Yes I asked myself that same question. I answered it myself while lapping with oil on Emery paper. I am going to do the best I can to tighten the clearances up. Other than the tires and handlebars, the oil pump is probably the most important part of the machine. It's kind of like a heart keeping the blood circulating. Thank you for your input Time Warp. Off the topic, on several posts I've seen "MrGreen". What does this mean?
Maybe oil and carbon powder sliced thru
Care to expand on why not ? By the way, I am talking tiny chamfer, not much more that a deburr.
In my mind ,gear faces should be touched up too to prevent scoring on the mating surfaces. The reduction in capacity, I would think, isn't an issue.
I think that you will find that the pump screws are 2BA.
Look at swooshdave's video and you can see the pump apart. This is kommando's, but he used an xring.
I have the exact same experience, owned my Norton the first time between 1974 and -84, never heard of wetsumping. Now I own the bike again and hear a lot of this potential problem, it´s very strange since it was no problem back in the day but now it is.....I surfaced my oil pump once - based on the service manual. It was very straightforward and dramatically reduced wetsumping (which I didn't care about but that's a different subject). I did it because when I bought the bike in '06, I didn't trust anything about it and figured it was just a bit of "routine maintenance." But for those interested, it reduced wetsumping from draining the oil tank to the feed-pipe level in 4-5 days to a month. I had a '71 back in the day and when we actually rode these bikes instead of spending most of the time talking about how to "upgrade" them, none of us ever heard of "wetsumping."
Side rant:
"Thanks for sharing that. It's nice to know what these machines are capable of in the right hands."
Frankly, my feeling about the "right hands" is people who do not see the need to "upgrade" things that were never broken to start with. Most of the "problems" with Nortons have been invented relatively recently by folks on the internet.
Certainly, the age of the machines means there are items that need to be examined/renewed. Electrical wiring/any rubber parts is a good example. But IMO the only thing that really needs to be "improved" to use a Norton nowadays is a more effective front brake. Everything else can be "fixed" with the normal maintenance described in the manual or the replacement of parts due to normal wear.
Sure, there are convenience and appearance items that, depending on the individual, are very useful but that's a personal issue. For example, some folks think putting an E-start on a pre-MarkIII is sacrilege, others figure they are just doing what Norton had intended early in the Commando's production.
As we say in the software business, it was an unknown unknown to shade tree mechanics.
They knew. The rider's manual says to run the engine for 3 minutes before checking oil level.
I have rebuilt many Norton oil pumps. In fact I am just finishing another today. The gears are quite soft and should be inspected to ensure that the teeth are free of any inclusions, that the pump body is not unduly scored, , and the end faces do not have any burrs. I very carefully use a fine diamond file on the teeth to remove any small blemishes. The gears and bodies can and should be lapped to reduce end float. I recommend that owners read and follow the method as outlined in this excellent article by John Hudson.
