for sale elsewhere. Perhaps Leon can tell us if Utility were sold in SA?
So, as usual, getting some answers invariably leads to more questions and we still don't have absolutely concrete information on the Montgomery/ Utility tie up. Known but not proven yer'Onor.
Hopefully though, I have opened the door a crack to the AOMC records.

Ha! You are learning the practicalities of registering your motorcycle in country towns in the so called good old days. Easy peasy now with wham, bam thank you ma'am, computerisation and God Wot but a little bit of forethought needed back then.
The Victorian way was for each country police station to keep a bundle of numberplates on hand ready to issue. No writing to town required, no re-issue of previous numbers allowed. (Note for our UK readers. The authorities want you to display a numberplate? Certain size, certain colour and so forth? Then they better supply'em----and they did.)
In my own case I rode my unregistered ex WD M20 BSA down to the local cop shop, got it registered, a pair of numberplates was given me for later attachment (BK520, strange how you remember these things) and I then took my licence test on it. From unregistered, uninsured with unlicenced rider to all legal on the road in one stop at the local cop shop, no questions asked.

Yes.
That said, the engine is at least 80 years old and most likely has been mauled about by a succession of enthusiastic owners so the surface of the head isn’t as good as it should be.
It would probably benefit from a light skim to clean it up before you start. As may the cylinder itself.
Villiers heads are so small they are easy to hold in a lathe. Years ago I made up a fixture to do so.
The fixture is very simple consisting of a circular base plate four spacers and four masonry anchors. Works for me.

Have another look. Prefix AXF is used on the 1934-40 250cc Mk16A but AXÉ is not used on any Villiers motorcycle engine.
Don’t know about Villiers industrial engines.

Difficult to tell, Leon. Montgomery seemd to change the specification at the drop of a hat.I suspect it was a case of fit whatever they could get for a good price. Certainly by the late thirties they were fitting pressed steel forks and tube type girders to both their 250 and 350 models. The standard model of both got pressed steel and the de luxe model tube type. The 500 seemed to get tube type on both standard and de luxe. So those bikes could be of any capacity but I assume either 350 or 500. They seem a little too hefty for a 250.
Then again they used some components across the range. For example the rear wheel mounted in the same fork lug on everything throughout the range. It does look a little overdone on my little beast. Not only that the lug had a protrusion each side for the chain adjuster. They just bashed the unwanted protrusion off to majke it either a left hand or right hand lug. They did not clean off the remains.
In close up the Montgomery is not elegant!!