classic motorcycle forum

It’s pretty disappointing. The author obviously hasn’t been following what’s been going on here but I suppose if you live up in Gympie it’s a bit hard to keep in touch.

Yes, no hurry with the carb. A 1” will keep you happy until the right one comes along. I’d be more interested to ensure it has the right oil pump. 1950 was the first year of the upgraded oil pump with 1/4” diameter inlet shaft but who knows what has been done in the 70 years since.
The bottom end upgrade to Red Hunter essentially just entails fitting roller bearings instead of ball. I remember lovingly doing this to my 600cc VB Ariel being convinced no one rode their side valve slogger as hard as rode mine. (I’ve always been a dreamer). Then again, it was still running strong when I sold it in England, a long way from home and it remains the only motorcycle I’ve ridden up the Champs Élysée and round the Arc de Triomphe roundabout.
As you can gather, I rather like Ariel singles.

I’m rather curious as to the auction house’s position when the new owner gets their Pioneer Certificate application knocked back. It’s one thing to be just on the wrong side of a particular date but to be so many years out is a different matter.

The majority of Lilacs in Victoria were first registered as Le Mans. I haven’t counted them to get the exact number but there’s about 50 of them with about a dozen or so registered as Lilacs—- and some of those are duplicates of bikes originally registered as a LeMans. It seems that years later down the track if a bike was returned to the road the Le Mans bit was long forgotten so it treated as a first time registration and the paperwork filed as a Lilac.
It’s all very odd and I’d like to know why.
As it is it’s taken a bit of faffing about to record and reorganise this stuff so Lilac owners can actually track down their bikes history I’d like to know the story behind it.

XXA 20610 first registered 17/5/46 as a Malvern Star, number plate 3468. Maybe the first owners surname was Henderson?

Being engine number cards they are obviously stored in engine number sequence regardless of any prefix, suffix or whatever. I've been going through them trying to make some sense of them and can tell you the following;
The very earliest numbers must be the two prototypes. These are XX694 and XX699. These are 1939 Junior de Luxe numbers. Villiers then seem to have done some tweaking so the XX was replaced with XXA. Supposedly Villiers used this letter engine identifier prefix until until fairly soon postwar when they changed to an entirely numeric system and all engines thereafter have a 3 figure number identifier prefix except they soon ran up to 999 so had to start again adding a letter after the number so ***A, then ***B in due course and so on.
Using this system the post war Malvern Star Junior de Luxe are prefixed either 586 or S586. I've never discovered where the "S" came from but it's there. Just another little Malvern Star/Villiers mystery. Supposedly this is around 1946-47.
Theoretically then we should have a set of XXA engines with lowish numbers followed by a set of postwar 586 engines with rather higher numbers--- except that we don't.
We have instead XXA engines ranging from 16838 to 50032 (highest number listed) found in 6 batches with XXA's generally fading out around 1948 with the 586 engines numbers ranging from 1039 t0 18439 found in 7 batches mainly in the 1947-50 period. Then we have the 716 2 speed 1F engine numbers ranging from 5946 to 29311 found in 4 batches with most in the early 50's.
It does seem that Villiers delivered orders in some sort of drip feed system and that they retained the engine number prefix until that particular order was complete even though it could be quite some time after that specicfic prefix was supposedly done and dusted.
On top of all this we have interstate blow-ins, ex-NSW, ex Qld, plus Leons batch of 'refurbished" machines all with Vic rego dates all over the place.
Of course we don't know how Malvern Star dealt with these engines. Were the engines assembled into bikes in the order that were received or did the assembler just take the next one off the shelf. Trying to nut out how an Australian firm did business when having to rely on overseas supply of major components is enough to make your ears bleed.
Any questions? 

Hi Leon
I can’t answer all questions as of yet but will start the ball rolling.
The Malvern /Mobylette card has very little info. The engine number is 65854, it had been registered twice, first time reg number AS 043 but the date of registration was left blank. NEVER seen that before and I’ve now looked at a monumental number of these cards now. The second registration was on 22.10.55 and the number issued was BH 736. For those in other countries with different systems under the Victorian reg system the number plate is only valid while the registration is paid. The number plate reverts to the State if the fee isn’t paid.
Secondly I counted 265 registrations for 1F powered machines. Except for the few blow ins and the solitary 2F powered machines the rest were all fitted with JDL’s.
More info soon.

Whacko, going back through that old thread plus skimming through the bicycle forum thread shows I don’t need to worry about the frame numbers except confirm the autocycle numbering system fits in with the general Malvern Star system of the period. Which basically was known already. That’s one job ticked off.
I was also pleased to to see the bicycle thread covered braced forks on Army bikes so the braced forks on the initial style autocycle were no novelty to the factory.
Finally, I liked the remark about the factory using whatever building materials they could lay their hands on for Army bikes due to wartime shortages. I believe that ran through to the autocycles as well.
Good stuff Leon.