Australian-made motorcycles in the 1950s - help please

[33d6]

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.

[cardan]

Exactly. Here's a relevant snippet re wartime production of Malvern Star bicycles, no doubt relevant to autocycles as well:

"During the war when overseas shipments of cycle parts ceased, Allied Bruce Small Ltd undertook the manufacture in Australia of many parts it had previously been considered impossible to make in this country. These were urgently required for the manufacture of thousands of military bicycles and further thousands for essential civilian use.
Many thousands of pounds have been spent in importing from England the latest machinery for rapid precision manufacture of these parts. Chain wheels and cranks, pedals, hubs, sprockets, spokes, tubular steel, cable brakes and many other parts are now being manufactured in Australia."

Notable absent from the list are frame lugs; as R pointed out lots of BSA lugs were used. The new "auto byke" (the name delightfully ripped off from the Excelsior Autobyk) for 1946 was all welded, so few lugs were needed.

Leon

[john.k]

Some one should tell the museum their prices are wrong too.......what they quote are deposits ....ride away with lots more to pay.

[cardan]

Hi John,

I see the date on the Museum Victoria MS has been updated to 1952, so that's a good start. I'm working with them on their "other" "Malvern Star" https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/391795 , which to me looks like a pretty standard 1950-51 Mobylette, but maybe there is something in the story that it was "built in Melbourne from French components".

When we've got that sorted, and 33d6 has finished his analysis, we'll have the full MS autocycle story and we can straighten out the few funny things (like the prices) that have slipped into the museum descriptions.

In the meantime, I'm helping a friend to rebuild his 1917 Regnis, which means I revisit A.G. Healing frame numbers and dating, and I'm revisiting an early Clipper motorcycle built in South Australia around 1906, and I'm still working on the other 1942-1960 Australian-made bikes. Plenty to keep me busy.

Leon

[33d6]

I've now transcribed all the Malvern Star cards recording engine number and the first time it was registered in Victoria and can say the following. Remember, Victorian registrations only.
There were 985 cards most of which were straight Malvern Star machines but some peculiar blow ins as well. The clip on engine era really confused the Registration branch so what they did was record the make of bicycle as the vehicle, so Malvern Star bicycles with clip ons attached are here also. There are two Berini, two Cyclemaster and two Cucciolo plus a couple were they didn't actually say what the make of engine was but recorded an engine number advising it belonged to a 1/4hp, 25cc engine. There was a single 2F powered MS plus another that had its original 1F engine replaced with a 2F. One power crazed enthusiast replaced his 1F with a 125cc 9D engine. Finally, there was a solitary Malvern Star/Mobylette.
There was some wartime production but not a great deal. Malvern Star may have had the engines but we've already read how they had issues making all the other bits and pieces needed to make a complete machine. Anyway, annual war years registrations were as follows. 1941 - 2, 1942 - 2, 1943 - 3, 1944 - 25, 1945 - 4 up until VE Day and I couldn't remember the month of VJ Day. Thats the minimum as there are hints that wartime record keeping wasn't as accurate as it could be. Many reasons for that at the time of course. In view of world events I don't think there was anyone there carefully dotting every i or crossing every t. The odd one got missed out. I'll do a bit more looking around now I have all cards in a countable format.
Last thing, there appears to have been two prototypes. One was the first 1941 registration the other quite a bit later.
Any questions?

[cardan]

Oh wow. Amazing. 985-ish Malvern Stars in Victoria might translate to (wild guess) 1200-1300 registered Australia-wide. Maybe more - you could inspect a Malvern Star autocycle in a Bruce Small branch in Innisfail in far north Queensland or Norseman in rural WA. Lots of national advertising and in Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth.

The shock is the really small numbers for 1943, 1944 and the first part of 1945. I was ready for tiny numbers in 1940, 1941 and 1942, but I expected way more from then on. Priorities and problems I guess.

Questions? Yes.

1. The new Malvern Star Auto-byke (with the Webb-pattern spring fork and the diamond-shape tank) was announced in October 1946. So how many MSs were registered prior to the end of 1946? There are a fair number of survivors of the rigid-fork, coffin-tank model, so I guess a decent number were made in the second half of 1945 and 1946?

2. How many Junior De Luxe engines in total? If we subtract the answer to (1) from this we get something like the number of Auto-bykes.

3. How many 1Fs in total?

4. Tell all about the Malvern Star / Mobylette! I wonder if there was consideration of assembling the French wonder machine locally. If you let us know the engine number I will ask the museum if theirs is the same bike.

Thanks for the great work - so interesting.

Leon

[33d6]

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.

[john.k]

In 60 years I have seen one complete MS motorcycle .....and that was a NOS bike in the John Longland collection..........who knows what has happened to it............Some 10 years ago I saw the concours 1914 Triumph he had ..........no longer concours ,but a rusted relic .

[cardan]

A NOS Malvern Star Auto-byke? I'd be up for it provided it was one of the green frame/cream tank/crimson wheel rim models. Very fetching.

33d6: Fabulous stuff. I have passed the Malvern Star/Mobylette engine number on to the museum and they will have a close look at their machine to ascertain whether it's the same bike, and also review their documentation to see why they state that it was made in Melbourne from French parts. I've asked them to check the frame number: certainly a Malvern Star type frame number (51M etc) would suggest local build. Interesting that "local assembly from a foreign set of parts" is something that drive the local motorcycle industry since before WW1.

Just one more question: what is the rough split on prewar/postwar JDL engine numbers? Just trying to verify Bruce Small's 1941 claim that the company had "about 500" JDL engines "on hand". Given the small wartime production they must have been using them well after the war?

What a lot of interesting things have come from looking into a most uninteresting motorcycle!

Cheers

Leon

[john.k]

John Longland (or was it Longhurst) was a real estate millionaire on the Gold Coast who had a big collection of early (for 1970) bikes and Rolls Royces ........he would have known Small for sure ............I d long forgotten ,until I saw the Triumph come up on ebay about 10 years ago,as the advert showed a letter from Triumph concerning the bike.,and another about the Pioneer Run from the VMCC.

[33d6]

I’m away from home at the moment. Will give an unexpected answer in due course.
I did bring the 1945, (15), 1946, (55) and 1947,(76) rego figures with me hoping for an opportunity to give them.
Can’t say much more until  I return home.

[cardan]

So the rigid-fork coffin-tank pre-1947 model were built in relatively small-numbers - maybe 100-150? With 265 2-speeders at the end, looks like most MSs were the "Auto-byke" with the Webb pattern fork. Makes sense.

Leon

[33d6]

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? 

[R]

After this write up, everyone will be wanting one !

Dare we mention a FB.
And I have a similar tank for a New Hudson.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffspiccies/4760798382/in/photostream/

[cardan]

Dare we mention a FB.

No! I have created a soft spot in my heart for Malvern Stars, but the rest... not for me thanks.

33d6: Brilliant. So much info, and particularly interesting about the drip-feeding of engines from Villiers. Hard to interpret, though. Could Bruce Small's assertion to shareholders in December 1941 that there were "about 500" engines "on hand" be true, even if the engines had arrived in batches during 1940-41, even if production was very small until after the war? If so, there would be little correlation between engine dating and machine dating; the latter of course can come easily from the frame number...

The other issue is interstate sales numbers. I have found stuff relating to NSW sales during 1952. In ten months (no figures for  Feb or Dec, but they could be found) there were 52 "new registrations" for Malvern Stars, so let's say 60-65 for the year. That's a lot. There were quite a few registered into 1953, and I'd expect sales in SA, WA and Queensland to be reasonably strong also. Perhaps 1500 would be a better guess for total production? No wonder they are around in numbers.

Just the Malvern Star Mobylette story to be sorted, and I reckon I'm done.

Cheers

Leon