I’ve just been scouring the photo archives (on line, highly recommended), of the Beaulieu Motor Museum, and came up trumps !
The list is as follows :-
Tommy Hatch, number 3
Oliver Langton, number 6
Arthur Franklyn, number 2
Sid Gleave, number 7
Ernie Mainwaring number 47
Phil Vare, number 20

Now what I need is some way of identifying registration number with race number,(I do have four registration numbers with their frame numbers) Any more leads ? As a vague possible clue, my front racing number plate on WX 179 has a row of 3/16″ diameter holes along its top edge, as if a windscreen has been fastened there, which MIGHT mean that it was Oliver Langton’s number 6….
DID THE RACE AUTHORITIES NOTE FRAME AND/OR ENGINE NUMBERS, OR REGISTRATION NUMBERS, WHEN THEY ALLOCATED THE RACE NUMBERS ? DO SUCH RECORDS STILL EXIST ?

I have the file that Chris Odling amassed, and it has nothing that I didn’t already know, being mostly a lot of photographs taken in the Brooklands Museum, of the ex-David Lawrence 29 TT bike before it was sold off to Argentina. I bought the bike from Paul d’Orleans, an American well known as “The Vintagent”, and he had bought it at Beaulieu in 2003 from Yorkshire autojumbler David Earnshaw, who had bought it from Derrick Shire’s widow very soon after Derrick’s death. Paul d’Orleans had commissioned Sunbeam specialist Chris Odling to restore it, but very little work was done in several years, apart from powder coating of the frame, purchase of a pair of Moss-Waye cranks, and a rebore to tolerances that were far too tight for a Scott but perhaps fine for a vintage Sunbeam.
There was nothing in the Odling file to throw any light on frame or engine numbers that might link them with race numbers, and that is the information I am short of.
Brian

Thanks Ted,
All mechanical work is now complete, ie. engine, gearbox, clutch, carburetter, magneto, brakes, forks, steering damper, etc., etc., and all the tinware, except for main oil tank and front mudguard is away for painting, and all the stuff for nickel plating is also away, so I will hopefully be able to make some solid progress when it all arrives back here. But who rode it in the 1929 Senior TT ? !
Brian

There was a LOT of Flyer stuff thrown in as a “make-weight”, so those photos are very confusing, like four clutches, (!), and some minor parts, like the correct magneto chain guard, went missing during the years in Chris Odling’s hands, and all but the frame was still stashed in a number of plastic fish crates, which still smelled fishy……
The main item totally missing was the big one gallon oil tank, with the cylinder-wall oiling tank on the side of it, and John Rose is currently making me one. There were also no mudguards, but that is just a minor problem.
Brian