Help needed to ID British Bikes circa 1911 1912

[Giacomo Fosscati]

Hi I am new to this Forum and I live in Australia.
This is a photograph of my great uncle Arthur on his bike outside his parents house in Monkstown, Dublin probably circa 1911 - 1912. The other bike belongs to his brother and I reckon they date from between 1907 and 1915 but am not sure.  I would dearly like to know what make of bikes they are. I was wondering if the one in the foreground was an early Norton because they used those druid pattern girder forks and had left sided belt drive.
Any suggestions welcome.

[cardan]

Hi Giacomo,

Nice photo - nice house!

The lead bike is a powered by a 269cc Villiers two stroke, in what look like Sun cycle parts. The bike could be a Sun Villiers, but many smaller manufacturers used this same combination of motor and frame parts, so it could be one of the minor brands. A dating point is the magneto, which appears to be a British Thompson Bennett - I suspect then that the photo is war time (say 1915-16 at earliest) or just post war.

The second bike is a somewhat-modified 3 1/2 h.p. Rudge. The petrol tank has a custom paint scheme, and the exhaust is a long sweeping pipe instead of the usual short pipe and "coffee pot" silencer across the front of the motor. The dropped handlebars complete the racer image. Any motorcycle sport in the family?

Perhaps the registration will help with identification and dating.

Cheers

Leon

[chaterlea25]

Hi Giacomo,
The registration number on the lead bike "IF" is from County Cork, near enough 150miles from Dublin
coincidentally theres a Monkstown in Co Cork as well!! No mansions like the one in the photo though!!
I will ask a contact to see if the registration records can be accessed.
Leons magnyfing glass must be better than mine as I cannot make out many details on the "Rudge"
I would like to have a good look at a high resolution copy of the photo, ? if you can send me a pm

Regards
John O R

(Monkstown Co Cork)

[cardan]

I've played with veteran Rudges for 30-odd years - thus no need for the magnifying glass!

[Giacomo Fosscati]

Thanks so much Leon & John for your expertise. I have found another photograph which I’m including and it seems to show my great uncle Arthur Blair-White (1891 – 1975) in the foreground on the Rudge (eg LF2275) with the Villiers Sun (Reg IF1187) in the background with his older brother Charlie on it. I am almost certain these photos are pre-war because Arthur got married in 1919 and he had a bad war and probably wasn’t in the mood for riding much after he got back from France.  I was thinking the pics were taken in 1911 or 1912 but I’m guessing.  I’m glad that some of you guys can tell from a magneto or a gearbox what month of what year the model dates from.  That’s what I call expertise!
The house, incidentally, was called Ashton Park and it later became a boys prep school called  Brook House which existed until recently when it merged with Castle Park school and the site was developed for housing.  They look like a couple of toffs in their blazers I must say but their lives was soon to change drastically when they went to war.
I know from my Encyclopedia of the Motorcycle that there were literally dozens of British motorcycle makers at this time.  I know that many of them used the Villiers engines before developing their own and sometimes going back to Villiers or JAP again.  I also know that JAP and Blackburne made a lot of engines for many makes of motorcycle.
I do know that all Irish registrations had an I or a Z in them and any reg with I or  must be Irish.
I know that IL was a Fermanagh plate and IA was Co Antim etc.  Didn’t know IF was a Cork plate John.
I presume the LF plate is an English or Scottish plate.
Leon, how exactly can you tell it is a Villiers engine and how can you tell it’s a 2-stroke? Is it a valveless 2-stroke with disc valves because I’ve read about those.  I trust any expert eye but am always intrigued to know how you identify things.  I hope the new picture helps you to further define your diagnoses.
I’m interested to know what the top speed of these bikes might be and what brakes they had.  I make motorized bicycles myself using Honda, Subaru, Mitsubishi and other engines and they don’t look that unlike the ones shown in these pictures.  Their top speed is about 34 mph max and they are chain driven and usually single geared.  I can only get horizontal springer forks these days & they can’t be trusted that much but I would kill to get hold of a real vintage bike for close scrutiny.
These pics are the best resolution I can get but I can’t see a way of attaching images to a PM.  I can email the best copies to anyone who gives me an address.
I really am grateful for your help Leon and John and I thank you for it.  

[cardan]

Hi Giacomo,

The Rudge is a 1913 "TT Roadster" - the sporting man's choice. Single gear, no clutch, belt drive.

A good starting point for identifying any motor is the exhaust pipe. Notice on the Villiers is comes out horizontally at the front, half way up the cylinder. Only a two stroke has an exhaust in this position. The Rudge has a very high, left facing exhaust which is most unusual on a veteran bike.

Other give-aways on the Villiers - the muffler under the motor with double expansion chambers, outside flywheel on the left, cylinder shape and so on. The magneto appears to have two "knobs" on the alloy end plate. This was a feature of the British-made Thompson-Bennett magneto, which in the early 1920s became the first Lucas magneto. So far as I know, Thompson Bennett was one of the many brands of magneto that sprung up during the war - pre-war most magnetos were German, particularly Bosch. In fact the magneto on the Rudge is a German Ruthardt (the design of which was "stolen" by the British firm CAV, often seen on early 1920s Nortons). In 1912 Rudge used the German Eisemann magneto.

Anyway, I understand why dating the is so important. From the Rudge, we know that the photo cannot be earlier than 1913. Other than my notion that a Thompson Bennett magneto would indicate 1915-on, there's no reason why the photo couldn't be 1913-14. Does anyone know when Thomspson Bennett built their first magneto? Perhaps more info will come from the registration numbers.

Leon

[33d6]

Hi Giacomo,
I can confirm everything Leon says about the Villiers powered bike. As for how you can tell it is Villiers, to an early two-stroke enthusiast it is as obvious as the nose on your face. If you look carefully you can see the exhaust is attached to the engine with a triangular plate with a stud and nut at each corner. The cylinder has has horizontal fins right to the top and the cylinder head is non detachable, it cannot be removed from the cylinder. The exhaust is bog standard Villiers of the day. Spare parts lists are still available for these engines and the photo presses every button on the spare parts list. Villiers made 5 variations of this engine from 1913 to 1922, it is the ONLY engine they made at that time. You need the engine number prefix to accurately date the engine but your photo must fall in between those two dates.The engine number would date it far more accurately.
It is a piston port two-stroke and does not have a disc valve.
Brakes. The foot brake is a wedge shaped block that is pushed in to the drive pulley on the rear wheel, the front brake is an industrial size version of the pushbike brakes of the day with two brake blocks that are pulled on to the front wheel rim.
Performance is looked at quite differently. Its not a matter of outright speed but far more about hill climbing ability, easy starting and reliability.
If you are making your own motorized bicycles you are serving a veteran motorcyclist apprenticeship. Next step is a 1930's-40's autocycle and then you are ready for serious veteran motorcycling. Welcome to the brotherhood.
Cheers,

 

[cardan]

A quick visit to internet land and I have learned two things: there is no "p" in Thomson, and "When the first World War broke out the only manufacturers of magnetos in Great Britain were Thomson-Bennett". (I had thought there were none!) So, I have no probelm with a just-pre-war daye for the photo: 1913-1914.

Leon

[Giacomo Fosscati]

Hi Guys, thankyou all so much.  Your expertise is awe inspiring.  I myself have always had a love of anything on two spoked wheels but only very very recently have I become interested in the real vintage bikes like pre 1930.  At 59 it's good to know that I can still get a new passion.  We have a motorcycle museum in Australia somewhere between Byron Bay where I live and Sydney and I plan to visit it soon to look at bikes like the ones in the pictures.  Although I sort of model some of my motored bicycle creations on that vintage look I have never been able to get girder forks or suchlike and my Honda engines are too small to generate current to run lights so I have to use expensive battery lights although some of the new ones are really brilliant.  Anyway they really fall under the category of bicycles and not motorbikes so are not suitable for discusiion on this esteemed motorbike forum.
Very soon I plan to acquire a vintage motorbike for myself.  I was thinking of a Morini 350 sport and this is the website to find out what I need to know.
Anyway I cannot thank you enough for the kind help you have so freely given.  I now have a new interest in vintage bikes and this forum is the place to find out stuff.  I'm off to bed to ponder all you have written.  Piston-ported 2-strokes without a detachable cylinder head. The exhaust port being at the bottom of the barrel or pretty far down like in the Villiers. The inlet port must be really high up on the other side presumably.  I used to think all Villiers 2-stroke engines had fins that went from horizontal to vertical as they reached the top of the engine so to speak.  Why did Villiers not make a motorbike themselves.  Given the models of bikes they supplied in UK and Italy, France, Germany etc., Villiers must have been a very big industrial concern.
I have a lot to Google when I wake up!
If you want to look at some of my bike creations you can see them on:
http://fosscati.wordpress.com/
Thanks again for all you have done.  I am really thrilled and fascinated by it all.
Giacomo

[Giacomo Fosscati]

Leon, do you know how many cc the Rudge TT Roadster was? I know you said it was 3.5 bhp.

[RichP]

The registration 'LF' is listed as a London County Council series dating from May 1912 but unusually in this case the booklet that I have doesn't make it clear how long the series was in use.

A quick edit - this website indicates that the series was in use up until February 1913 :-

http://www.oldclassiccar.co.uk/registrations/lf.htm

[cardan]

The 3 1/2 h.p. Rudge was 85x88=499cc. There was also a 750cc version, with the same bore but a phenomenal stroke of 132mm.

The "TT Roadster" was just like the standard model, but was not fitted with pedals for starting and had a shorter wheelbase. If you bought your "TT Roaster" without mudguards, rear carrier and other road-going gear it would be called a "Brooklands Racer".

Leon

[R]

The museum at Nabiac has many interesting bikes. As everywhere, read the plaques beside the bikes with an open mind, you sometimes see some mildly, or wildly, inaccurate words !!

What sort of Honda engines won't drive a generator ?
Even 50cc scooters come with full electrics...

[Giacomo Fosscati]

What sort of Honda engines won't drive a generator ?
Even 50cc scooters come with full electrics...

The Honda GXH50 is a horizontal shafted motor for pump or generator. At least it is built in Japan unlike the 35cc model which is made in Thailand. It has no electrical running capabilities. I have a few queries about the fascinating stuff that has been written above but won't get time to write it until later tonight or perhaps Tues night.
I would pay a fortune just to get my hands on a saddle from one of the above bikes not to mention the forks, wheels, frames or engines and of course the tanks.
I can get a tank fabricated to fit in theequivalent space on a beach cruiser bicycle but it would cost serious money.  I can also get a bicycle frame builder to build me a frame from drawings (with lug joints etc) all I would need is a good side on picture of the bike and I could draw the frame in AutoCAD which I have done before and accurate to within a couple of mm.  How I wish I had inherited some of the tools that those old motorcycle makers must have had in their factory workshops.  Which reminds me I need 5.5 million Euro of readies if I want to buy Moto Morini at auction this wednesday.

[R]

You can buy basket case or project Veteran bikes for a lot less than that 5.5 million Euros !
Good ones, even....

We diverge, but how do we know even a ballpark figure for what MotoMorini will bring at auction ?
Always sad when someones pet project of reviving a name goes belly up - but they were priced above Ducati equivalent models, more or less, so no great surprise. The Corsaro Veloce models appealed - but folks wondered why they were 87 degree v-twins, what happened to the other 3 degrees ??