After almost 50 years since owning an 850, back when I was a but a teen, I am once again a Norton owner. I had been following the prices of 850s for a long time and with the current financial squeeze causing a drop in prices, managed to acquire this one.
I bought it through an auction, sight unseen however it looked to be in very nice original condition, which as it turned out, was. The seller told me that it belonged to his son who h.ad it as display piece in his house and it was only occasionally fired up. He gave it a service prior to selling however when he drained the sump, as it was prone to wet sumping as they do, less oil appeared than expected given how low the dipstick read. He drained the primary and a load came out. He let me know that the main seal had failed and offered to either send it to a shop and have it replaced or if I wanted to do the job, give me a generous discount. I told him that I would do it and the bike was delivered to me.
While waiting for the tools to arrive, I decided that I would fire the old girl up and after half a dozen or so kicks it roared into life and settled into a nice idle. I ran it for a couple of minutes then removed the primary oil level plug and about a litre of oil came out. No big deal, a few days later the tools arrived and I proceeded to remove the rotor and drive sprocket when I discovered this
As can be imagined, gut wrenchingly disappointed. The main seal had a lot of red RTV around it and the inside face of the rotor was a bit beaten up as well, so I immediately called the seller and he seemed to be as surprised as me and to his credit he has undertaken to reimburse me for the cost of all the parts needed to repair her, so thanks again Dave. At least I have a half century's more mechanical experience since my first 850 and look forward to getting her back on the road, better than ever.
The bike shows 26,000 miles and to the best of my measuring ability and rechecking each measurement at least a dozen times, has negligible wear in the bores or the pistons at 76.89mm. Just waiting on my pinion puller to show up before splitting the cases. I do have a question regarding my timing cover, I had planned on doing the AMR mod to stop it wet sumping in the future and I see the screw inserted roughly where I see the hole drilled when doing the mod, so can anyone tell me why it might be there? Thanks
Dale
I bought it through an auction, sight unseen however it looked to be in very nice original condition, which as it turned out, was. The seller told me that it belonged to his son who h.ad it as display piece in his house and it was only occasionally fired up. He gave it a service prior to selling however when he drained the sump, as it was prone to wet sumping as they do, less oil appeared than expected given how low the dipstick read. He drained the primary and a load came out. He let me know that the main seal had failed and offered to either send it to a shop and have it replaced or if I wanted to do the job, give me a generous discount. I told him that I would do it and the bike was delivered to me.
While waiting for the tools to arrive, I decided that I would fire the old girl up and after half a dozen or so kicks it roared into life and settled into a nice idle. I ran it for a couple of minutes then removed the primary oil level plug and about a litre of oil came out. No big deal, a few days later the tools arrived and I proceeded to remove the rotor and drive sprocket when I discovered this
As can be imagined, gut wrenchingly disappointed. The main seal had a lot of red RTV around it and the inside face of the rotor was a bit beaten up as well, so I immediately called the seller and he seemed to be as surprised as me and to his credit he has undertaken to reimburse me for the cost of all the parts needed to repair her, so thanks again Dave. At least I have a half century's more mechanical experience since my first 850 and look forward to getting her back on the road, better than ever.
The bike shows 26,000 miles and to the best of my measuring ability and rechecking each measurement at least a dozen times, has negligible wear in the bores or the pistons at 76.89mm. Just waiting on my pinion puller to show up before splitting the cases. I do have a question regarding my timing cover, I had planned on doing the AMR mod to stop it wet sumping in the future and I see the screw inserted roughly where I see the hole drilled when doing the mod, so can anyone tell me why it might be there? Thanks
Dale
