Oddball Norton Commandos
(Page 4 of 6)
January/February 2008
By Robert Smith
The restoration took just three months — though Jim spent more than 10 years accumulating the right parts!
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Dave Guthrie nearly lost his SS before he even bought it. When he saw a 1971 Norton advertised locally, he followed up right away knowing other members of Vancouver’s British Motorcycle Owners’ Club (BMOC) would also be on the trail. Dave was in the middle of haggling with the owner when he heard a car door slam and footsteps approaching. “OK, consider it sold,” Dave said, agreeing to the full asking price. “Just then, two guys from the BMOC walked around the corner. It was probably the last under-$1,000 Norton basket case in the area,” he says.
Restoring the SS was a challenge. The bike had been stored in a chicken coop. “It was covered in feathers and chicken s***,” says Dave. On the way home with the bike, and still unsure of what he had, he stopped at a car wash and hosed the bike down, becoming aware for the first time that the exhaust pipes dragging on the ground should have been at knee level. A check into a 1971 Norton sales brochure revealed the truth: Dave’s bike was an SS, one of only a very few that have survived intact.
While each of these unusual Commandos had its place in Norton’s lineup when produced, they seem to have long since been forgotten by all but the biggest Norton fans. Nonetheless, they were important to the ultimate success of the Commando line, and serve as reminders of Norton’s marketing creativity in a time of limited capacity.
It’s in the rubber: Norton Commando Isolastics
The Commando story begins in the mid-1960s. Industrialist Dennis Poore has just acquired the bankrupt AMC Motorcycles and its top brand, Norton. Norton’s flagship model, the 750 Atlas, is ageing badly. Its overstretched, long-stroke engine is a vicious vibrator, especially in the lightweight, dual-cradle “featherbed” frame, designed originally for the racing Manx single.
Poore’s first project is a new big bike for the American market. Poore decides to revive the 800cc overhead-cam Norton P10 engine, developed and abandoned some years before. Dr. Stefan Bauer, whom Poore lures from Rolls-Royce, proposes using the P10 engine in a new frame of his own design.
Vibration is verboten, so to this end Bauer decides to isolate the power unit with rubber mountings. To avoid transmission snatch and chain windup, he fixes the swing arm to the engine unit, separating the entire powertrain from the frame — and hence the rider. He calls his system Isolastic. It’s brilliantly simple, and vice versa.
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