1950 Works Norton

Went down to the club yesterday as Ken was giving a talk on the 1950 works Norton he restored.
I think the story goes along the lines of:
One of Kens friends in the UK found a frame at a swap meet and it looked like a Featherbed but was brazed.
Ken realised it was on of the first Featherbed frames built for the 1950 season and the bikes were dismantled at the end of the season.
Much searching was done and a correct engine turned up along with most of the other main bits.
Rex McCandless developed the frame with its twin loops and swinging arm with shocks.
Ken said he made the shocks out of car ones.
This frame set up and tele forks started the modern era.
Here are a few pics.





They took it to Goodwood and Kevin Schwantz rode it...and dropped it when he forgot the shift is on the right. Sounds like some of the other race Nortons run a l/h shift for them there modern racer blokes.

Ken fired it up outside and I might have a clip of that too

Very nice.
You don't hear much about those early featherbed manxs, if they were dismantled that season (why ?) that may be why.
Someone in the NOC still has the prototype roadgoing featherbed dommie that showed up at early race meets.

BTW, why is the all aloy engine painted black ??

Ken makes/lists enough replica parts I'm surprised he couldn't build one from scratch.

Note too that manx frames were bronzed welded, rather than brass being involved.
A fine distinction, but a distinction nethertheless.
Brass doesn't build into fillets....

Apparently they did not have enough money to keep them and used parts off them for the next season.
Ken says that there are almost no interchangeable parts off a works bike and a over the counter Manx.
I'm not sure but does he mean the factory bikes are not Manx's?

Are not the originals painted black?

He said that the hubs and even the mag are magnesium.

There were over-the-counter manx race bikes,
and there was the factory manx race team.

The factory bikes tried many experimental things - like outside flywheel, short stroke, desmo,
rotary inlet valves, big bearing crankcases, enclosed valves, who-knows-what, etc etc.
Some of this trickeled down to the over the counter bikes, much didn't.
A lot was secret, and never shown or mentioned ?
Some was trotted out for the press and even public to see.

Hmm, 1950 pics do show a fairly dark looking top end, maybe they were blackened.
Most years were gloriously displayed in bright aluminium...

72Combat said:

They took it to Goodwood and Kevin Schwantz rode it...and dropped it when he forgot the shift is on the right.

Click to expand...

What a dope!

'Note too that manx frames were bronzed welded, rather than brass being involved.
A fine distinction, but a distinction nethertheless.
Brass doesn't build into fillets....'

Rohan, I bow to your superior knowledge about bronze welding. Brazing is the my knowledge, the common way of describing bronze welding. Actually furnace brazing was used on many bikes to attach the forgings to the tubes. There are no forgings on a featherbed frame. However in common parlance the frames are brazed, which in your usual nit-picking pedantic way you insist on using the correct term - bronze welded. I don't believe even Indian Enfields have furnace brazed frames these days, however garden gate manxes certainly did.

acotrel said:

'Actually furnace brazing was used on many bikes to attach the forgings to the tubes.

Click to expand...

Correct. Lugged frames, with tubes poked into holes and then brazed (with brass) was how english made motorcycles were made into the mid 1950s.
Bicycles used this method earlier AND longer than motorcycles did, so for neigh on +100+ years or more.
Some are still being done this way.

But if you try and simply join 2 tubes together, with no lug to poke them into, and try to braze them together with brass, you will fail, dismally.
Brass like to flow, esp into small spaces, not build into nice big strong fillets....
Whereas bronze likes to build into fillets.

BTW, its not nick picking, nor being pedantic, its correcting you when you post utter nonsense.
Perhaps you just don't have the smarts to even recognise this, which is a real worry.
We have long noticed you like to play fast and loose with the truth - as the saying goes.
But some of us like to keep the record here nice and somewhat ACCURATE,
for future readers here to be not totally lead up the garden path, technically speaking.....
And this must be the 10th time we have discussed this, at least ??

Note too that the Norton featherbed frame is widely credited with being the saviour of the frame making industry, with an all welded frame.
1950. The featherbed manx 1st appeared.
Oddly, quite a number of makers had welded frames prior to this. But they didn't win TT races to become famous for it.