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Background

The Club bought most of these drawings in 1992. Twenty years earlier, a London-based Velocette dealer — Littlejohn — acquired the rights to manufacture the L.E. and Veloce Limited’s other post-WWII lightweights after the firm had gone into liquidation. The purchase included the remaining Factory parts stock and a lot of related paperwork, including drawings. Littlejohns had no intention of re-manufacturing the L.E. Instead they did little more than offer a mail order parts service. Most of the drawings remained in store — some stuffed into plastic bags, others rolled up and tied with binder twine. A priceless archive, detailing the history of one of Britain’s most famous motorcycle firms, spent 20 years in lock-up garages and under the stairs of the Littlejohn’s family home.

By 1992, many of the drawings were in poor condition — water damaged, torn, or so tightly rolled up they could not be opened without irrevocable damage being caused. A small group of volunteers — acting on advice from skilled paper conservators — have restored the collection listed here. The restored drawings were then placed on a scanner and the information they contain copied into a digital format. Manchester member Alan Britch spent two years creating this computerised database. Copies can now be produced at the press of a button, leaving the fragile original drawings untouched.

The Club owns many more drawings and other paper artefacts – amounting to the country’s largest archive of original documents originating from a single UK motorcycle manufacturer.

Sadly, many of these items are too badly damaged to be included in this catalogue. The Club has applied to the Heritage Lottery Fund for help towards the cost of the skilled conservation work necessary to restore the archive and make it available to a wider audience.

History

Veloce Limited’s drawing office was a light, airy room at the front of the single-storey factory facing York Road. For many years the office was headed by George Wilkes, and his initials — HGW — are present on many of the surviving drawings. All drawings were produced in-house by skilled draughtsmen using traditional materials — tracing paper and a sharp pencil, with Indian ink for the dimensions. Pre-WWII, even the basic template of each drawing was produced by hand. Post-war a pre-printed layout was used. Veloce’s drawings were produced to the highest standards — to be expected of a company who had a reputation in the Black Country as being top flight engineers, quite apart from building first rate motorcycles.

A letter suffix was used to identify a drawing’s size. Thus a drawing with a code ending in Z — the smallest — measures 10in x 8in, the old quarto size. In contrast, a drawing bearing an L suffix is nearly a metre square. Velocette produced a drawing of every motorcycle component — often full size — which listed the material from which it was made, the finish and any heat treatment process used. Drawings were individually numbered — in the bottom, right-hand corner — using a derivation of the part number illustrated combined with the letter code already mentioned. For example, part LE101, Flywheel Oil Seal Housing, was produced on a drawing numbered LE101Z.

Veloce’s part numbers

Velocette numbered their motorcycles’ component parts from the earliest days. However it was in the early Twenties that a comprehensive identification system was developed. The driving force was Ethel Goodman — Percy and Eugene’s sister — who was to marry works rider George Denley, himself soon to become Veloce’s first sales manager. Ethel devised a ‘standard list’ — basic parts such as nuts and bolts that were common to the whole motorcycle range. She gave these parts, logically, a ‘SL’ part code — still in use when the L.E. model was produced forty years later.

The first design of a particular part was given a simple identification code — for example LE113, Cylinder Head Gasket. Later developments of the same component were allocated a revised code — LE113-2, LE113-3 etc.

The drawings in this catalogue are arranged in groups by the part’s letter code — also in number order, as follows:

A - parts common with other Velocettes — tools, number plates

BT - Viceroy Scooter gearbox and final drive (T for transmission) parts

LAS - an assembly of LE parts – e.g. a gear lever with its pressed in bushes, a crankshaft etc

LE - L.E. parts, of course. But remember that, as the Valiant and later the Vogue were substantially L.E.- based, many of their parts are identified by this code too

LEX - experimental parts. New components for L.E. – based models that were under development. Many became production parts

SE - Industrial (Stationary) engine parts

SL - standard parts — as already explained. Nuts, bolts studs and washers. Also piston rings

SS - salvage schemes. Methods of reclaiming parts that would otherwise be scrapped. For example SS10A, a sleeve to reclaim a bearing housing accidentally bored oversize.

TA - Viceroy parts

TAS - assemblies of Viceroy parts

TF - Viceroy frame parts

TS - Viceroy engine parts

TW - Viceroy wheel parts

Additionally, there are small quantities of drawings having other identification codes. Check in the catalogue’s third Description column to identify these.

The catalogue, and any subsequent drawings, are available from the Club Webmaster

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