An early picture of an ES2 race bike builder

A photo of an emerging Norton ES2 based race bike builder, and at best pretty average rider taken some 40 years ago. (The bike we now call "ES1"). Told that "ES2 engines were never intended to be raced, so why don't you take it home and buy a proper racing bike".

I couldn't afford it at the time, so this was all the motivation I required. Things did get a little out of hand over the decades since.

Time fly's when you are having fun
Burgs

ES234 said:

A photo of an emerging Norton ES2 based race bike builder, and at best pretty average rider taken some 40 years ago. (The bike we now call "ES1"). Told that "ES2 engines were never intended to be raced, so why don't you take it home and buy a proper racing bike".

I couldn't afford it at the time, so this was all the motivation I required. Things did get a little out of hand over the decades since.

Click to expand...

Have to say I have never seen your bikes race but I have seen, and my bike has raced against, the Lodge bikes.

And it really quite extraordinary how well you guys have made those bikes go.

I have a good friend Nick Thomson who builds the KTTs, Eldee 2 and 3, the Big Velo and the 350 DOHC Velo replica that Chris Swallow rode in the Manx. For years Nick raced a Venom and when he swapped to the OHC race bikes he quickly found how easy and reliable a real race engine was to prepare.

Production street push rod engines are a mission just simply to stop them blowing up when they are raced.

So those ES2s are just amazing. Very impressive.