dillinghamp said:
So what would you do? You go back to building 15xxxx 71MY bikes. And 'cos everyone's running round with their hair on fire, unsurprisingly, factory records get confused, and either don't get written, or don't get updated... Anyone got a 154xxx?
An interesting theory, but if you weren't there at the time then that's all it is.[/quote]
No, I wasn't there at the time - perhaps another contributor was? I did work for Norton, but not until 1982 at Shenstone. It was a complete farce and again, I understand, Wolverhampton and Andover weren't any better. Stores had no security at all. There was no goods in or goods out. Parts waited outside stores to be "booked in" although there was little, if any, stock recording system (no computers back then) and never an inventory check. If someone needed a bit, they just came and helped themselves... I did once see Denis Poore when, on one day, he arrived in his Mercedes, and was highly amused by Geoff Fawn and his approach to management (or lack of it). The British motorcycle industry wasn't killed. It committed suicide. On the other hand, there were dedicated individuals such as Bob 'Wheelie' Rowley, the test rider with an excellent sense of humour and Tony Denniss, the gentleman design engineer.
I was then fortunate to move to work for Bernard Hooper in his consultancy firm. Back then, one of the other employees, Dave Beale used to ride Bernard's Norton 76 into work every morning and Bernard would occasionally tell about the Wolverhampton days. Commando's would be shipped out to the States without exhaust systems and or other major key components, because the company didn't have the cash to pay suppliers., knowing they would have to airfreight components out to the States and pay dealers to fit them. But why? Because Denis Poore had moved the company's liquid cash into dollars and it was "unfavorable to convert it back at present".
I could go on for hours. Happy days...
No wonder then that a gearbox slipped through without getting stamped then. And as to the depth of the facing, these are sand cast components. They vary. When you pick up off the cast datums you have to jiggle the envelope around to get all the faces to clean up. No CNC back then. Men with mills and dials. So the boss could easily vary in height by 100 thou. If you want to get serious about it, you actually need to compare the dimension from the timing cover face back to the engine number face, one bike to another, and if there more than about ten thou different it may have been re-machined.
In the light of the above though, I think the most likely explanations are 1) it's a completely original and genuine bike, or 2) the bike went out without an engine and, when an engine caught it up, or as a result of warrant replacement, the dealer stamped it up.
