16H Speedo

Is it a WD16H or civvie bike, what year is it? Chronmetric speedos are often for sale on ebay but fetch high prices, the same with the horns, depending on what type you're after. Side mounted & centre mounted speedo brackets are being made new and again available on ebay, they're also not that difficult to make.

That's a centre mounted speedo, the cable's about 26" long. If Richard Payne sees this post he'll tell you a lot more about that contract of bikes to India. I think that was the contract that had the "S" shaped end on the silencer.

Here's a speedo bracket on ebay,

The original Norton one has a slight cutaway on one side (see picture) but I'm sure you can alter that.

Certainly a centrally-mounted speedo. The offset mount first appeared on WD bikes during the early part of 1940.

The length is indeed 26".

India Office bikes differed considerably from the British War Department offerings and in many respects were more advanced. They were fitted with sump guards and pillion equipment for instance, and of course the enclosed valve engine.

This is a '38 India bike in service :-

[IMG]http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/gg164/commando16h/NOC/Norton%2016H%20No%202%20009_zpseevqkg0v.jpg[/IMG]

I didn't realise the Indian contract bikes had the enclosed valve engine, why on earth didn't the British forces have that engine?

Earlier India bikes had the open tappet engine but they changed over from 1938 onwards. MEE tested the 1938 engine but found it offered no improvement and by this time the British Army had several thousand of the earlier bikes in use (by the standards of 1930s motorisation, that was quite a lot). They took the decision not to complicate the spares inventory by introducing the newer engine (which shares almost no components). Peter Roydhouse wrote about it in some detail (originally for the Club calendar) http://www.nortonownersclub.org/history/1936-1945-wd