I was wondering if anyone, or aftermarket company, has ever tried or produced a Triumph style head pipe mount for Nortons (IE short spigot pipe screwed into the head onto which is clamped the head pipe.) ? Probably a six of one half dozen of the other affair, but maybe an extra joint would take a little stress out of the port thread area.

GB

See this thread exhaust-port-repairs-t3373.html I think that is much sturdier than clamps.

Jean

Jean also uses cannons to shoot bunny rabbits and squirrels. he figures, no sense in doing ANYTHING with less than total effectiveness.

hee hee

Those darned machinists think they can make ANYTHING.

...well, I'll admit, some of them CAN!

Several racers do this - make a spigot with an OD the diameter of the ID of the header, clamp them in using the exhaust collars, tighten and safety wire the collars in place, then use springs to pull the headers up tight. This is handy for 2 reasons: ease of removal, but also when you fall you don't break your headers. I've often considered doing this, just never got around to it.

How necessary is it on a street bike? Not very, other than stopping the collars from rattling loose and doing permanent damage to the head. Nonetheless, I'm sure someone (Jean) could come up with an elegant slip-on solution.

-Kenny C.

Jean do the socket screws go through and screw into the head as well

Yes, the screws are in the head also, well, actually half in the head and half in the sleeve. The best way is by far Ludwig's, looks very strong. If you look at the way other bikes are setup, especially the Japanese bikes, they have the same way to hold the exhaust pipes and you never hear about recurrent problems with their exhaust pipes. Car exhausts are also held the same way, studs and nuts.

Jean

Jeandr wrote:.. The best way is by far Ludwig's,..

Thanks for the complement Jean . ( yours isn't so bad either ! )
It is indeed bullitproof , but it requires some welding up between the fins to provide enough material for the stud threads .
Studs are brass and nuts regular copper exhaust nuts .
Added advantage is that pipes are very easy to remove and install : nuts are only 1/4 turn over finger tight .

Funny that some qualify a simple , efficient and well engineered solution for a REAL problem as overkill , while at the same time happily engaging in constructions requiring massive amounts of time and resources , creating more problems then it will ever solve .

No smiley face emoticons will ever be used by me, so you have to assume I TRY to tell a joke once in a while..

grandpaul wrote:No smiley face emoticons will ever be used by me, so you have to assume I TRY to tell a joke once in a while..

same here .

Holmeslice wrote:a spigot with an OD the diameter of the ID of the header, clamp them in using the exhaust collars, tighten and safety wire the collars in place, then use springs to pull the headers up tight.

This solution is very effective, and it could look good on a road Norton if it was made from stainless (or chromed after welding). The Ducati single I raced for 20 years has a spigot secured by the threaded exhaust gland nut and it never came loose. (Standard Ducatis are as infamous as Nortons for chewing up their exhaust port threads). The spigot is the same OD as the original header, and so the slip-on header has a larger ID. I think the same would apply to the Commando, so there would be more fabrication than one might think.

geo46er wrote:I was wondering if anyone, or aftermarket company, has ever tried or produced a Triumph style head pipe mount for Nortons (IE short spigot pipe screwed into the head onto which is clamped the head pipe.) ? Probably a six of one half dozen of the other affair, but maybe an extra joint would take a little stress out of the port thread area.GB

CNW were working on an exhaust system at one stage and from memory that was going to be spigot mounted.
Reference to it seems to have dropped off their website now though.

Hi all,

We have in fact been working on a spigot type exhaust system and have a few bikes running with it as we speak.

We make a threaded insert that installs in the head with a belleville washer in-between the insert and the head to secure it. The stainless clamp we CNC machine out of stainless. This was the easy part of the development. The hard part was making the headerpipes we wanted. They are 1 5/8 o/d and also made out of stainless. They have an insert for the first several inches (essentially a double wall pipe) since running a big bore directly out of the head made less horse power that staying with 1 3/8 for a certain distance. The pipes are computer mandrel bent and look really nice when polished to a chrome like finish. We are having a peashoter style muffler, also stainless, made to fit the big bore pipe.

What really took some time was to make the left and right header pipes look as identical as possible. If you look at your pipes you will see what I mean....at least the ones we have used in the past are noticable different in many ways. Problem is that the left side wants to come down further to clear the primary (even more so on the MKIII) but then not tucked in to close to the side stand lug and it has to stay above the stand when it swings out. Left side is typically run higher and tucked in against the fram rail to clear the kick starter. If you look at the pipes from the level of your front axle you will notice this difference. Finally you want the mufflers to run as even as possible which is a challenge since the kick at the end is different from left to right....so many things to consider and try to work with. Especially tricky since our pipes are that much larger in size. End result is that we have two very even looking header pipes.

While we were at it we also designed an SS system (one high pipe on each side) with the same big bore pipe. You can see what that looks like on our site in the gallery, bike #061.

One of the last bikes we finished is #070 and that was slated to get the big bore system. We were also running our brand new rearsets on that bike. Unfortunately we encountered clearance issues between the brake lever on the rears sets and the big bore pipes.....back to the drawing board on the rearsets. It never ends. Just when you think you got it finished.....you get thrown for a loop. Nothing we cant fix though so we'll press on.

Thanks

Matt / Colorado Norton Works

I wonder where Norton would be if they had bikes like that in their prime production years

Jean