Hi,
Just to clear up a bit more confusion…. It is WX 179, 1929 TT3, that I own, bought four years ago from Paul d’Orleans, “The Vintagent”, from San Francisco, NOT the ex-Geoff Lee machine just sold by Bonhams. Who bought it ? Incidentally, the provenance of the 1927, 1928, and 1929 Works Senior TT Scotts is nothing like as clear-cut as the Bonhams descriptions would have one believe. After the TT events were over the team machines were taken back to Shipley, and dismantled. I have copies of the letters sent by Manager Matt Rowley to the West Riding of Yorkshire Taxation Office, saying that the machines had been “scrapped and dismantled”. Obviously that was an untruth, and they were not scrapped. They were RECYCLED, in every sense of that word. In 1930 an emergency replacement team was put together, using an amalgam of the ’28 and ’29 bikes, due to the total failure of the intended vertical-engined machines. Later they were again dismantled, and because the factory was desperately strapped for cash, they were reassembled again, and at this time registration numbers, frame numbers, engine and gearbox numbers, etc., were jumbled up !!! To make matters even more complicated, several of the engines and gearboxes were replaced by Dirt-Track Model items, plenty of which were gathering dust on the shelves due to the Scott DT Model being eclipsed by the DT Douglas and Rudge machines. They were stamped-up to look like TT units, and sold off as ex-TT machines. I have been trying for years to get my head around all this confusion, and I’m still a mile away from the full story. For instance the machine just sold by Bonhams has a DT type box, and a standard Flyer clutch, not pukka TT items…. The engine in the ex-Geoff Lee machine is stamped TT3, and if that is original it is the engine originally in my frame, numbered 3M… I could go on and on about all this !
Brian
