frankdamp wrote:After a little over a year actually working in the UK industry, the biggest problems I saw were lack of leadership and shortage of funding. The one caused the other, in many instances.

The famous "Green Blob" was an attempt by the N-V/Manganese Bronze people trying to "re-image" the company. If memory serves me well, that PR exercise cost as much as the design effort on the Commando. Either one would have been a problem, but both together were a catastrophe. The disappearing funds made it very difficult to get things changed when testing showed a problem.

The engineering people tried to get the final drive chain increased from 1/4" to 3/8" wide for the best part of a year, but were repeat3edly told that it would cost too much to order the new-size sprockets. Only after we broke a chain at over 100 mph on the MIRA track did we get anyone to listen. I think even then it was more a result of destroying one of the test engines than the recognition that there was a potentially serios design flaw that resulted in the change. We'd been having to a chain adjustment after every two tanks of gas on those high speed tests.

Some of us down in the trenches could figure things out, but the Maharajahs running the company were so out of touch.

The "understabding" about the japanese was "They can make good "little" bikes, but they'll never be able to compete with us on the big stuff". Then the CB750 hit the street and the UK industry disappeared in a puff of smoke.

That seems very much telling it as it was Frank.............but even if the Brit industry had bothered to look seriously at just how very good the small capacity Japanese bikes were, and taken on board the fact that the same engineering excellence could also be applied to bigger machines, I am not sure whether or not they would ever have been able to actually build anything to rival the CB750, Z1, or HI/H2?

Mike Jacksons series of pieces in CBG seem to suggest that marketing of Norton in the US (their biggest market!) was carried out in a very amateur fashion, with a yearly budget that equated to around one months spend by one the big Japanese factory's, which in combination with the introduction of the disastrous Combat spec motors, probably hastened Nortons demise notwithstanding the Japanese bikes which were then available.

Matt Spencer wrote:Those inline fours have wierd vibratory characteristics .

"In-Line 4" = front to back

"TRANSVERSE 4" = side to side, across the bike, like all the moderns.

I noticed that Matt speaks pretty good hobot...

That was roughly the sequence in the UK market, Hobot. The 250 "Dream" got the ball rolling. When I first started riding (58), a "good " 250 like the Villiers 2T twin put out maybe 12 horsepower. The licensing rules had just been changed to limit learner drivers to 250 ccs, then along comes the "Dream" with overhead cams, 12,000 rpm redline and about 35 horsepower, giving it a top speed well into the 80s. British-built smaller bikes disappeared in very short order.

The 305 version of the Dream was about as big as Honda initially sold in the UK market, and Yamaha, Bridgestone, Suzuki et al were just minor ripples. It was that concentration on the smaller machines that gave Honda such a presence in the UK market. To most folks, a 500 was a "big" bike and with the good performance of the Honda 250s, a lot of youngsters started out with one , because of the learner restriction, and remained loyal to the brand. When the CB750 hit the UK market, with electric start, excellent power and performance and a ready market among the Honda enthusiasts, BSA-Triumph and Norton were doomed.

I could never figure out why, if the original 850cc Mini engine had electric start, why the hell a 650SS Norton or an Atlas couldn't. I think it might be the result of Lucas not being interested in doing the development work. We used to have a very difficult time with Lucas because they really regarded us as a very small, nuisance customer. We'd get wiring harnesses that were full of errors and they wouldn't even talk to us.

I tried to get the company interested in Bosch and Wipac as alternatives, but management said that we were too small for them to bother with, and in any case, the US market insisted on Lucas (yeah right they did!).

Just a different perspective, looking from the right-hand side of the big pond!

Gosh Frank you are gemstone to have in our midst a feature missing on other forums. I'd never heard half of the intrigues and dead ends of poor ole Norton since reading all about it here.

Matt has a strong accent that's hard to interpret at my end but his general excessive experiences touches a common sense. I missed out for decades so soaking its scope up how ever I can.

Carbonfibre wrote:

Matt Spencer wrote:The term is ' underdeveloped ' . Scared of seeing what broke before they produced it .
In the Pre Motorway Era , they considered pottering around country lanes to be ' normal ' rideing .

Except for Vincents .

But CONCEPTUALLY , the Square four was Adopted by Yamaha in the notorious TZ ,and the RG or whatever it was by whoever it was , Triples by Kwakersaki and Suzooki ,
And the V4 is alll the rage for 4 stroke raceing now.
With the straight fours obsolete for anything but docile old tourers .

Now , If somebody had a brain , Theyed be Developing a Double flat four dual crank H 8 ,
as the vibration could be got at near nill , the valve area large , and the power unit copact and durable,
AND you could get a few r.p.m.s out of it .Might pay to have hydraulic tappets though . 32 Valves to adjust !

Try riding a modern Japanese bike................there is no problem with vibration, but this was something that is very difficult to deal with on twin cylinder motors designed in the 1940s, hence the Norton rubber mount system.

That may be true, well until you ride an Interpol/Commander, they make an IL4 feel like a Commando. Norton were very close to having what would have been a very influential bike in the F1, it may have even created a paradigm shift in the whole idea of what a sport bike should be

frankdamp wrote: a "good " 250 like the Villiers 2T twin put out maybe 12 horsepower. The licensing rules had just been changed to limit learner drivers to 250 ccs, then along comes the "Dream" with overhead cams, 12,000 rpm redline and about 35 horsepower, giving it a top speed well into the 80s. British-built smaller bikes disappeared in very short order.!

The 250 Honda Dream had a max power of 18bhp at 8k rpm when it came out in 1959, you were only off 100% with that BS.....

I blame Norton's demise squarely on AMC. Norton is bought out by it's competitor in sales and racing and right away the order to stop all works racing comes through putting an end to any exotic development.

After this the Norton factory's policy was that it's riders compete on the same equipment that the public could buy over the counter. It was not until Doug Hele took over the race department in the very late 1950's that development started to jump again with the desmo Manx and the Domiracer projects providing some trickle-down improvements, but this AMC sabotages by shutting the entire works down.

At the time AMC shut down the Bracebridge Street Norton works, Norton was the only part of AMC that was by itself profitable and self-sustaining, so it made perfect sense to axe it and pull it into the rest of the AMC mess. Besides not having any money, AMC did not have any sense either and never made one smart decision through the sixties and seventies.

Instead of keeping the Featherbed chassis, which had it's design elements copied by every other major motorcycle factory in the world, they axe that and keep the shitty engine instead, the exact opposite of what the Japanese did, coming out with multis in chassis that borrowed heavily from Norton design.

AMC was Norton enemy #1 in my book.....and possibly their thinking infecting everything else in the industry through all the later mergers is what did the entire show in....

hobot wrote:Matt has a strong accent that's hard to interpret at my end but his general excessive experiences touches a common sense. I missed out for decades so soaking its scope up how ever I can.

I have seen very few statements on the internets that were more ironic than this one.

And to think that for a while I was wondering if hobot and Matt were the same person.

Yeah me too - eerie ain't it. After seeing your kicking comedy skit and the bonking a stopped car, I suspect some genetic over lap with us too, even if you deny it : )

hobot wrote:Yeah me too - eerie ain't it. After seeing your kicking comedy skit and the bonking a stopped car, I suspect some genetic over lap with us too, even if you deny it : )

I won't deny owning some errant genes.

If theyd had the nouse to throw this into production ,
They'd have had a lighter faster better handling Bonneville .
( or NORTON ) The frame was rather similar to the flat single G.P.
Norton bike , single tube spine frame . Tecnivcally better than an EGLI .

The whole shambles may well have had its head above ground still .

Now , a Transverse Crankshaft in relation to the ENGINE in a four , would mean Four of them .
However , on a Twin if they were inline , itd be like a Kawaski 250 /350 racer of old .
BUT , inline counter rotateing crankshafts , on a transverse cylinder twin would get a Velo .
However counter rotateing Crank Shafts through a planatary gearset , inline , with transverse cylinders ,
And Crankshafts would get us someting with a few intresting properties .
Presumably flogging the gearsets out of a Jet Turbine Compressor would get a workable arrangement .

Id think an 80 x 100 Cosworth ( flogging half a Merc . ' Nice Car , did you get it from adolf personally ' )
on ISOs with a SEPERATE gearbox , Egli type frame , with the mounting plates across the block faces would be the way to get a competetive
unique design to take on all comers .Weight Ridgidity Cooling . And Id probly throw on a double A frame monted Girder ( with full side legs )
The top hat arragement on the Britten giveing rise to some peculiar tendancies in the alignment of the front axle .If youve got youre Eye In .

Anyone know where the patterns for Williams F-750 front Fork Sliders went . alledgedly ran Koni Internals .
' Somebody ' should be retrieveing
as much of the heritage as they are able .

Pretty much any forks can be converted to accept modern cartridge damping parts, and I would guess on something like a Norton, modern front and rear suspension parts and uprated brakes would be very worthwhile improvements.