Bsa - Wm20 77869

[Darren Witty]

Thanks for the information. I had a look on the WM20 site mentioned above and it shows my bike 77869 as early 1942 with numbers as late as 82450 still being made in 1942. Have they got it wrong or is there an explanation....and I'm not reading it right?

[rewdco]

Originally Posted by Darren Witty

Thanks for the information. I had a look on the WM20 site mentioned above and it shows my bike 77869 as early 1942 with numbers as late as 82450 still being made in 1942. Have they got it wrong or is there an explanation....and I'm not reading it right?

Darren,

It looks as if the dates in the WM20 website list are only based on the information which can be found in the "British Forces Motorcycles" book by Orchard and Madden. For this contract C/13290, they only quote a "demand date" of 26/01/1942. This is by no means the start of the deliveries for a certain contract! The delay between the "demand date" and the start of the production could well be several months, even years!

I have based my theory upon data which I found on the "receive cards", now held in the VMCC library. The "demand date" (24(!)/01/42) can be found at the top of the card. Don't know yet what the date in the bottom left hand corner (30/11/42) exactely means, but I did find out that this date is always quite close to the date of the start of the deliveries. On the reverse, there are more details about the number of motorcycles being delivered every day. E.g. on day 322 (of 365 days in a year), there were 16 plus 60 bikes delivered.

By the way, did you see that pannier rack scetch on the BSA site today? Just what you were looking for at the start of this thread?

Regards,
Jan