Gorgeous bike. I have a Duc parked next to my Commando too, but it's not a bevel. Still looking (and for that Laverda Jota, and R75/5).

And don't let Grandpaul swindle you out of it for $500 in hundreds. I'll give you $550 in small unmarked bills, no questions asked....

Good luck with it.

BrianK-
I've posted several times on the Norton portion of this site--I'm onto your
tricks! All kidding aside, I was quite lucky to stumble on the Ducati. Strangely enough, Cookie looked at this same bike. We live about 5 hours from eachother, but managed to miss eachother only by a day or so. Small world, and Im glad he didnt buy the bike. The R75/5 is another bike I'd love to have in the garage. Not sure if you saw the red one on ebay that didnt sell. Beauty. I am currently in the middle of a ground-up resto on a 76 Bonnie. I paid way too much for it in the pile-o-crap state it was in. Moment of weakness, I guess. Im just glad that decent parts are quite cheap. I started with the sludge trap and worked outwards from there. The engine is done, powdercoat and cad is done. Just waiting on wheels to come in and a last order of misc. bits and hardware. I suppose I could get some pics posted. Cheers.
JD

Duc's do seem to attract old Norton riders don't they? Triumphs too but I've never actally owned one, just had them around.
My BMW designed 750 Changs work just like the old R60 I had around for a while in college and do errands very well. An R75 tends to be as reliable as a post if kept in good shape.
I thought I'd try some classic Goldwings for a while as I'm pretty familiar with BMW models, they are proving quite interesting. They are a bit like driving a truck beside the Norton.
There is a guy in SF that has a P11 for sale that tempts me too, but I think he wants too much for its shabby state.

Be very wary of the P-11. It was a scary piece of work. When I was at Norton-Villiers in Wolverhampton, we found out about a lawsuit in California against N-V for injuries in a P-11 off-road accident. Nobody at N-V knew what a P-11 was!

We tracked it down to the US importer (Berliner Motors, I think) who had stuffed an Atlas engine into a Matchless 500 Scrambler frame and badged it as a Norton. We got one to test. It had the candy-apple red tank and black frame - quite a handsome beast.

It had a very unsettling dynamic characteristic. I did the initial break-in miles, limiting myself to less than 75 mph. It felt slightly uncomforable in the yaw axis and would start to weave as speed built up, getting to about about 12" from side to side at 60 mph, and you couldn't do anything to stop it. As speed went up, the amplitude of the weaving got bigger, until at 75 it was almost a full freeway lane wide from side to side.

The other test rider, who did the later testing, was braver than me and he found that at about 85, it straightened out. We tried all kinds of changes trying to fix it, but wthout decent test instrumentation we couldn't really sort out the cause.

That bike and my old 650SS commuting bike were still in the experimental shop at Marston Road when it closed down. I don't think they went to Andover. Have no idea what happened to them.

That was supposed to be a P11 problem all right. I never rode one, just its Matchless predessor. The P11 was great in a desert race but that's where it belonged. I'm surprised somebody would buy an off road racer and sue but welocme to California.
It was also a bit of a stoplight king for a while, not that I ever did that sort of thing....
Well, Ok, I used to do it a bit with my G15 CSR. That bike was only beaten once in my time and that was when I missed a shift against a new Honda four.
This site echoes some of the things Frank mentions about the hybrid bikes if anyone is interested. Having owned the G15 CSR and now owning a Featherbed I'd have to say the observations are spot on. It also echoes everything I'd heard about riding P11s on the pavement.
http://www.motorbyte.com/norton/Report.html

BrianK
Speaking of Laverdas, there's a cool Jota on ebay right now. Check it out, or you can find it on michaelsmotorcycles.com Just in time for a stocking stuffer. Free shipping, too!
JD

My wife says she made enough on Ebay for me to buy another bike for Christmas. I don't think the Jota is in that range though.

That was an interesting report, Cookie. I guess there was a major disconnect between those of us at Wolverhampton and the Plumstead guys.

The story we had was that the P-11 was not a factory bike, but something cobbled together by the US importer. According to that report, the P-11 was made in substantial numbers at Plumstead and was in production for several years, prior to the development of the Commando.

I thought you'd find it interesting Frank. I do think the first few were cobbled together over here, but after that it was production.
One thing I noticed was that the report said that Norton silencers were not used on the G15 CSR except for the prototype. Mine had the same silencers as an Atlas. I imagine a few came through like that as there were so many changes; I also think mine had Norton badges but they were probably added by the American importer.
I do wish I had a clearer memory of that bike but I really had nothing to compare it to at the time. Most places I went it was the first Norton anybody had seen so we though they were all like that.
I was after a Norton because the bike magazines said they were about the quickest production bikes available and my friend Vlad was being encouraged to sell that one. I think Vlad read the same magazines I did because he always had something interesting.
I did hear that the later P11s handled better on pavement, probably due to factory work. They were always a scary fast dirt bike.
By the way my G15 CS was great on fire roads too. When I foolishly tried to ride it in the rough dirt I was embarrassed by a Yamaha DT 1B.