Joined: 07 Oct 2005 Posts: 143 Location: Anacortes, WA, USA
Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 9:58 am Post subject:
Dave:
My old boss at N-V, Peter Inchley, actually gave me a demonstration to compare the Featherbed (the works hack 650SS I was using) to the Commando.
We used the test track at the Motor Industries Research Accociation near Nuneaton. On the flat lanes of the high speed circuit, he was able to show how the Featherbed frame flexed in torsion, where the back and front wheels were being twisted relative to each other. The Commando didn't exhibit the same tendencies.
Of course we were riding the "factory fresh" prototypes, before the Isolastic spacer tube problem was found. Any rider comparison these days should with a properly set up Commando.
My structural testing was bare frame, and I was measuring torsional deflection between the headstock and the rear shock mounts on the seat loop and also to the lower Iso mount location. The engine/transmission and swing arm were not installed.
In retrospect, maybe we were'nt really comparing apples to apples, as we should really have checked rear wheel spindle to front wheel spindle, with the front forks installed too.
Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 168 Location: Langley, B.C.
Posted: Sun Jul 06, 2008 10:02 pm Post subject:
I told my friend Murray Neibel about my purchase of thev 650 SS and he got very excited. He has been looking for an SS for some time. He sells Suzuki now but was a Norton dealer back in the sixties when the SS came out. He tells me that very few came to the east coast and even fewer to the westcoast where we are.
He says that in the 1963 a friend took a 650SS to the Westwood racetrack in Vancouver (now gone) and it blew away the short stroke Manxes and G 50s. The only alteration from stock was removal of the cigar mufflers in favour of straight pipes.
The 650SS also won the Thruxton 500 in 62,63 and 64 (Phil Read and Brian Setchell)
I'm not expecting great speed or power from the bike(compared to an 850 Commando), but he is! He says expect less low end grunt but a much quicker revving engine, a result of the smaller displacement, relatively hot cam and high compression and the downdraft head/carb arrangement that the SS had.
Joined: 22 Feb 2007 Posts: 153 Location: Pennsylvania, USA
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 7:51 pm Post subject:
worntorn wrote:
The 650SS also won the Thruxton 500 in 62,63 and 64 (Phil Read and Brian Setchell)
I'm not expecting great speed or power from the bike(compared to an 850 Commando), but he is! He says expect less low end grunt but a much quicker revving engine, a result of the smaller displacement, relatively hot cam and high compression and the downdraft head/carb arrangement that the SS had.
Sounds like a proper set-up to me. Any idea when you'll be able to report back on his ride report worntorn? It's of interest to me how the SS would compare in this regard to the Commando. In what I've read, also, these bikes were rare over here in the U.S. Of particular interest is the 'downdraft head/carb' arrangement you mention.
Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 168 Location: Langley, B.C.
Posted: Thu Jul 10, 2008 9:31 pm Post subject:
The bike was shipped today from Toronto and is expected to arrive here in vancouver on thursday. Not sure when I'll have it properly on the road, but I may sneak the commando plates onto it for a short ride.
The bike was stolen and wrecked in 1995. One of the Sarnia Vintage bike members, Herb Becker (of racing Commando fame, scroll to bottom of this page http://tinyurl.com/57v6o9 ) found the bike in a wrecker's yard and purchased it for a few hundred dollars. The thief had blown the engine when one throttle slide stuck wide open. The right side connecting rod went thru the right side case.
Herb donated the bike to the Sarnia Vintage group to be rebuilt and then raffled off. Terry Gower did the bulk of the work on the bike, but Herb and others in the group also helped. Lots of NOS parts were donated and the rest came from Mike at Walridge Motors. I talked with Mike and he remembered the bike well, or i should say he remembered the sale of a great many 650SS parts well.
After a long search a set of 650SS cases were found and purchased in Atlanta. Luckily the bikes original laft side case was undamaged, so the bike retained it's original engine number which matches the frame.
Terry told me they did not hold back on parts as they had a good budget with the raffle bringing in $16,000 and of course all labour was free.
The fellow who won the bike is not a motorcyclist, although he did obtain his motorcycle license after winning the bike. He learned that he is not that interested in motorcycling after putting just 1500 miles on the bike since 99. He said that he has not ridden it at all for few years, just started it up once or twice a year to keep things working.
The bike won 2nd place in Vintage class at the big Toronto Motorcycle show/swap meet in 99, so it comes with a trophy. Also included is an 18 page document that lists all of the work performed and new parts installed.
Terry said that the only weak point on the bike is the clutch cush rubbers which were quite worn but had to be reused as new ones were not available. He thinks new cush rubbers can be had now, so I will change them out.
Joined: 22 Feb 2007 Posts: 153 Location: Pennsylvania, USA
Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 10:49 am Post subject:
worntorn wrote:
The bike was shipped today from Toronto and is expected to arrive here in vancouver on thursday.
Way to go worntorn.... would love to see pictures of your new acquisition if you care to share. The SS is just a gorgeous looking bike. Congratulations.
Joined: 26 Sep 2007 Posts: 129 Location: Encinitas, California
Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 12:21 pm Post subject: congrats on the 650 SS purchase - it looks familiar...
I wonder if that's my old 650SS.
I bought one while in college in 1975, and rode it through many adventures before selling it to a friend in Toronto in 1981. He sold it a couple of years later, but I don't know where the next owner lived.
In any case, I sure can't recommend a 650SS for any lengthy rides. I think I did 3 or 4 semi-long distance rides (over 150 miles) and had problems every single time. Each problem was vibration-related, from minor things such as mirrors falling off to:
- carburetor shaking loose at 60 mph
- one exhaust header pipe popping off, scaring the shit out of me as flames shot out (also at 60 MPH, and at night, for special effect)
- tack drive shaking loose, thus spitting oil over my foot
- headlight frequently shaking itself loose, so it ended up pointing wherever it liked, depending on the nature of the bumps in the road
I could go on and on, but you get the point. It shakes. You'll find out. Maybe this one was put together with plenty of Locktite, so you'll have better luck than I did.
Now if only I had my engine serial number written down from all those years ago, I could even find out if it's the same bike.
Despite the headaches of holding the thing together, it is a sweet looking bike
Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 168 Location: Langley, B.C.
Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 1:01 pm Post subject:
This bike was first delivered to a dealer in Toronto. I don't know the name of the original owner, however an Amway dealer named Joe Reicke owned it for 11 years before it was stolen and wrecked.
I've been warned not to call Joe as he will talk forever and probably try to sell me some Amway products. I'm still tempted to brave it.
I'll post some photos of the bike as soon as it gets here.
I'm expecting some vibration. One of my growing group of Norton 650SS advisers has suggested that if I want to really ride the bike I should pull it down and have the crank dynamically balanced for $125. The balance is cheap enough, but I have a feeling that if the engine comes apart, a couple of thousand will go into high performance stuff.
It seems a shame to pull apart an engine apart that is freshly rebuilt and not yet broken in.
i'll probably just put up with the vibration for now.
Besides, I want to spend at least a month just looking at it from various angles!
My structural testing was bare frame, and I was measuring torsional deflection between the headstock and the rear shock mounts on the seat loop and also to the lower Iso mount location. The engine/transmission and swing arm were not installed.
In retrospect, maybe we were'nt really comparing apples to apples, as we should really have checked rear wheel spindle to front wheel spindle, with the front forks installed too.
Frank, it's fascinating to hear that the factory went to such lengths and the Commando spine undoubtedly has good torsional stiffness. The team did their work well. As you imply though, a pity that the focus wasn't on at least headstock to rear wheel stiffness because I am more and more convinced that the poor head steady triangulation is a major part of many Commando stability problems.
Good luck with the new bike worntorn. I've heard several people say that a good 650SS is like a Featherbed International only faster, smoother and more reliable which must put it up at the top of the Norton tree .
Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 168 Location: Langley, B.C.
Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2008 8:34 pm Post subject:
Read thru the posts again and realized I missed wrench's question as to whether the bike I bought was the one from Bradsbikes that he posted the photo of. It isn't that bike, mine is completely stock (more knowledgeable members may correct me) in appearance.
I really like the look of the bike in wrench's photo though, so I might consider sweptbacks and Dunstall type megaphones as opposed to stock headers with the cigar mufflers.
Am I correct in thinking that Paul Dunstall discovered the Dominator bikes made more power with smaller dia. exhausts? I also seem to recall that he was heavily involved with the development of the early Commando engines, maybe that is why the Commando was such a hotrod in it's day. It could explain the relatively small bore of the stock Commando headers.
There are lots of large bore aftermarket pipes out there, but perhaps the factory had it right with the small bore setup.
ETA for the bike has been moved up to this Monday. Only two more sleeps!
Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 9:24 am Post subject: Pix please
Congrats, you will like the bike very much if it's as good as my 650 Manxman was. I had a couple of mods done at the time, one was higher compression pistons and the other was a Ravesi cam. The bike only ran right with Sunoco 260 (102 octane if I remember right) so when that fuel was discontinued, it would ping on full throttle. Being very difficult to time, I put the job off to later and later until one day on the freeway when a con rod gave way and sawed the right hand case in two and knocked the nice Lucas competition magneto off it's base and also cracking the cylinders. Major damage. I rebuilt it with a 750 Atlas motor.
My café racer project is using the very same frame of that Manxman so in effect it still lives
Post some nice pics as soon as you get it, the bigger the better.
If I have it correct the Manxman was available for one year only (61) then in 62 the 650SS was sold alongside the Standard and Deluxe model 650s. From the advertisement, which I assume is correct, the Manxman appears to have the downdraught head which the 500cc and 600cc Dominators did not have. I'm not sure if the first bike is even a manxman, it looks more like an earlier bike.
I believe the main dfference between the ss and the manxman would be the higher compression, hotter cam and twin carbs of the ss. With the changes you made to your Manxman it must have been quite similar to SS performance,only lacking the twin carbs.
Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 6:42 pm Post subject: #2 it is
Mine looked like picture #2. The main differences that I could gather at the time, was the gas tank which was smaller than an Atlas tank, it looked sleeker and less "bulbous" than the Atlas. When I rebuilt it as a café racer, I gave the tank to my brother for his Norton chopper (what a shame but I'm sure everyone has skeletons in their closets ). My Manxman also had twin carbs, two 26mm monoblocks with a single float bowl on the left hand carb. It also had a Lucas competition magneto which was cool since it could run even if the battery and the electrical system was toast. The downside to a mag was the time it took to time it and the somewhat weak spark (0.015" gap maximum on the spark plugs).
I think the Manxman was available in Europe too, but I could be wrong. Mine was a 61.
Joined: 22 Dec 2006 Posts: 168 Location: Langley, B.C.
Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 9:50 pm Post subject:
I stand corrected, the Manxman was a twin carb model. Looks like the main internal difference between the Manxman, (which seems to be a 61 model only) and the 650SS is the use of a new hotter SS type cam on the SS bike.. This cam was also used on the Atlas and later on was used for the early Commandos. The CR was also raised on the SS with the Manxman being at 8.3 and the SS at 8.9 to one. Carbs were bigger as well. The listed carb size was 26 MM for the Manxman, as yours were Jean, and 28 MM for the SS.
I think there were some cosmetic differences as well, apart from the different paint scheme. I'm still looking into that. When Roy Bacon's book gets here I'll read up on it. The SS also had a 150 MPH speedo and a tachometer instead of the 120 mph speedo only that was on the standard and deluxe. I think the Manxman also had a 120 MPH speedo, not sure if it came with a tach.
Overall the two bikes are very similar, the Manxman was clearly the forerunner of the 650SS.
Mine had both a tach and a speedo, both Smiths Chronometric, but my brackets are not identical which leads me to believe the previous owner installed a tach after buying the bike or it could have been a dealer installed option for the american market, my Maxman used to belong to a guy in New Jersey and he broke down in Québec city and left the bike as trade in for another one. I bought it as a non runner for $175 in the mid-seventies.
Joined: 07 Oct 2005 Posts: 143 Location: Anacortes, WA, USA
Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 8:37 pm Post subject:
My N-V company bike definitely had both speedo and tach, but I don't remember whether it was a 120 or a 150 speedometer. I was using it in late 1967/early 68 and it already had abpout 90,000 miles on it. I don't know what year it was, as it had never been registered and we ran it on trade plates (001 JW).
As far as I know, it was part of the sell-off of equipment when the Villiers Marston Road facility was liquidated, along with a rather battered P-11 we had been testing.
I'd still like to know what happened to the ISDT AJS and Matchless Starmaker-powered bikes from that time, but even the old hands don't seem to know!
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At the end of 1967 the Norton Commando was announced.
The Norton Commando was greeted with a certain amount of scepticism because on first sight the commando appeared to comprise of the old Norton Dominator twin cylinder engine mounted at an inclined angle in a set of new cylinder parts.
It was not realized that the new Norton Commando Isolastic method of engine suspension damped out all engine vibration and produced a machine which had uncanny smoothness for a vertical twin. In due course the critics were silenced and the Norton Commando had the distinction of being regarded as the first of todays so called superbikes. There can be little doubt that the original design concept of the Norton Commando has proved correct, since comparatively few modifications of any real consequence have been made since production commenced during 1968.
Now nearly 40 years later Norton Commando riders like us are a breed of our own, and as far as we are concerned its still more fun to go for a blat on the old Norton Commando, and fast. As a Norton Commando owner and enthusiast, my goal here is to promote and give credit to those who keep the Norton name going.
It is more deserving to give credit to the Commando itself, for after all these years it continues to be respected. The original Commando designers like John Favill are those who deserve the credit for developing this incredible motorcycle.
The Norton Commando Roadster and Interstate of the late seventies, never died. Although the Norton Villiers factory dispersed the tradition lived on. Today Kenny Dreer in the USA is developing the new 952 CC Norton. What a great looking bike this is, and its engineering is still based on the original layout. It will be interesting to see how the new 952CC Norton does in todays tough motorcycle market. One thing is for sure, I would own one if I could afford it.
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