Beschreibung:

Late Vintage-era model • An older restoration (mid-1980s) • Many-time concours award winner • Ideal Banbury Run mount Sunbeam had begun experimenting with overhead valves on their factory racers in the early 1920s and these duly appeared on production models in 1924. The new 500 roadster was known as the Model 9 while its race bike counterpart, which could top 90mph, was accordingly designated the Model 90. The 350cc versions were the Model 8 and Model 80 respectively. The John Greenwood design was advanced for its day, with a specification which included a crankshaft supported by three ball-bearings, dry-sump lubrication, and primary drive enclosed in an cast alloy chain case. Power was transmitted by single-row chain to a three-speed, 'cross-over drive' gearbox with offside power takeoff. The overhead-valve models' frame and cycle parts, which had much in common with those of Sunbeam's larger side-valve models, evolved slowly. Sunbeam missed the industry's virtually wholesale switch from flat-tank to saddle-tank frames for the 1928 season, and a saddle-tank version of the Models 8 and 9 did not appear until September of that year. Changes to the overhead-valve engine were confined mainly to its top-end. The early flat-tankers featured a straight-ahead exhaust port, a peculiarity which necessitated the adoption of a bifurcated down-tube. Later on in the 1920s Sunbeam followed the then-fashionable trend to twin-port 'heads before reverting to a single-port design. Pushrod enclosure had arrived by 1930 to be followed a couple of years later by partial enclosure of the rocker gear. The late-Vintage Model 8 offered here dates from 1929, the first year of the 'saddle tank' Sunbeams, and has the revised lubrication system introduced the previous year, which featured a Sunbeam mechanical oil pump inside a raised boss on the timing case (in previous years an external Best & Lloyd pump had been employed). An older restoration, the Sunbeam comes with an excellent history folder, which reveals that it had been bought as a restoration project in October 1985 by a previous owner: Mr John Riley The folder also contains an old-style continuation logbook (1942), a V5C Registration Certificate, sundry restoration invoices, and an impressive collection of photocopied literature, instruction manuals, parts lists, etc. Following restoration, 'WM 3897' went on to amass an impressive array of concours awards between 1986 and 1990 when Mr Riley died. The elderly owner acquired the Sunbeam in August 2003 but stopped riding it around four years ago, finding it had become too heavy for him, hence the decision to sell. Only minimal re-commissioning should be required before returning the machine to the road.