At sixty-five (me), kicking over my Norton is not fun. I vote for the MK III, too.

Since LAB has the amazing memory I wonder if he (or anybody else) recalls an article in a classic bike type magazine a couple years back?
An Englishman had a MK 3 that had blown up to restore and he built it back up as a 750 because of what he had for parts.
He ended up with a 750 with a starter and left foot shift. It seems to me that could have made quite a nice bike.

After a long absence from bikes (which I'm afraid will probably continue) I can understand your reluctance to get into left foot, upside down shifting, Fastfred. Occasionally, while at N-V, I'd ride a friend's Triumph 21, and I had a big enough learning curve just with it being upside down, still on the right!

Where you get into trouble with left-side shift, if you've never had one, is in a potential accident situation, because you'll instictively go for the gear shift as a brake, as you haven't time to think about it.

frankdamp wrote:After a long absence from bikes (which I'm afraid will probably continue) I can understand your reluctance to get into left foot, upside down shifting, Fastfred. Occasionally, while at N-V, I'd ride a friend's Triumph 21, and I had a big enough learning curve just with it being upside down, still on the right!

Where you get into trouble with left-side shift, if you've never had one, is in a potential accident situation, because you'll instictively go for the gear shift as a brake, as you haven't time to think about it.

But from what FastFred has told us about the other bikes he has owned, he doesn't appear to be unused to a left foot gearchange?

I haven't been riding the Norton with quite the verve since last year when I shifted instead of braked in a fast corner. Everything else I have has the brake on the other side and I'm not sure the old neural circuits rewire as quick as when I was a kid.