A bidders perspective of the Bonhams auction, "Important Pioneer, Vintage and Collectors' Motorcycles and Related Memorabilia Stafford, Staffordshire County Showground, 24 Apr 2011"......

When details of sale of Stanley Woods memorabilia at the Bonham's auction #19163 of "Important Pioneer, Vintage and Collectors' Motorcycles and Related Memorabilia Stafford, Staffordshire County Showground, 24 Apr 2011" showed up, I decided after viewing the stuff to takes steps to bid.
Now I live in Sydney, Australia, the auction was half a world away in the UK...as well there is a 10 hour time zone difference and the auction was on Easter Sunday.....
My first grand daughter was to be christened that day with a family gathering with friends afterwards...
Looked a trifle difficult....but with the wonders of the internet and the time zones playing into my hand...the auction commenced at 7pm Sunday night, Sydney time, I was "in with a chance"...
Well hope springs eternal.....
I sorted out the bidding and nervous as to getting "dropped off", I had three computers in operation, each logged on via a different search engine...Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer...
On the night I had little difficulty with any....
Looked like the NASA space facility at Houston monitoring a shuttle launch....
Well what happened....??
I succeeded in securing one item, missed three and was the top bidder in another that obviously had a reserve....
The bidding via the internet was acceptable, although a little difficult with bidding proceeding briskly...thats how I seemed to "miss out", although to be fair one never knows the final bidding of those bidding against you and for all I know they may have had a greater resolve than me...
All up it seemed there were plenty of people out there with deep pockets....
So let's view the auction up to when I closed off at item 235 after some 3 hours watching the drama unfold....
You can see the complete results with prices at...
http://www.bonhams.com/EUR/sale/19163/1/ 
Apologies for the quality of the images, which were scanned directly from the Bonhams catalogue/report...and I acknowledge  Bonhams for their use.

Lot 2, a Vincent Black Shadow speedo went for £1080 including the 20% buyers premium. This I thought was a bit pricey....

lot 14, Vincent petrol tank £1200 incl.BP......

lot 15,  Vincent girdraulic forks £3720 incl.BP

lot 45, selection of Amal carbs. £576 incl.BP...seemed too much for what was there, although one was a TT carb.

lot 73, Bonnikson speedo set £780 incl.BP...likely fair as it had a Bonnikson drive gearbox and external gear ring set.

lot 88, 1927 British Anzani 1076cc V twin engine £4800 incl.BP...
"V twin" engines pull big bucks...

lot 89, 1922 Barr & Stroud 980cc V twin sleeve valve engine £5280 incl.BP...

lot 92, OEC Duplex petrol tank £1500 incl.BP...did somebody really want this...from memory it was a "one bid job".....

lot 102, Velocette literature £780 incl.BP...this is one I started bidding on, but got left in the dust....the price surprised me and I'm a Velo man and a literature collector.

lot 104, PhD thesis on Veloce Ltd £288 incl.BP...this seemed a good buy as I had to repair the copy I borrowed years back from the UK and it cost AUD$195 for the repair....

lot 115, "TT Special" books,£240 incl.BP..this was a bargain and somehow I "stuffed up" with the internet bidding as I was chasing it and it went to "others"...

lot 131, bound 1910-1913 of "The MotorCycle" ,£2520 incl.BP...gulp you don't realise the cost of these "MotorCycle" magazines today....

lot 149, Edwardian & Vintage motorcycle catalogues,£1320 incl.BP...boy these early catalogue prices staggered me...

lot 158, assorted motorcycle books.,£144 incl.BP...boy was this a bargain....

lot 169, 1937 Brough Superior catalogues,£600 incl.BP...one original catalogue , the other two were repros...phew BS stuff is pricey...

lot 172, photo of Geo Brough and T.E. Lawrence on George 6th,£480 incl.BP...I said BS stuff was pricey...one photo!

lot 186, quantity of motorcycle photos.,£1440 incl.BP...original photos command money...

lot 188, the Ken Jones photo collection.,£22,800 incl.BP....seems a lot, but then there were some 8000 images, so thats only £2.85 a photo...

lot 194, Mike Hailwood's 1967 IOM TT silver replica for 1st place, IOM Senior TT.,£8400 incl.BP.

lot 203, Stanley Woods diaries and memoirs.,£960 incl.BP...these I was bidding on, but they were more than I could justify without a good look....

lot 218, letter from his mother to Stanley Woods ,£1680 incl.BP....this was like a bolt from the blue....from memory the bidding started over £1000...one letter...

lot 229A,   Stanley Woods photos 1932 to 1936 period,£1080 incl.BP

..finally DQ scored a winning bid.....
lot 233, Stanley Woods photos of his Australian trip 1936-37,£384 incl.BP.
This was important for the Velocette historians in Australia...
Stanley with wife Mildred visited here from December 1936 to around March 1937, bringing two works Velocettes with him, both rigid framed models, likely 1935 stuff. 
A 350 and 500 SOHC "dog-kennel" engined type.
The 350 is still in Perth, WA, but the 500 was sold to an American serviceman during WW2 where it went, much later to be purchased by the Wassell family..of the big motorcycle accessory firm in the Birmingham, UK area.
Sadly it was on display in the National Motorcycle Museum at Coventry and was  destroyed in the fire....but eventually it rose from the ashes, phoenix like following an extensive restoration by Ivan and Graham Rhodes and helpers.
But it is still a replica...the original was cremated...
Look forward to receiving the album with the hope there are a "gem" or two not seen before...

lot 234, Stanley Woods film archive, not sold,£1500-2000 estimate.

Well I thought I had this one, as I was the highest bidder, but is soon came up as unsold...likely there was a reserve price on it that we didn't exceed....

The difficulty with internet bidding...I'm sure there was no indication it carried a reserve...not that it may have made any difference...

BMW Motometer instruments ..... the "twin instrument" used on BMW/5 motorcycles....1969-1973....

Following the radical change around 1969 by BMW with the introduction of the /5 series...R50/5, R60/5 and R75/5.

BMW introduced instruments made by another German instrument manufacturer...Motometer, rather than VDO who they had obtained speedometers from since the early 1950's.
These were a 100mm diameter "twin instrument", that is they had a speedometer in some 3/4 of the binnacle with a smaller tachometer in the lower half.

The speedometers were either 120mph non trip or 200kph non trip, using some four speedo ratios depending on the final drive in the motorcycle.
The R50/5 used a w=800 for the 200kph dial and w= 1300 for the 120mph dial with 3.56:1 final drive.
The R60/5  used a w=760 for the 200kph dial and w= 1215 for the 120mph dial with 3.36:1 final drive.
The R75/5  used a w=660 for the 200kph dial and w= 1050 for the 120mph dial with 2.91:1 final drive.
Later a lower ratio final drive was introduced for the R75/5, the 3.20:1 final drive.
The R75/5  used a w=715 for the 200kph dial and w= 1155 for the 120mph dial with 3.20:1 final drive.

BMW/5 spares list page for the instruments.

Odometer gearing data....ex DQ..sorry about the "scrappy notes"..these were done many years back.

Warning light display.
The tachometer was the same ratio for the R50/5, R60/5 and R75/5.... 2:1
All German vehicles seem to use what we call a "captive" drive cable, that is the inner cable is secured into the outer at the bottom of the cable by a washer that is staked over in four places under the bottom cable ferrule.
The difficulty with this is that you cannot lubricate the inner...so it has to run with only the meager lubricant supplied when the cable was assembled.
So I hear you say...
Consider the speedo, say the R60/5......lets say it has 78000km on the speedo.
The the cable will have rotated 78000 x 760 ( the calibration factor) 
This equals 59,280,000 rotations..at varying rpm and with the scant lubrication I mentioned previously.
This can go part of the way in explaining the pointer "dancing around" when the motorcycle speed is constant.
Following are some details from Motometer...
Left click on the images to enlarge...

The speedcup mechanism used to indicate the speed was not damped on this instrument, for either the speedometer or tachometer.
This means any slight wear in the top or bottom bush that the speedcup shaft pivots in and or an inner speedo or tacho cable with a "set" in it will cause an unsteady pointer despite a constant road or engine speed.
So it is possible to fit the top frame and the damper pot from the BMW/7 series and use silicon damping fluid...the result is a steady pointer.....

Undamped top frame assembly.

Damped top frame assembly...part of the damping mechanism can be seen rivetted to the top bridge piece.
A plastic cup is slid down the speedcap shaft to the top of the speedcup bell and filled with silicon damping fluid. Part of the damping piece fits into the cup when assembled and the speedcup shaft has to rotate through this fluid to indicate the speed and this stops the pointer oscillating.

Undamped speedcup assemblies.

Damping mechanism...the damper bar and the speedcup plastic cup.

The bezel rim on these instruments is a rolled on/crimped on chromed bezel.
Tricky to remove and replace.
My business, KTT Services made these and they are still available...best rolled on by an instrument repair firm, but you can do it yourself if you make up the tooling. Email me  see address above.
Illustrated below is a removal method and re-rolling for a Smiths SSM speedo that uses the same principle of crimped on/rolled on bezel. If you've access to a lathe you can make suitable tooling.

Careful use of a screwdriver going around the bezel several times with an oscillating movement will peel the rim back...my wife does the demo...

You can find a suitable pair of pliers and grind the end to allow you to also peel the rim edge back.

Plier end ground to a suitable shape.

Pliers I used...made by the German company Knipex, although they appear to be no longer available. However they are a glass/mirror breaking set of pliers and the end is suitable to grind to shape.
Friend, Gert Boll has brought to my attention that similar mirror breaking pliers are listed on the Knipex site....they may well be suitable for grinding to the shape needed in my illustration above....
http://www.knipex.de/index.php?id=1216&L=0&page=group_detail&parentID=1369&groupID=1417

A Smiths bezel rolling on tool to illustrate a re rolling on operation...

Tooling you can make...a ballrace attached to a bar to do the rolling on...an aluminium plate with a suitable "V" of the correct diameter to lock the assembly while the bezel is rolled over. The large block has holes drilled in it to fit over the back of the speedo and allow you to push against the seals/glass for a water-tight seal as you roll over the rim.

Rolling the rim over ...you turn the lathe chuck by hand slowly to fold the rim edge over the 90 degrees necessary to seal the instrument.

The tooling before use...
You can investigate more the SSM bezel replacement earlier in my blog...use the search facility on the RHS of the blog...type in SSM or bezel...
Or...go to...
http://velobanjogent.blogspot.com/2010/05/continuation-with-smiths-ssm-and-rsm.html

Detail of the speedcup shaft bottom pivot length. This wears on the end stone in the bush at the top of the mainshaft and the inside of the aluminium speedcup "poles" on the magnet, eventually destroying it.
You can lightly stone the worn end of the shaft and then tap it though the brass piece in the speedcup to the correct setting...0.140" protruding.

Phil Irving and the Vincent supercharged attempt in 1936 TT races....extracts from his little design note books....

As you may be aware I've had the use of some of the small notebooks Phil Irving used while he was in the UK in the 1930's and 40's especially at Velocette and Vincent....
This blog will concentrate on the special racing Vincent single engines in the mid 1930's while PEI was employed at Vincent.
Left click on the images to enlarge....

To get a bit of back ground we need to review some pages from PEI's Autobiography.....
Phil speaks of several engines with various designations....
STT27, STT28 and STT29...
They are supercharged Vincent 500 engines of the comet type....

Phil wrote this using his small notebooks for reference, but reading them reveals often more interesting information. Stuff because of the constraints of the final size of his autobiography meant much was left out.....
Like the visits to Donnington Park, lap times after carb.alterations, modifications etc...

The following is a photo from PEI's collection, noted as "1936 supercharged TT Vincent, ex Roy Harper photo..."