restore cost....ouch!

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Oh ok yes he moved the table around the cutter. It was a sight to see to solve Peel's mis fitting adaptations away from Norton.
 
Time Warp said:
http://s30.photobucket.com/user/manurewa/library/Cover?sort=2&page=1
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Awesome work on a standard mill with rotary table...looks like there were a ton of different set-ups.
 
Good ideas there.

I just picked up an 8" enco rotary table this week.

Now I just need to remember what I wanted to make with it.
 
A dividing head with indexing plate is also pretty useful. Add in a low lead drive and you can do just about anything. The low lead turns the work at a fixed ratio to the feed ratio while it is fed on one or more axis. This allows cutting of spiral bevel gears, etc.. Long before CNC existed, lots of complex machinery was built using these machines.
I turned this into a machining thread didn't I? Sorry about that and also the bad pun ( machining thread)

Glen
 
So my lathe is in the bag, ta very muchly worntorn, shouldn't cost more than ten thousand dollars to ship across the pond! Then a couple of £thou to crane it into my workshop, oh hang on my workshop isn't big enough, I need a new house with a big big workshop, so that'll be another £300,000, and I need to re-tool everything, my stuff is too small, so another £5,000 should do it. Leccy prices are going up so must budget £2,000 per year for the power hungry beast, and install 3 phase £5,000. Phew!
And I think I need a milling machine as well, I fancy a Cincinnati Milacron with tooling, £5,000 should do the trick.

So this rebuild of my MK3 which cost £850 thirty odd years ago, is now going cost about £350,000!!!

hmmm I may have got this all wrong

That £12,000 Norton at the Stafford show is incredibly cheap isn't it?

:D

CB
 
And i thought you where British! where's you backbone man :?: just think a Big,Big workshop for you and a new home for the Missus! foundry, pattem makers department, machine shop, sheet metal dept, powder coating shop, ...dodnt tell me this doesnt get you reved up :?: :lol:
 
Some stuff you don't get to buy, no matter how much money you have. That is the part most of us work towards. :wink:
 
Yeah come to think of it, isn't this where John Bloor started with a reborn Triumph? Now he's got a huge factory in Hinckley Near Birmingham making thousands of bikes. Who needs rebuilds anyway? :D

British? I'm English! with a wobbly backbone :D and Oh yes I am revved up by the way, unlike my Norton :roll:

CB
 
Cheshire Bloke, no Cincinnati here, but perhaps better, a 14,000 lb Kearney and Trecker all hydraulic Universal Horizontal with a Quill type Verical head attachment., 18" Bridgeport Rotary table and large Kearney and Trecker indexing dividing head., plus a hydraulic parking attachment for the Vertical head (the V head weighs half a ton) when shifting from vertical to horizontal use.
All yours when I shuffle along.
I think your resto cost just went up again.

Glen
 
Hey Glen while your in the mood for giving things away can I have your Vincent when you shuffle along? :wink:
 
John I haven't ridden a new Bonnie but I have ridden the new Tigers, and the 800 beat the 1200 Tiger, it was a really nice bike to ride, the 1200 is just too much of everything, too heavy, too many gadgets, too tall etc.

My other bike is a '93 Triumph Sprint 900cc, 20 year old this year, and still going like a rocket :D . It has been exceedingly reliable over the last 54,000 miles, averaging more than 55mpg. I have had it for 19 of those years and it only let me down once and that was due to a gell battery which frizzled the voltage regulator and left me stranded. So apart from the usual silencers, tyres, fork seals and bits and bobs I can't find a real excuse to get rid of it.

Maybe I will wait another few years until it becomes a 'classic' then restore it! Come to think of it, when my Norton was 20 years old it was labelled as a classic! So what is the difference between them? :?

Worntorn I used to use Bridgport millers and also Dean Smith and Grace lathes both good stuff, but the Keirney Trecker is in a different league top drawer stuff. In the early 80's I just started using the early CNC machines, I had to make a punched tapes to feed into the machine computer then prove the programme by making a component, a lot different now. Still prefer the manual machines for one off's though.

CB
 
Cheshire bloke said:
Maybe I will wait another few years until it becomes a 'classic' then restore it! Come to think of it, when my Norton was 20 years old it was labelled as a classic! So what is the difference between them? :?
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It takes longer for some bikes to become classics now because technology is not changing at the rate it was in the mid-20th century, and production is much, much higher too.

In the early 1980s bikes that were only 10-20 years old were radically different than what was on the showroom floor, and those early 60s-early 70s Brit and Euro bikes were made in tiny numbers in comparison to the Japanese machinery.

Today bikes that are twenty and even thirty years old look very much the same as those you can buy new, and they were made in numbers ten or more times those of 50s-70s Brit and Euro production.

The history and artifacts from before the Japanese revolutionized all aspects of motorcycling, and from before digital technology ruled the world, are scarce and much more urgently in need of preservation. There is a lot of motorcycle history of the 50s and 60s that has already been lost forever, and with each old timer dying off and their estate being liquidated or thrown in the dump that much more is being lost.

I agree that a "restoration" should be representative of some point in history, either when the bike was new or as it was used when it was contemporary. Otherwise all it has to show is the "restorers" wet dreams.

Much more important at this stage is not making things look shiny, but simply preserving them and history and keeping them from being lost. I have bought bikes in the past with no more intent than to prevent them from being parted out and scattered to the four winds. I am not worried about winning shows, but I like to have fun riding and I also realize that if a bike is together and running it is much less likely to end up on Ebay in pieces.

I am not going to live long enough to put every motorcycle my family has laying around back into showroom condition, but I can save them, have fun with them and get them and some of their history to good homes where they will be preserved for future generations to know.

I just picked up a 1961 Norton featherbed project that is interesting. It has non-matching engine and frame numbers, an Es2 with a 99ss engine. At first glance I and some others looked at it as a parts bike, but then I found out that it was originally built up in England in the 60s and brought over to the usa in the late 60s and enjoyed as it is. I call it the 99ESS2. It is in good shape, complete, and I will try to put it together in a way that preserves it's past. I have it's history traced back to the late 60s and it is fun trying to dig further back. As little as possible will be done to it to get it in useable condition, which will just be some paint work, fresh big-end shells and maybe some top-end work.
No expensive machine work or chroming will be done or necessary because again, I don't need trophies to enjoy life. I am sure the total cost of having it back on the road including purchase price will be about $3000 US!
 
Cheers beng that just about covers everything, I have my answer! And I agree about the 'restorers wet dreams' :D .

And a rebuild for $3000 good lad, that's my level of expense, you're not from Cheshire are you? we're all a bit tight around here with short arms and deep pockets :D

CB
 
I think you are thinking Yorkshie :) "He lad cos remember when Nortons where 3/6d and petrol was free, my Norton would run on chip lard and do 500 miles per gallon"



Cheshire bloke said:
Cheers beng that just about covers everything, I have my answer! And I agree about the 'restorers wet dreams' :D .

And a rebuild for $3000 good lad, that's my level of expense, you're not from Cheshire are you? we're all a bit tight around here with short arms and deep pockets :D

CB
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Ok, with the coverded scope of cost to restore-recover plus spiff up beyond factory issue, maybe we've enough data points we can ballpark the expected ratio of investment vs loss when eventually must be rid of your beloved Commando, that really is in good long haul roadworthy condition? I'd say its like 2 x's input for less than one output inefficiency of investment returns. Could easy reach 3:1, so don't tell the wifey poo.
 
hobot said:
Ok, with the coverded scope of cost to restore-recover plus spiff up beyond factory issue, maybe we've enough data points we can ballpark the expected ratio of investment vs loss when eventually must be rid of your beloved Commando, that really is in good long haul roadworthy condition? I'd say its like 2 x's input for less than one output inefficiency of investment returns. Could easy reach 3:1, so don't tell the wifey poo.
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OK Hobot I think I got this :? ! So if I spent £12,000 on bike and restore costs, it will be worth £4,000? Or if you take out the initial bike cost of say £3,000 and spend £6,000 rebuild costs, it will be worth a total £5,000? :? :? :?

Yeah definitely got it! I think :shock: probably

My head hurts :D

CB
 
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