An Unusual Frame Number.

[nevhunter]

I've had a new Ariel crankcase presumably of war origin with NO numbers . Military Harley frames have no numbers and a few other makes Sometimes don't have them. A registering authority will (sometimes) require A specified (by them) number and letters be stamped on the frame to enable subsequent tracing.. I work (since 1987) with red plate permit issuing and some have no number and go through in that condition. Where there's none I prefer to leave it that way for originality. Nev

[john.whiting]

The number on the frame shown is so evenly stamped,it looks like factory.....Harley never used frame numbers right up to the 1970s,IIRC.

[chris.shearwood]

The number on the frame shown is so evenly stamped,it looks like factory.....Harley never used frame numbers right up to the 1970s,IIRC.

I have been thinking that the number on the frame is too evenly stamped to be factory made!

[paul.jameson]

Let's go for another angle. Looking at John's first post and his photo of the bike below the one of KMT470, what is the silencer bracket bolted to? I would guess it is the offside sidecar mounting. Such mountings did not appear on W/NG frames but they did appear postwar in the "export or die" era. So, assuming that the silencer is bolted on as I suggest, this cannot be a W/NG frame but a postwar one - probably originally prefixed AP, BP, RF or AB.

It remains a very nice bike indeed.

[will_curry]

There may be some interesting issues here.

MG7775 comes back from DVLA as an MG car, registered in July 1989.

To my untutored eye there is some strangeness about the entry 'MG 7775' in the
photo of the old-style logbook - it is neither in the same ink or the same hand as
the rest of the entries.

[nevhunter]

ALL Ariel frame Numbers I've seen are very level and even (considerable) depth. Late 20's ON..I've no experience with earlier ones IF frames were available as a part it's unlikely they would be numbered in my view. New crankcases and gearboxes weren't as far as I can tell. Nev

[adrie.degraaff]

Over the years i have bought several unmarked unfinished Ariel parts, a 4 valve sloper head halve mashined, a roundfoot barrel casting unmashined, a 1953 crankcase no number (was finished but the casting was very bad) how do i know 1953? 1951-1953 where differend castings so a leftover must be ..

If a model ended there where still unfinished parts, (maybe taken from the bin).

A frame and crankcase taken from the bin is unlikely but not impossible and with this number you are sure there is no second on the road.

[John.reader]

Just to add a bit more to this post, Will Curry is correct in that MG 7775 now belongs to an MG car.
What actually happened was that in October 1993 a very good friend of mine, whom I have known for many many years achieved his life’s ambition to own an early MG sports car. He bought a 1948 MG TC that had been restored from a wreck by another man who I also knew, and who had made a magnificent job of the restoration. However as the original registration number had been lost, he re-reregistered it in July 1989 with an age related number. He then drove the car until 1993, before selling it to my friend. The registration number on the car was TSU 673, which we both thought looked horrible and completely destroyed the character of the car, so after much persuading on his part I agreed with my friend in May 2000 that he could have my MG number for his car as long as he promised not to immediately sell either the car or the number plate on for a profit. Well that was twenty years ago and my friend still has the car and he still enjoys driving it so he was as good as his word.
We had to take both vehicles to the DVLA local office in Chelmsford to be inspected, which went off without a hitch, and my Ariel is now MSL 657. As I haven’t ridden the Ariel for over twenty years I haven’t bothered to change the plate, although I have the new plate and will fit it before I put the bike back on the road.

I didn’t mention this in my first post as that post was already too long, and I was really only asking about the frame number.

So to return to the original question, I was hoping that this post would give me a simple answer as to how my log book, with five figure numbers for both engine and frame numbers and with no prefixes on either came in to be in existence. What I was trying to avoid was a situation where either I, or more likely my son, would be hit with accusations of either fraud or vehicle theft if he wanted to sell the bike at some point in the future. Obviously there is no simple explanation to this otherwise it would have surfaced by now, but the log book is completely genuine so there must be an explanation, it's just that we haven’t found it yet.
I bought the log book and the frame in good faith in 1975, and I built the bike and put it on the road in 1981, and its been taxed and tested continuously until 2001, and there has never been a query about it. If there has ever been any skulduggery with either it must have taken place before they came into my possession, as I have owned both for the last forty five years.

So what to do now, fortunately I’m fit and well at the moment so I’ve got some years left to think about it.

Regards, John.

[JohnnyBeckett]

hi if DVLA is happy with it i would not worry about it not having letters, i think you will never know the reason why it has got no letters, and you are not looking at the letters and numbers wen you are riding it down the road , just go and enjoy using it while you can we did not worry about things like that wen we were younger we just wonted to ride it, and a lot us will soon be to old to do that

[GuyH]

I had a similar question with a '39 OG 250 I was restoring. It has a V5C, was registered decades ago but when I looked at both the frame and engine numbers the prefix for the frame wasn't an Ariel one and the engine prefix was for a '35 engine. There was no sign of the numbers being removed and re-stamped on either frame or engine and they both appeared to be in perfect condition. I could see though that the stamps didn't match the ones Ariel used. Someone with a lot more experience than me of these things said that back in the day there were quite a few unstamped new old stock frames and cases around and people would build up a bike and go to the registration authorities who instructed them to stamp them with numbers and prefixes different from the ones the factory used to avoid any misunderstandings that it was an original factory bike. The consensus of opinion on my OG was that it is completely legal as the V5C has the frame and engine numbers on so I should just finish and ride it. As Johnny says - enjoy it while you can!