Can anyone help me to correctly date the year of my Factory works 350 International engine? Number is "8015" I was told it was a 1939 model. It has the round fin bronze skull head, which is putting me off a bit, as I thought the square fin was introduced in 1938. I found some number charts, but nothing to relate to "works" engines Regards, Noel
Steve Lacey
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Hi Noel, If your engine was 1939, it would have a 5 digit engine number (1939 numbers started with 87920) Four figure numbers were used immediately post war, 8015 would equate to 1947, the engine would have a prefix letter B. All pre world war 2 Norton numbers were based on the engine number, with the frame number always being completely different. All 1946 on Nortons had matching frame and engine numbers (when despatched!). If you take a look at the sicence museum records, even one off works bikes supplied to star riders had numbers that followed normal production sequences, so an outside flywheel works TT bike could be the number before a cooking ES2! Regards, Steve
noel Saward
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Thanks to Geoge Cohen, my engine has been dated as a 1937 model which was destined for the Isle of man.
350cc machines from 29 to 39 used a separate lot of numbering. From 29 to 36 they used 1000 to 6200. From 37 to 39 they used 6201 to 10700. Yes, 5 numbers were used from 1939. The letter code was used from 1946 onward.
Hope this helps others.....regards Noel