1914 BSA Model K saved from the scrap bin for £100

This veteran BSA so nearly ended up in the scrap bin, after it had already survived for over 100 years. Thanks to Wesley Wall’s persistence, it didn’t.

Words: James Robinson Photographs: Gary Chapman

When your day job is looking after and restoring veteran, vintage and classic motorcycles for the National Motorcycle Museum, perhaps you’d not fancy doing your own projects in your ‘down time.’ Not a bit of it. National Motorcycle Museum restorer Wes Wall’s veteran BSA is proof that he takes his work home with him; or indeed, brings his home into work, for the machine resting in the museum, featured here, is Wes’s own. And what a stunning machine it – a 1914 BSA Model K – is too, with quite a story as well.

It all started in early 2018, when Wes was contacted by Phil Bull of the BSA OC, to ask if he would be interested in a ‘rough old BSA’ that the club had been contacted about. There was no other detail, other than ‘it was really old’ and, in the keeper’s assessment, ‘beyond salvation’ and if no one wanted it, it was going to scrap. Wes called the owner and asked to have a look at it – if nothing else, there might be one or two bits salvageable, better than it all going to scrap anyway.

Said Wes: “The chap was surprised I was interested in it and couldn’t believe I was prepared to travel down to his house in Surrey from the Midlands to see it. I had to convince him to let me come and take a look, really. He kept telling me it wouldn’t be worth it.”

It transpired it had belonged to the current owner’s late father, passed to the son – who had absolutely no interest in it whatsoever – on his demise. But not to be deterred from travelling, Wes went down, expecting, as he puts it, ‘a rotten and rusted wreck’ while even if a couple of odd parts were salvageable, it’d be worth it.

Wes remembers: “His place was a 1960s-type maisonette and he led me to the back yard, where there was a tarp over the bike, or what apparently remained of it. He whipped the cover off and straight away, I was over the moon. I expected metal sweepings really, but this wasn’t that bad – admittedly it looked bad, but clearly it had been saved by the oil that it had sprayed over everything mechanical. The mudguards were rusted through, as was the petrol tank and there were parts missing, but I was well happy.

“Then the man went into the garage and came back out with his arms full and said: ‘Think this is something to do with it’ and handed me a box – it had in it the saddle, pillion seat, full lighting kit and bulb horn. He then disappeared again and came out with the wheels, which had clearly been blasted and hand painted black and were now rusty, but were all there. He even found the old tyres, which were in bits as they’d obviously been cut off.

“I only had £100 on me and told him it was worth much more than that. But he insisted I just ‘take it away’ and I had to practically force him to take the money I had. He just wanted it gone.”

Wes did ask if there was any paperwork (such as a logbook) with it, but sadly there wasn’t, although the son did have one thing; “There was a letter from BSA in reply to one the owner’s dad had written in 1962, where they [BSA] said they couldn’t help with dating it, as all their records had been destroyed.”

But Wes now had a date, suggesting that was perhaps most likely when the father had acquired it. And it had probably been in bits since then. By now, Wes had the BSA all back in his home workshop and started to go through it. “It was almost all there, totally complete but there was lots of work to be done on the tinware, while the alloy footboards were beyond repair. But on stripping the engine, I found that one of the cam followers had collapsed and that was probably why it was taken off the road. I suspect that had happened in the 1920s, from the condition of the other bits.”

With restoration under way, Wes lightly shotblasted the numberplates, just to see if there was any clue to a registration number, as he had no other indication as to what it was: even the 1962 letter didn’t quote it. As he gently cleaned, the number (KN 855; from Maidstone in Kent) emerged through the rust. Straight away, son Kyle checked it on the DVLA website and, much to their surprise, it was on there! Wes deduces that the man who owned it was probably a VMCC or similar club member, so when the publicity about the computerisation of the DVLA was at its height, and about how registration numbers would be lost, he’d decided to make sure it was added to the database, even though it was presumably already in a rusted and dismantled state at that time. But that would tie in with its first date of registration, which is recorded as November 1983. But it means it still wears its original restoration.

The motorcycle itself is a 1914 BSA Model K, a 499cc side-valve with BSA’s own three-speed countershaft gearbox, with chain primary drive and belt final drive. The machine was a direct descendent of BSA’s first ‘proper’ motorcycles (as opposed to earlier efforts, which saw BSA-made components united with proprietary engines) that had been launched in 1910; at the end of 1913 there was 557cc version launched too. But of course, the war was about to happen and so Birmingham Small Arms was to spend the next four years focussing on its core business, that of gun making.

Meanwhile, who knows where Wes’s BSA spent the war years, both those of the First World War and of course the Second too, while one wonders how close it came to being part of the scrap drive in the latter of those two conflicts. What a shame if it hadn’t been saved in 2018, after surviving all that time – luckily Wes decided to take a drive down to Surrey, or the gleaming BSA (which Wes basically says he ‘got stuck into’ during 2020’s lockdown period) would have most likely been no more.

As for the future? Well, Wes has ‘run it up’ in the workshop, but not ridden it as yet, though the intention is to do the Pioneer Run on it in the future. It’s quite possible that would be the first time on the road in 100 years.