Procrastination stories...who has a good one?

My thanks to all the guys and Gal in the forum. You have gotten me up off my butt and made me do something with my bike besides ride it.

In 77, the new wife decided that me going to my buddies' workshop to "work on the bike" almost every evening, had to have some devious secondary motive to it. There must be some other beautiful young lady out there in the next town, in that garage I went to all the time. In essence, she was correct, but not the kind she thought it might be, but rather the two wheeled kind. She started to ask strange questions....so I did what I should have done earlier, and asked her along. When she figured finally out that the lady wasn't to be worried about, she relaxed a bit about it, and decided to give a hand with the repairs and we made a good team. She wrote down every step of how to take a Norton apart, and we just followed the instructions, in reverse to put it back together...whole notebook full, but better than Haynes. Bike totally striped, painted the frame, rewired the loom and did the tank up too as black looked better than lime green with a yellow duck sticker on it. See picture.



Years went by. The exhaust did road duty in a few corners, rusted and turned brown, tank got dents from clipons, master cylindar leaked and put 1000 holes in the tank paint, a cow bit a corner of the seat out, a dog decided to scratch the tank all up, my belt buckles did the belt buckle thing. A hundred thousand miles of riding wore the paint at the back corners of the tank to the metal, and the wonderful new lead free gasoline made the tank look like one of the wine bottles naughty boys used to stick a hundred candles in and let the wax melt all over the sides while they partook of the evil weed.
I moaned about it for years and sometimes even made a motion towards doing something about it, but I was always too busy with riding it to bother with cosmetics. It looked crappy, but it ran like stink and that was all that mattered. See picture.


This week, I pulled out the paint I bought twenty years ago for her, the exhaust I bought in 1990, the Decals I bought in 1992, the pinstripe I got somewhere in a dusty storeroom, the fairing I had on her in the 70's, and the seat I built last year from an old rusty interstate seat that I finally got back from the saddler that covered it for me.
Four sunny days, no experience with a paint gun, but pictures of all your beautiful bikes in my head and I went to town. Thanks all of you....it's all your fault..... :wink:

Congratulations! The bike looks great. Looks like you've been busy!

One question though: we've seen before and after pics of the bike. What does the rider look like these days? How about a pic of the happy rider astride his gleaming new machine? 8)

Still working on mine. Maybe it will be ready to fire up in a few more weeks. I tend to procrastinate on all the unpleasant and/or difficult jobs, like scraping burned-on gaskets, cleaning greasy parts, and getting all those pattern parts to actually fit together!

The scraping and cleaning jobs are all done now. All I have to do is finish reassembling everything. What could be easier? :roll:

Debby

Never could keep my hair in place...... :wink:

Great post!

Makes me feel better about my own procrastination issues :wink:

Sweet looking machine, who's the old bloke with the bike :?: i noticed the Union Jack on the wind shield, where is Deep in the woods of schnitzelland :?: i thought schnitzel was a German delicacy.
Mike.

Hi Hewho,

Thanks for sharing some of your Norton history with us, neat story and cool bike!

Be careful riding that bicycle I saw in one of the pics; I'm still recovering from a nasty spill I took on my Raleigh back in April.

Jason

Hey Hewho, The way you have been describing your bike, I expected to see a dripping, rusting pile of stuff. That's a nice looking ride.

Why did I think you had a 71? Looks like a 72/73 to me.
I was going to look it up on your former posts, but 19 pages was bit much.

Anyway, looks good and as you say, Ride On!!!!

Answer to all of you...

Thanks for the compliments and encourangement...naturally always welcome.. :wink:

It was in worse condition than you could see in the fotos...and it still needs a lot of attention, but I got the worst sort of sorted out. Went to a bike rally over the weekend and among all the Jap stuff, and the couple real, and fake Harleys, it still got a lot ot eyeballing. A row of these big, tall, fat crotch-rockets, and my little tiny shiny lady in the middle, looked out of place, if only because it looked better than most of them... Lot of positive feedback too from total strangers...cool!

It is a 72, not 71 or such. The "old bloke" is me...we ain't no 19 anymore, and the union jacks.....would you put the German flag on your baby....think not. Yes, I'm in Schnitzelland, which those unfortunate enough to have plodded through my blog will know. I ride the mountain bike when I can, which isn't often, but we have miles and miles of woods up here to ride in and it's a nice thing to do when you can. As to procrastination....not a good thing, but it has been a trait of mine and it feels good to step out of it once in a while a give a thorough "eyes closed and jump" to some project I have been putting off forever. And the Norton had waited a long time, to say the least....Thanks once again, and lets have some more stories from some of you....I can't be the only one guilty of the art of procrastination.... :wink:

How this for procrastination, My dad lived in melbourne around 20 years ago when he bought the 72 commando for $500AUD in 1985 when later on in around 1986 he replaced a slippery clutch and rebuilt the motor. He went to test this nice new clutch and fresh motor, as he went to take off fast he snapped the mainshaft in the gearbox. So off he went and bought a new g/box shell and a few other parts he needed and as he proceeded to rebulid the g/box he discovered that this aftermarket case had been made wrong, where the cam plate bolts on the high lug on the outside had been machined off. So there the norton sat in melbourne for around a year and followed him to nyah west, still in the un running stage where it sat in the shed for about 19years.

It was when i was around 15 that i discovered the beaty of this classic and pulled the g/box out and had a look at the problem where he told me it was the plunger. After looking at many pictures i discovered that it was the cam plate bolt that had the problem, at that time i was doing an engineering class at school were i manufactured a spacer that would fit were the original lug would be. This fixed the gearchange problem and i rebulit the g/box and put it back in the frame, we then tried kicking the bike over to find out it was seized. It then sat there till around March last year and i pulled the bike out off the shed again and started stripping down the motor to find the head in need of rebuliding and the barrels needing to be relseeved and all new pistons and rings. While waiting to get the head rebuilt i got the tank and sidcovers and tailight fairing painted in a Suburu black that had a gold pearl in the mix. When i got the head back and got her back together it was a very happy time, she fired up about after 1hour of on off kicking and dad loved the sound after not hearing it run for around 21years.

So there ya go after 20years of procrastination of not doing anything then around another 1 1/2 after finding another problem together we finally got the old girl going again.

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My.....that was worth the wait....

Just like our girlfriends used to try and tell us....some things are sweeter, if you have to wait for them...... :wink:

Good job!!!!!

Ride safe!!!!

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