Ceandess / Wolverhampton - British Petrol & Oil Caps

I'll admit that, while I'm definitely not a parts hoarder, I do have a fondness to collecting these old petrol and oil caps. I don't feel too bad about having them here since it's not the sort of part that's keeping someone's bike off the road. And they're damn cool to look at, so I buy them anytime I see them cheap enough.

All these old British petrol and oil caps were made by Ceandess of Wolverhampton England, and they're stamped on the underside with that mark. They use a simple spring loaded inner seal and cork washer, so all you have to do is push down and turn in order to lock them onto the neck of the tank. Most of these also have a simple vent hole drilled into them as well.

There are lots of repop caps out there, and for as simple of a construction that they are, the repop caps just don't seem to work. I once had a repop gas cap come off in the middle of a ride.

These stamped caps were basically advertising / promotional pieces for petrol and oil companies back in the day. Other than the Norton "curly N" cap, they didn't tool anything specific to actually show their logo, but instead used a standard alphabetical stamping tool to forever emblazon their likeness into the caps. I personally think these stamped caps are quite cool, and very collectable.

Here's some close up photos of the few that I have. I'm sure there are countless other variations as well.

My favorite of all the caps I have, and this one adorns the Norton Atlas.

And this one for the Atlas oil tank.

Standard, smooth cap from a later model. This one being chrome plated steel.

It seems the earlier caps were brass, and then nickel plated. This one had the nickel coming off, which is quite common. I'm guessing that over the years, someone removed the nickel in order to get down to the brass.

The newest edition to the collection, and the only one I've ever seen with "London" stamped into it.

These caps are often found with some great looking original patina. A lot of them will have worn nickel plating around the vent hole where the petrol has eaten thru it. In some cases, I've even seen them where you could see the sides of the cap worn thru where it had been taken on and off thru the years, and someone's hands had worn down the nickel plating.

This is a very unique oil cap, in that it's much smaller than the standard 2" oil cal. The Norton Electra took a smaller 1 5/8" cap, and I happened to stumble across this one years ago.

The underside as seen in these photos. With and without the cork seal. You can see that over the years, they changed the position of the stamping around the inner cap.

Some of these caps also had a small loop with a chain affixed to it. The chain had two prongs at the end that provided tension. The prongs would go inside the tank and then the cap had enough free play on the chain to come off and hang to the side while you filled up. I never quite understood wanting to do that, as I don't have any desire for the cap to be flopping around and scratching up the paint on tank.

Some of these caps are on a few motorbikes here. Some are saved for bikes that I'd like to own at some point in the future, and the rest just sort of sit there looking good. All the spare caps sit on top of the nuts and bolts bin in the garage, and I enjoy seeing them any time I'm working at the bench.