classic motorcycle forum

+You do not have to be a member of the BSA owners club to get the dispatch records for your bike it will cost you £15 a member pays £5.The person to contact is the librarian Steve Foden he can only be contacted by letter, his address is113 Holmville Road Bebington Wirral CH63 2PX. You need to send a Cheque payable to BSAOC library account also SAE envelope. You will also have to provide photos of the bike also pencil rubbings of the engine and frame numbers this is a requirement of the DVLA. For this you will recieve a document which will tell you when the bike left the factory who it was dispatched to also whether the engine and frame were together when they left the factory you may also be informed when it was first registered and what colour it was if he has that info. I am a member of the BSA owners club and done this a number of times for different bikes but be patient for a reply as this is a voluntary job and he does have a life to lead on average it usually takes about 2 weeks.

As has been said no engine numbers began with FA7 only frames. A possible explanation could be if there is no sign of tampering is that the cases were replacement ones supplied by the factory  if so these were not stamped by BSA but were supposed to be stamped up by the dealer but I have heard of cases that were not stamped by the dealer so you have 2 explanations 1 they were stamped by a dealer but were mistakenly stamped with a frame number or 2 a previous owner has done the same thing. The correct size  stamps are not hard to obtain.

I have a 1963 A65 and it is positive earth it is fitted with Pazon electronic ignition which can be wired up either positive or negative earth.

If you read about the rise and fall of the BSA marque you will get a good perspective of what went wrong, there was no one single cause in my own opinion it was a combination of really very bad management government changes in the law and it has to be said strikes by the ordinary working man. A brief idea in regard to the afore mentioned reasons. Bsa owned Sunbeam Ariel and Triumph so in effect it was competing with itself when you think that take any of the Japanese manufacturers of the time Honda only made Honda motorcycles  Yamaha only made Yamaha bikes as did Suzuki also Kawasaki, also the management of the time relied too much on the loyalty of the British working man instead of taking on the Japanese manufacturers BSA had plenty of very good designers but the management refused to invest until it was too late. Also at that time the late fifties and maybe early sixties there were no regulations as to the size of bike you could ride you could  buy a 1000cc Vincent Black Shadow stick a couple of L plates on and away you go. When the government did change the law and limited learners to 250cc until they passed their test, learners had the choice of far superior Japanese small bikes and the British small bike market was the first to collapse. In regard to Strikes the british bike market  BSA and Triumph in particular also Norton were doing very well in America to the detriment at the time of Harley and Indian makers. Now in America the  bike buying was seasonal you had to have all your exports in the States at the beginning of the season what happened in 1970 was all the BSA and Triumph bikes were in the docks ready go when the dockers went on strike, BSA never really recovered from that strike and the Americans turned mainly to the Japanese. It is hard to understand how a company so big and diversified as BSA could not take on and beat the Japanese in 1959 BSA was the largest motorcycle producer in the world they owned numerous other companies such as Raliegh pedal cycles they owned Daimler cars Alfred Herbet machine tools they even owned a factory not far from where I live and made Caterpillar earth moving equipment under licence from Caterpillar in the USA, that factory is still there today but it is now owned by Komatsu making their own earth moving equipment.

Only the tax element is rolling on each year the MOT part still remains at pre 1960.

I see where you are coming from but I think that most of the people that own classic bikes are rather elderly like myself and there is no way that if I get up one morning to go to a classic bike meet and it is raining and the forecast is no improvement then I will not be going it has nothing to do with the value of the bike but simply I see no pleasure riding in the rain any distance just to stand around in the rain done it to many times in my youth. If the forecast says only light showers in the morning and dry in the afternoon then depending on distance I would go in the afternoon even though I would have to spend quite a bit of time cleaning the bike the next day because of the wet roads.

Don't get hung up on this they are all just words Veteran Vintage Classic you have veteran soldiers, vintage wine, classic  cultures such as Greek or Latin and not forgetting the classic horse races I suppose it all depends on the way each individual looks at it. With regard to vehicles if you want enter the London to Brighton Veteran Run it has to have been built before 1905. I have no strong feelings myself if it is over 25 years old and no longer in production then  to me it is a classic but that is just my opinion others will probably differ. I think you will find that most people would consider your bantam as a classic as is my 1956 BSA A7 and 1963 BSA A65.