Pete, the Old Trip does indeed now sell Greene King ales. An improvement IMHO as I could never detect any discernable taste in Kimberley beers.

The Abbot was excellent about 3 weeks ago.

I’d completely forgotten them. They were a short-lived marque in their own right, bought out in the early 60s by DMW – who didn’t last a lot longer themselves.

It appears it’s true you learn something everyday – I never knew that.

All I really remember is a triangularish crankcase and a cylinder angled so far forwards it looked like half a V twin.

More obscure British bikes:

Francis-Barnett Snipe, Falcon and Fulmar.

Strangely, the page containing the original plans for Cosford has only disappeared in the last couple of months, certainly after the new exhibition opened.

Perhaps they would have been able to display the Valiant, Vulcan and Victor better if they’d had the 14,300 square metres of space they were planning instead of the 8,000 they got?

As I don’t generally like modern architecture anyway, it will come as no surprise that I think the building at Cosford is a complete eyesore. I’m also of the opinion that it’s totally unsuitable for its purpose.

Somebody, somewhere appears to have said, “sod what’s best, we’ll get an award for this”.

Moving the shop, which could possibly have been said to be a little large where it was, to a cramped corner of the new building is ridiculous. Even if they doubled the size it would still be a fraction of the original area.

I also dislike banner signage, although as there are so many exhibits hung up as well, I didn’t find it as irritating as I did at Hendon.

Sadly, yes I am old enough to remember Panther motorcycles, although I haven’t seen one in 40 years or so.

Cadet has already been mentioned. I think that was a James m/c too.

My knowledge of BSP sizes and threads is minimal, and that’s exaggerating, but IIRC, they’re specified by the bore, not the thread size.

1.3″ over the threads would suggest something like a 1″ bore so 1″ BSP sounds a good starting point.

Edit:

It appears I’m a smart-****.

http://homepages.tesco.net/~A10bsa/bspgo.htm

Says 1″ BSP is 1.309″ major (over the tops of the threads) diameter.

As you suspected, the Renault was Dauphine.

Not too bad if you wanted to go in a straight line very slowly, anything else, forget it. 🙂