BSA mystery machine

You can’t use it, but this charming C15 has been sectioned to show how it would have worked.

You won’t see many Beesa C15s sectioned to show off the inner workings as neatly done as this one. It’s part of Paul Rigby’s collection from vintage through to late classics, but as he’s a man who likes to get out and ride his bikes, this one does rather cramp his style.

There’s a big gap in its history, but Paul does remember being asked to weld and re-instate a silencer for a family friend about 30 years ago “so they could re-use it on this bike they were restoring. I never saw the entire bike back then, just various parts.

“Twelve months ago the family contacted me and asked if I would be interested in retrieving the bike from the loft. I was glad to help, expecting boxes of parts, but I was confronted with the completely assembled bike in their loft.

“Then I spent many hours stripping it down to manageable sized parts to get it through the loft hatch. I’ve asked the family about it, but they have no history, and sadly the owner passed away and nobody thought to ask him while he was still alive. But I did undo the welding work I did 30 years ago on this same exhaust to expose the cutaway components and had it re-chromed.”

Look around this stripped-to-the-bone Beesa and you can see what a thorough job was done on it, apparently at the BSA works in Birmingham’s Small Heath area. Top restorer Graham Horne should know, he worked at Ariel and then BSA when the British bike industry was still a significant power in the world, and he’s looked the bike over. “Judging by the quality of the work and the finish, I think it was a factory job,” he says. This was not just a case of taking stock components and cutting them back to show how they

worked, they’ve been finished with polishing, plating or chroming to show each part to best advantage.

Both hubs have been cut back to show the brake shoes and the cams that open them to provide stopping power.

The Amal carb shows off its operation, with even the float chamber open to view, and the inlet tract down into the combustion chamber draws your eye to the cutaway barrel and polished piston, while round on the timing side there’s a pair of very smart pushrods nestling in their cutaway tower. It’s a very smart little bike, but after 30 years or more in the loft it’s not immaculate. The paint is worn in parts and the plating on some of the nuts is beginning to lift. So if you have a burning ambition to take the best overall trophy in the cutaway classic concours, this is not for you. But if you love your Beesas – and a lot of people do, because of the memories they recall – you could stand this unique example in the corner and bring back happy times without making a sound or ever getting wet.

The bike is entered for Bonham’s auction at the Carole Nash Classic MotorCycle Mechanics Show at Stafford on October 19/20.