Safety Wiring Exhaust Nuts

we manage to cleaver-away some of the flaws

Click to expand...

:shock:

Yeah, I think I "butcher" a lot of my attempts at re-engineering! :lol:

Apparently, I'm not "clever" enough to spell correctly !

This brings up a good question, Are we as Norton owners as much want a be mechanics as we are riders? When I told my friends who ride bikes of all types that a Norton was in my future they said you must like to work on bikes. Well at the time it sounded like a rip, But ya know what? As soon as I got the MK III sorted out and rebuilt (Fred did the motor at Old Britts) I went out and purchased another one. But this one is a Combat OH NO!!!! So Jason must be right I think I can do this bike better than when new, And my friends are right too, I love to work on them and try things to make them better, Thats the name of the game for me! And thats about all I have to say about that! Have a great day. Chuck.

By the time the MK111 came along a lot of things had been sorted out, even though some say the MK111 is for old people. It still seems to take quite a lot of work to keep my MK111 going however. Thankfully the problems are mostly small, like the exhaust nut problem.

The bike I ride the most is twice as old as the Norton (47 Vincent) and it has been totally reliable including many long trips, the last of which was 2500 miles thru the UK and Scotland. I have also done two 3,000 mile trips to California and back on it, always fully loaded with gear and two up. So far my only roadside emergency was a broken speedo drive.
My hope is that the Norton can be made just as reliable as the old Vincent.
I wonder how reliable a 30 year old Japanese bike is? Or how about a 60 years old one that has done 250,000 miles and been rebuilt several times like the Vincent has?
I saw a well-worn 1980s Honda Goldwing at a bike shop the other day, it was squirting oil everywhere, just like some of the old brit bikes do.

I remember some guys buying new Norton's in the seventies and after two, three months they were aboard a new Honda 750. Needless to say, they had nothing good to say about a Norton. I think they were right. After all, here we are, some thirty years later still trying to make up for poor to nonexistent quailty control and poor engineering. I don't know anyone who rides a thirty-five year old Honda, but I'll bet they spend a lot less time wrenching than I do. Would I trade my Combat for a restored seventies Honda 750? No way! More than a little quixotic, I'd say.