Fiction or Fact...

This so named  BSA C15T (C25) the subject of this page, is said to be an ex works machine built in the Competition Shop at BSA and ridden by both Brian Martin and Jeff Smith.. Was it?

 We see if we can find out the truth...

05/10/2021...

Yesterdays news gets more intriguing now I have done a bit more delving... on what is said to be a "Works" BSA... The bike was last sold by Bonhams in 2016 at Stafford...

Here is the write up... from Bonhams 2016...

04/10/2021...

We need more information on this bike that is said to be the last bike to wear the BSA 250 plates, and ridden by Brian Martin and Jeff Smith...

 Is it true?

We know it was a prototype BSA Bantam frame used...

Photo Courtesy Robert Rowley...

Was it one of these BSA  frames that was converted...?

This shot was taken at "Umberslade Hall" where the last of the BSA's were designed both Mike Mills, and Mike (Bonkey) Bowers, worked here... This is Mike Bowers bike..

I think that the frame for the BSA C25 engined bike could have been one of these, but if it was, who built it, that is the question...

We know that Mike Mills built the frame for the last BSA trials bike that Dave Langston rode, but we don't know where that frame was built, was that pieced together in the BSA Comp shop...Or at Umberslade?

Photo Courtesy "Jake Bee."...©...

This is the Dave Langston bike with the frame built by Mike Mills...

Now in the Edward Freeman collection...

If you look, the bottom fork yoke has simular drillings... to the bike in question above...

Also behind from the same collection, is the ex Brian Martin BSA 250 and wearing the plates as this was the last bike that we know Brian Martin was riding...And his works bike... And more so still wore the

BSA 250 registration number...

So back to the plot, how do we find out if this machine is what it is said to be... I have several irons in the fire so Watch this Space...

Here is one of my New BSA C25 crankcase halves with no engine number stamped onto it...

Here is the one from the Ex works bike...

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Right, I have spent the most of today looking into this subject, and thinking I was getting nowhere, I started to think in my head that the bike in question, must have been put together at Slumberglade Hall...

 But it would have had to be built before January 1972 when the facility was closed...

 So I kept reading, and then some transcript from Brad Jones's book "From The Inside" a look into Umberglade Hall... good reading with stuff that someone else has told me who worked with Mike Mills...

 Anyway, just about thinking of my tea... and thought I would just look at the Facebook page for "From The Inside", and getting to the bottom of the page "Bingo"...

Photo Courtesy Brad Jones and "From the Inside" and his © 

Use requested...

There is a chap sat on a bike with a Mead and Tomkinson sweat shirt on, and that bike has the same colour B50 tank, the barrel, and head, are carved just like the two fifty bike in question...But with two extra fins..

I will not put the photo on until I have permision to use it. But you can take a look on that Facebook page, just click onto the Photos and you will see the bike I mean...

 Good story getting better...

So if the bike was put together at Umberslade R&D prototype workshop, did it then get transfered to Amoury road when the Umberslade facility closed in 1972?

I think we can rule out the bike being built by Brian Martin's team, but whether they then took over the bike as just another ride, is unclear...

 You would think if either Brian or Jeff Smith rode the bike, there would be at least one or two photos recording that fact...

I have asked Deryk Wylde and he says the bike is too pretty to be a works bike, and would they fit those orrible brakes to a trials bike... 

No photos then Deryk...

I have just been reading a bit on the CCM history page, and it says when the BSA Comp shop closed in 1971 Alan Clews and Brian Martin drove down to Birmingham and managed to come away with six GP frames and other parts all for £750...

In 1973 Alan Clews asked Fred Stoneham (Interspan) if he could design a simple ignition system that would work... Fred came up with that...

This needed no moving parts...

If you look on Jeff Smith's 1968 GP bike it has the same chaincase as the "bike in question", were BSA using a no moving parts (apart from the points) ignition system then...Or was it just a total loss system using a fully charged battery?

This would be alright for one race on a GP scrambles bike, but fitted to a trials bike that in National trials were still doing seventy miles of road work per trial, plus the sections in between, so a total loss ignition system would seem foolish...But not out of the question...

And more so did the "Bike in question" have this fitted, or Interspan?

You can see the same chaincase fitted to both bikes.

Back to the auctioneers write up about the bike in 2016...

Reading through it and being picky... Should the line

Originally registered as "a"BSA 250 it was ridden by both Brian Martin and Jeff Smith.... Have an"a" added before BSA 250...

And the line

the BSA registration number was * transferred to another machine...

Was the word "still" where I have put the star tippexed out...

Or if it were true did Brian Martin just stick his set of BSA 250 plates onto the bike to test ride it along with Smithy...

Looking at the modification to the BSA Triumph "Four-stud" fork-caps making it now two, I just can't believe that this was done by anyone at Umberslade or by Brian Martin... This is a weak point of the forks with even four studs, and the caps if cast which they would have been then, just crack across the centre of the wheel spindle... This mod, if you can call it that must have been done by one of the later owners...But why?

One other thing I noticed on the bike was that the swinging arm had been sawn apart and rewelded just before the wheel plate, was this to shorten or lengthen the arm, or to get it to the right length with the BSAC25 engine fitted, and to help it steer...

2024...01...

With the new information about the ISDT tests and the photos of two of the riders in the 1971 WalshTwo Day Trial...I now think the four-stud to Two-Stud modification was done by the works to aid wheel changing in these long distance events... IE... It is quicker to remove Two nuts than it is to remove Four, and the diagonal nature of the modified cap would spread the tension just the same as four...And these caps would not be cast aluminium...but forged... 

OK... OK... Perhaps the fork mod to two studs was done by BSA, for some reason, and not to get into that later Scottish Two Day trial as Wrighty was the  first one to win that trial, on four-stud forks, and they were four-stud and a long time after the "Works" bikes had all been disbanded... This photo is from the "Bantam Trials Saga" page if you look...

Just a snippet of History:

Jeff Smith came back from competing in a series in America as a special guest for the Northern Experts trial in 1970, he then competed the next day in the trial, but pressing on lost a lot of marks, but said he had realy enjoyed the trial...

 He was now riding a 175 BSA Bantam.. I have the photo...

Jeff retired from competative sport in January 1972...

Michael Martin left BSA in 1971 to start making the Mickmar engines...

The BSA Competition Shop closed in 1971...

Photo Courtesy Nick Draper...

This the photo of Jeff Smith riding the same Bantam in 1970, photo from Nick Draper... On "Bantam trials Saga" page...

17/12/2022...

A couple of days back I was looking at this page and thinking if we could not perhaps find any more clues to if this bike was what it was said to be, and I thought I wonder who now owns the bike and was it sold from the eBay advert as it said unsold...at the time...

Then I had a phone call today the 17th December from the new owner of the bike and I must say I was more than pleased who it is, and know that the bike will be kept as part of trials History anyway... and well looked after...

I will not disclose the name until I have permision...

So I thought do a bit more home work, three hours later and I have now got it into my thinking that the machine was pretty certain to have been put together at Umberslade Hall.

Reading several acounts of the place  and the development shop it seems clear that with the chaps working in that department who were all into offroad bikes these were more than likely the ones that built it..

The names John Cart, Bob Kemp, and Gordon Sims, worked in this department under their team leader at the time Michael Martin who was sorting out the Triumph Adventurer...and the BSA Bantam engines. 

John Cart says that one of the little escapades was to spend some time at Hawkstone Park  riding to destruction if they could, the offroad bikes mainly BSA B-C25 engined off roaders and the prototype BSA -Triumph Adventurer, along with some B50's... And Jeff Smith was there to help test the bikes saying that the Adventurer was too heavy and did not steer but the "Yanks" would love the bike. So it looks to me that  KOE 68P  was built at Umberslade and was indeed a BSA works bike as it belonged to BSA-Triumph...

11/01/2024...

Quote from Michael Martin.

In BSA days we used to have test days at Hawkstone Park to test production prototype off road machines. Typically US specification machines. The test objective to complete 100 laps. Brother Brian would provide the main muscle from his works team. They typically did two stints of 10 laps each. The engineers who were seeing the test through would provide ‘tea break time’ by doing stints of 5 laps. Like the rest of Brian’s riders Andy Roberton was always on hand for a test day ride and we gained lots of info thanks to their efforts.

Photo Courtesy Deryk Wylde The Nostalgia Bookshop Facebook...

Andy Roberton on one of the Test Day B50 BSA's...

in the 1971 Welsh Two Day Trial...He won the event...

Photo Courtesy Deryk Wylde The Nostalgia Bookshop...Facebook...

Dave Nicol in the same Welsh Two Day Trial of 1971..Works BSA B50...

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More information to who built the BSA Bantam frames there is uncertain but we know that Mike Mills and Mike Bower's  were both in that department and Mike Bower's Bantam bike had one of those frames, and the frame for KOE 68P had been converted if that is the word to "Oil-In-Frame" before being plated...

By the spray job on the tank this was not a production bike...but look at the neat job bronzing the oil filler cap, done by the same welder that made the frame...

It was understood that Mike Mills did not like bronze welding frames and prefered Argon-Ark (Tig)  but he did do some bronze...

It is also more than likely that when  the complete stock of competition type bikes from Umberslade in January 1972 were removed from the facillity when closing, they were taken back to the BSA Competition Department to be sold off, and it was probably Brian Martin that had this task and was in charge of the opperation. And this is how the bike was passed on to probably a close friend, or ex BSA Competition works rider, that now was perhaps a motorcycle dealer. And this is how Roy Jordan eventualy got the bike and had the fortune of getting a reply in the letter from Brian Martin on the bikes history has he knew it...

This is what I now believe, I may be wrong?  But unfortunatly the likes of Brian Martin and Mike Mills have sadly left us, has time has marched on, and unless the right person reads this and corrects us, we will have to presume this thinking is correct... At least we now know the BSA C25 trials bike KOE 68P  now has a good home... More on that later...

It Is known that the new owner in the words of Henry Cole is giving the bike a simpathetic restoration...

The bike just looks, and has trends, that it came out of somewhere special... an interesting Exhaust system too... Total loss ignition ? We will find out and perhaps what is under the chaincase...

More photos of the BSA Later...

10/01/2024...

The shots we have been waiting for...

Photo Courtesy Deryk Wylde Nostalgia Bookshop Facebook...

The story on this page just did not add up in some ways, and we were missing something ...

Well this photo is it, and really proves the bike is what it is said to be... OK...OK... it might not be the exact Machine, but it could be, and it proves that Jeff Smith did ride one... So thank you once again Deryk for coming up with the goods, and thank you Ed for looking after part of BSA History...

Note: registration number YOB390J and also only two wheel spindle nuts on the four-stud forks...

And this could be Hawkstone Park...

Quote: Pat Slinn

And More intrigue Later...

Then we get the clincher from the now owner of the last Works BSA C25T or should that be B25T trials bike that could have worn the

BSA 250 reg plate.. its been a long time coming but we got there...

Photo Courtesy the Now Owner of BSA 250...©...

Well Raphe Venables was there and he would be glad that we found out the true story in the end...

Photo Courtesy Owner...

Just a tail note to the story is that I now have bought a 1967 BSA C25 engine and these were only made for the one year most for export to the USA in the bike named the Baracuda... Now this engine differs in a few details to the 1968 B25 engine, and the ones easy to spot are that the engine oil relief valve is different the C25 is like the C15 that screws in and also there is no raised engine number plate on the C25 again like the C15... also there is no timing rod hole on the C25 unlike the B25... so we should asume that This ex Works Brian Martin bike should be known as the last BSA B25 T trials bike to leave the factory...perhaps...

I like it when a plan comes together... and this one has...

More Later...

Updat2024...01...