Ya know, that bike looks amazingly like the one with the locomotive in the background...... Maybe because it is the same bike :eek1 Thanks for posting it, I never think to take a picture of it when I am at VMD.
Heres one I have , Its hard to say what it is , its a lot of fun, the first bike out in the spring and the last to be put away in the fall. Some day I may take it on a long camp out trip just to see how far it goes untill something fails. Dan
I've posted this elsewhere, but it belongs in this thread, too. I owned it from April 1982 until the fall of 1985. Never did get it charging properly. 1971 BSA B50SS Frame No. GE12659 If anybody can offer me any help finding the current whereabouts, I would be much obliged.
This bike belonged to our friend Malcolm Dixon AKA BritBodger. It was a hot rod, and he rode it like he stole it. Speaking in the past tense cuz Malcolm died a few years back. Great guy, RIP my friend! Great to see this in this newly dredged up thread.
A BSA thread needs a BSA Bantam picture or two, i know they are only toddlers but most Europeans over 25 at least must have owned or had some access to a Bantan at some point in their lives. I got one in bits but some one must have one or two on here, did they sell the Bantam in the states? I am fairly confident the ausies and kiwis will have had the Bantam, but not sure about The states.
My first bike was a BSA Bantam, the 150 Major, my wife's first bike was a Bantam too, she had a 175 Super. For all their problems they didn't put either of us off British bikes, but fuelled the desire for bigger. I don't have a BSA, and haven't had one for decades, but the '70's were all about BSA's for me. At 16 in 1970 I got a '51 B31, I wanted a B31 because it was almost the same as a B32, otherwise known as a Goldstar. In the '70's old BSA singles were not desirable by anyone at all, and I set about collecting parts, lots and lots of parts. With Goldy cams, high compression pistons, some porting and bigger carbs, various tuned length exhausts, my B31 got a lot faster. It was the '70's, so ended up with extended forks and everything I could removed chromed. On my 18 birthday we were run down from behind, I survived with a few grazes, the bike wasn't so lucky. I started a rebuild with another frame, but then picked up a '54 Goldflash with a blown engine. At the same time a friend fitted a semi unit A7 into his '54, so I got the engine, gearbox, chaincase and plates....but it still won't fit. Another friend who rode A10's had a twisted swingarm B31 frame lying in the grass in his backyard - so I cut the oilpump kink out and fitted it to my frame, giving him back an A10 frame. I built this bike up using my ZB31 engine. This is the day I got it running...it also came with no rear wheel, the only rear wheel I had lying around was from a Yamaha YDS3, so that's what it has. A mate was working at a place making school chairs out of 7/8 tubing, and put a few bends through in his lunch break, hence the unpainted bars. During my BSA parts collecting I found a '48 M20 in parts. I rebuilt the engine first, with a new piston, valve guides and bearings, and homemade headgasket. It ended up in my swingarm BSA - the bike BSA should've built, a swingarm M20. It has a QD BSA rear wheel here, and a solo seat I got off a scrambler. I made a segmented front pipe, 17 welds there. I finally sold all my BSA stuff in the early '80's when we decided to cut down on our parts inventory, just keeping my wife's pre unit Triumph 500's and parts, and my Featherbed Norton didn't need so many parts in stock.
