BirminghamtoBerlin.com


Classic WWII BSA WM20 Military Motorcycle Run - Summer 2009

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Site very much under construction just like the 2 Beezas we are working on.
Please bear with us this site is an ever changing work in progress.....

All thats left of the once huge BSA Factory
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Pic courtesy www.madeinbirmingham.org

Our header picture - this is Poignant and rather sad as its all that is left of the once huge BSA empire on Armoury Road, Smallheath, Birmingham, the building is - I am told, the sidecar assembly shop. At the end of WWII this factory employed more than 28,000 people. This is where in Summer of 2009 our marathon 850 mile trek to Berlin begins. I just thought you might like to see how the mighty are fallen.
 

Just recieved yesterday evening a series of pics of Steve Maddens superb restoration of an early WM20, heres a general taster - more pics in the Pin up bike section.

Steve Maddens newly restored BSA WM20
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Note many early model features

L to R Hans, Richard & Paul
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Here we have myself, somewhat younger (the handsome one in the middle) on my Matchless G3, with a friend riding my M20 in Wales. The gentleman standing at left is Herr Johanes Loebnitz, a very inspiring man who taught me a lot, and who incidentally was the chap who took the photograph of Wing comander Douglas Bader sitting in the cockpit of a Messerschmitt Bf109 whilst a guest of General Galland and the Luftwaffe after bailing out of his Spitfire over occupied France.

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A pint of best to the first person to name the 80's Speedway Star in the background

Hot off the camera Richards bike 15th June 2008
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First time outside in 7 years

Richards bike again
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looking good apart from the oil leak!

Richards 'crack of doom', failed weld on gearbox
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Despite looking nice its all got to come apart again!

Chris's magdyno-less WM20
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squinting in the light of day

Wiring loom going on
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note new 'original' blackout hood on Chris's WM20

Nice close up of the once used speedway tires
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Tread is a slightly modified Dunlop universal

Rich's M20 back on its own two wheels
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after 5 years in boxes - poor thing!

Two M20's being reborn! Richards in the foreground
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he's assembling his in the correct order!!!

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Click this text to be taken to our new Weblog page & why not sign up & participate? (Opens in a new window).

Diary log
Tuesday 26th August
The pleasure of working on the bike has been forfeit this bank holiday weekend due to work going crazy in what is normally a quiet month for engineering firms.
 
I stumbled upon a small Lubricant Equivalents document in the front of a Matchless Maintenance manual, produced by the REME engineers at Chilwell dated 1st April 43, with a date like that one immediately thinks practical joke - I have retyped it into my worm processor and will post it in the REME section along with the lubricants chart I posted recently.
 
I have been trying to find good clip art of BSA WM20's but there aint much around I was sent a very nice adaption of the Line drawing that appears in the owners handbook, which I thought people could copy then colour in to record the details of their WM20, and if you care to submit the finished item we will keep a line drawing registry of visitors bikes all to a common scale. Ive posted that in the REME section too.
 
Saturday 16th August
Hier, le 15 août 2008 les enthousiastes de motocyclette britanniques en France ont découvert notre site Internet. J'irais comme dire être bienvenu à tous nos visiteurs de la France et à tout le monde parlant français. J'espère que vous avez trouvé notre site Internet intéressant.
 
My apologies if the welcome to our visitors from France above is not quite grammatically perfect, I used an online translator program. In the past we have had a few hits from France but yesterday it seems France discovered our little website giving us the highest 1 day hit total since we started the website.
 
This website is maintained by enthusiasts for all enthusiasts of WWII British military motorcycles, predominantly BSA WM20's at present but soon to expand into other makes, It thrives on the contributions from its visitors so feel free to drop us a line or send us a picture of your motorbike or ongoing restoration project.
 
We hope our mad project to drive our restored BSA WM20's from Birmingham to Berlin will give others enthusiasm to have a go at something gloriously eccentric.
 
Friday 8th August
Well Ive been updating the website continuously over the last 3 days, plenty of new material in the Rare Pics, Richard C's page has a feature on making a pair of early pattern KM front footrests, more stuff on REME and QMS pages, Ive almost lost track of the changes, tidying up pages to present better, more links, yadda yadda yadda,
 
Monday 28th July
No usual weekend entry due to the VMCC founders day meet at Stanford Hall - what a cracker it was too, scorching hot and more good lumps of rusty metal than you could shake a stick at. I managed to obtain a 3 gallon petrol tank with both rear tails - so far all I'd been able to get for my projects was two both with one side cut off for the Vokes filter air hoze. Its ready to paint too! It had a bonus in the form of the early fuel cap with the round tap handle type opening lugs.
also In todays update I have posted the official lube chart for the BSA WM20.
 
Sunday 20th July
An important development for the website, a good friend of mine of many years standing, Steve Madden who co authored British Forces Motorcycles 1925-1945 and his partner Jenny, who has proven her vast knowledge of all things WWII WD Motorcycycle have most graciously agreed to act as authenticity consultants for our website. This is a great honour for us, and will increase our knowledge base almost infinitely. To this end I have given them their own problem page where we will feature the questions and their answers. To start the ball rolling all you have to do is eMail us with your question via the 'contact us' link on the QMS page
 
Friday 18th July
Sadly the guy in France has not been in touch I can only assume permission is not granted to feature the pics of a very nicely restored BSA KM20, albeit in civvy trim - who wants to see flashy civvy stuff anyway!! Give me Olive Drab any day.
 
Been a good week apart from having my one and only lot of BSA M20/21 parts on e Bay yanked because the AA said I was infringing their trademark ergo their intellectual copyright when I described a petrol tank as AA pattern, they seem oblivious to the fact this pattern of tank was a special made to order contract by BSA only for the AA - how else should I describe it then? Dunderheads!
 
My Mag Dyno is finished just awaiting collection - hooray! Also Ive been a  BAD Boy! Couldnt resist flexing my overdraft & buying a 1939 Girder forked Matchless G3WO Kit of parts for restoration, Its missing the early type fuel tank, chaincase clamping strip and handlebars, its in many tiny pieces and Im just going to hide this away for a while till the BSA projects are finished, as fate would have it this bike is from the same contract as Richards, theyre only 150 different on the frame numbers which equals a week and a half apart in construction - considering how many thousands were made - spooky yet again!!
 
Thursday 10th July
I have had such positive reaction about the header pic of the BSA factory I have decided to leave it up for a while.
 
I deleted the Mainly BSA link as they now no longer sell spares - its good news really as they are now using their stocks of parts to rebuild complete bikes and anything that puts more WM20's out there cant be all bad. Instead we now have a link to the annual War and Peace show down in Beltring Kent.
 
Lastly have started a special page for the El Alemein Norton 16H - Pics courtesy of Ulrich - I someday hope to see this historic beastie in the flesh.
 
Thursday 3rd July.
Firstly to all our American visitors Happy 4th July for tomorrow.
 
I have news of a KM20 restoration in France - I am awaiting permission from the owner before I put anything on the website. Also we have a new Pinup bike of the week from Colin Smith of Derby here in the UK.
 
Saturday 28th June
Today a WWII British army Log Book 412 - WD WM20 Service log book sold on eBay UK for over £104 - is this a record? 
 
Next a small but important note - We have in all cases gone to great pains to obtain permission from the copyright owners to display all the pictures seen on this site, saving pictures to your computer for your own personal use/reference gets no complaints from us, however using them for commercial gain in any way without obtaining permission in writing from the website owners - namely Richard and I is regarded as breach of copyright and will be treated accordingly.
 
Monday 23rd June
Didnt think I'd be posting again so soon but an interesting eMail from Ulrich this morning gave me new material to add to his page.
 
Next I won off eBay a drivers handbook for a military WM20 when I checked the number range on the booklet it turns out it is for exactly the batch my bike was in - hows that for spooky!
 
Lastly - I have webbing saddle covers up for sale now with Terry maker plates on the reverse. They really do look the business - well you can see them on richards and my bikes on this front page. I will also be getting pillion covers made too.

Stephen Dunne's WM20 in Delhi
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see log Fri 13th June, click pic to enlarge

Friday 20th June 2008
Well today we got news of our first official sponsorship - Colin Baker of CBOC lubricants pledged a generous amount of SAE30 engine and gearbox oil. Thank you very much Colin - much appreciated. Sponsorship is an aspect we had not given much consideration to but obviously if it is available it will make the expense of the undertaking a lot more bearable.
 
To make matters worse it looks like the eBay seller I was buying the customised M/C jackets from has done a runner with my £96. 2 weeks ago they promised me a refund cheque but nothing has arrived. To cap it off they are no longer a registered eBay member. So we are once again looking for a supplier for custom embroidered Jackets. The persons name and eBay ID is published here with a warning to be wary of doing any business with this person :- ubol sueathet, ebayclaudeballs@yahoo.co.uk
 
Sunday 15th June 2008
As it was such a beautiful day I pushed Chris's and my M20 out into the fresh air and sunlight. For mine it is the 1st time for around 7years, for Chris's perhaps much longer!
 
Having being alerted to my self draining gear box, I have cleaned away the oil and sure enough there is the problem! I had had the outer casing welded up prior to assembly but it has fractured in exactly the same spot. On checking a spare casing I have, it is cracked in the same place. Is this a common weakspot!
Chris very kindly offered a 3rd casing only to discover that this one was cracked too! O well its off to the welding chap with it.
 
Chris is impatiently awaiting the return of his magdyno, and has taken the starting of my M20 1st very well.
 
Friday 13th June 2008
Yesterday I found a big puddle of oil under Richards WM20 a welded repair to a cracked front casing on his gearbox has opened up again - shame (no I'm not sniggering!)
 
Bad news on the driving test - I cant take my Direct Access 5 day course on my WM20 because its not powerful enough at 12 hp it has to be over 46 HP so Im going to have to take it on a 500cc Kawasaki with the controls all in different places - brilliant! The law is an ass! If they deliberately wanted to make something more dangerous than it need be they couldnt have come up with a better plan.
 
Visitor Stephen Dunne sent in a picture of his WM20 being restored in Delhi India and has promised to keep us appraised of his progress with more pics and updates, he also may be joining us as a 3rd Bike on the Berlin run either for the full run or a part of it - welcome aboard Stephen. The more the merrier.
 
Monday 9th June 2008
Rats! Richard started his M20 yesterday - first bloomin kick too - he started it again today just to rub salt in the wound! Oh well he's won the race.
 
I implemented the Weblog page for this site today, where visitors can participate in discussions, post pics etc, generally get interactive to use the current jargon. I also coughed up the extra to increase the site size by 150% from 10 pages to 25.
 
Posted a bunch more useful links on the REME page, Other than that rather quiet in the post weekend blues :(
 
Saturday 7th June 2008
Not much news - some more pics from Ulirch in Libya of the 2 M20's now dragged out of the old shipping container. Rust looks to be just surface rust.
 
Also more rare bits pics too...
 
Wednesday 4th June 2008
Ive updated the rare bits pics page with loads of more interesting photos many courtesy of regular contributor Richard Corcoran.
 
I know many of you are chomping at the bit over the Libyan connection, suffice to say the wait will be worthwhile, in the meantime I will post a couple more pics from Ulrich - I will move them all to his own page when it is implemented.
 
My Magdyno has gone to an ex Lucas man to be thoroughly checked out and if neccessary rewound, Les Nation is a very interesting fellow, well into his 70's he still rebuilds Magdynos to competition standard - did you know competition magnetos are wound on stainless steel cores? Thats all the difference there is really. I was also told that it was common for the wire to snap when Magnetos were being wound the wire was joined and the winding finished, however any rotors that ended up being wound from a single length were put in a special box and collected at the end of the day to be used in lucas Racing magnetos. A good powerfull and reliable Magdyno is going to be essential on the run to Berlin so I thought this is worth the expense!
 
Sunday 1st June 2008
Well I wasnt actually going to put an entry in the diary for today but the site was loading slowly and I though I'd better explain - sitemeters server was down, theres a bit of HTML script on the front page that logs in - except it cant find it so it tries for a default period of time then loads the page without sitemeters link/logo.
 
Anyway now I'm here some news about my bike at least, 3 of us spent a very frustrating 2 1/2 hours yesterday trying to get my Beeza to run, 3 chugs and a backfire was the longest we managed to get out of it. After much kicking over and tweaking of the points and only right legs feeling like they were made of rubber for our trouble, we found the magneto was not sparking reliably - when it did spark it was a big fat juicy blue spark but it was erratic, we tried electrical contact cleaner solvent to clean the pickups, fitted a new earth lead but still no difference - so Im afraid the Mag Dyno will have to come off.
 
Friday 30th May 2008
Fully refreshed after a long bank holiday weekend, buckled down to some serious work, the New Oil tank has been mounted and plumbed in and the battery carrier re-mounted ready for wiring in. Now Im happy about the Oil system I may actually try to fire her up this weekend. Fingers crossed!
 
As a result of correspondance with visitors to this site I am going to include visitors bikes in  illustrated items about their restoration projects. My first such guest is Richard Corcoran who is putting together a very early 1939 BSA KM20 
 
Tuesday 20th May 2008
A few things done today, fitted the thru body dynamo bolt that Ive been short of for ages - a member of the BSA WM20 forum came up trumps with a spare pair, also disassembled the enots petrol taps and fitted new cork seals top and bottom to the sliders, we'd been fortunate enough to find a supplier of the replacement cork seals at the Stafford classic bike show and autojumble.
 
Lastly stamped up the etched brass data plate on the Indian made replica Vokes air filter, suitably aged with a gentle rub with fine wire wool over the black paint covering. Going to have to make up the side mounting lugs but another member of the BSA WM20 forum has given me a good lead on someone that might make me a set copied from an original.
 
Sunday 18th May 08
Site updates include pics of webbing saddles originals and the copies we're having made and pics of the battery carrier nuts we made ourselves - indistinguishable from originals - I kid you not!

Feel free to browse the site, things change around here on almost a daily basis, any comments good or bad you care to leave in our guestbook area are appreciated - go to QMS and scroll down.