The 4 cylinder that almost became a Norton

Nougier were great bikes, the 4 being the ultimate but I have trouble believing an interest by a foreign factory, specially a British one for small brothers ' French atelier !
Philippe
 
Jean Nougier is the source of the story that Joe Craig personally came in 1954 to look at the engine. And offered him the deal - which didn't eventuate.
 
Noteaby Gorrilla gave up raceing such things , as the Gold mine wasnt doing so well . :lol:
 
But MV Augusta /4s didn't.
How many GP wins did Ago notch up in a row. ?
No opposition, the pundits whispered...
 
There is a story in this current "Old Bike Australasia" on Jean's engines and the Norton link.
 
Did you guys know that there was a 4 cylinder Manx Norton engine?

Vanwall used 4 Norton cylinders and heads on a common crank case as the basis of their 2 litre front engined F1 car.....enlarged to 2.5.... :roll:

http://www.grandprix.com/gpe/con-vanwa.html

The first actual Vanwalls (the name came from putting Vandervell and Thinwall together) were known as Vanwall Specials and were built for the new Formula 1 regulations in 1954. The chassis was commissioned by Vandervell from the Cooper Car Company and was designed by Owen Maddock. The Vanwall engine was designed by Norton engineer Leo Kuzmicki, under the guidance of the company's chief development engineer Joe Craig, and was essentially four Norton 500cc engines combined into one 2-liter unit. Vandervell was able to use Norton because his father, C A Vandervell, was chairman of Norton at the time.
 
Rohan said:
Alan Cathcart has unearthed a story that Joe Craig was negotiating to buy the rights to this engine for a racing Norton, but didn't get approval to spend.
1953 was the year that Nortons were taken over by AMC, so not good timing.... ?

http://www.bikerenews.com/AntiqueBikes/ ... DPRIX.html
Click to expand...


Apart from Vanwall as mentioned there were other stories of a Norton in house 4 clylinder design, but if Craig did indeed look at this engine there is no doubt he thought that just putting the think in a featherbed nd putting a good rider on it would have gotten better results....

The thing is a chopper....just look at that steering head angle and motocross length forks...the rider would need to be a natural countersteerer and make steering inputs 2 seconds before he needed the bike to turn.....Oh dear!

:D
 
SteveA said:
Rohan said:
Alan Cathcart has unearthed a story that Joe Craig was negotiating to buy the rights to this engine for a racing Norton, but didn't get approval to spend.
1953 was the year that Nortons were taken over by AMC, so not good timing.... ?

http://www.bikerenews.com/AntiqueBikes/ ... DPRIX.html
Click to expand...


Apart from Vanwall as mentioned there were other stories of a Norton in house 4 clylinder design, but if Craig did indeed look at this engine there is no doubt he thought that just putting the think in a featherbed nd putting a good rider on it would have gotten better results....

The thing is a chopper....just look at that steering head angle and motocross length forks...the rider would need to be a natural countersteerer and make steering inputs 2 seconds before he needed the bike to turn.....Oh dear!

:D
Click to expand...
I have just come across this in looking up history of a village I used to live in. I lived opposite Leo Kuzmicki and often chatted about motor sport and his involvement with Vanwall.
Leo told me about a 500cc Norton 4 cylinder engine intended for GP racing which was being developed whilst he was at Nortons and which had run on the test bed and was very promising as an answer to the Italian 4s then becoming dominant.
He said that one morning they tried to run the engine on the test bed to find that it had been sabotaged overnight. I can't remember the details (it was about 40 years ago!) but it involved stuffing rags into part of the engine causing it to overheat and seize up during the run. Leo said that the fine was badly damaged and never rebuilt and I'd not know why but was convinced that the sabotage came from within the company itself.
Sorry can't give more information but it does confirm that such an engine did exist.
m
Wayne Giles
 
Photos exist of most of the castings for the early 1950s BRM designed four cylinder, and a complete single cylinder engine of the same specs was built and run as a test slave.
Power output was said to be not real encouraging though.
And there was the minor matter that the engine was designed so the carbs were behind the radiator - not the best design for optimum power ?

I'd comment that one day I started up my old dommie - and in the mirror saw lots of little black bats (?) coming out the mufflers. Inspection revealed little bits of paper, sooted over. Put a bit of newspaper in the carb throat to keep stuff out, hadn't I.
A bit of stray rag could similarly easily get into the oiling or water system ??
 
While hunting up hemi heads Harley vs Norton, stumbled on this
early engine discovery era history. WestLake head developer with Harry Richardo as his race bike tuner to boot! A short teaser below

http://thevintagent.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... swirl.html

In a curious side note, while Vandervell was a Board member at Nortons, he 'took' Kusmicki's design for the four-cylinder, watercooled DOHC racing 500cc Norton engine with him when he left the Board, during the A.M.C. takeover of Norton in 1955. This design was expanded and used in one of Vanwall F1 cars.... so in effect, the legendary 4-cyl Norton engine WAS built, only in a 2.5 liter form.
 
Leo Kuzmiki (sorry for the misspelling) was a lecturer before 1940 pecialising in internal combustion engines at one of Poland's leading technical universities before WW2 and he like many of his brave country men went over to England to fight against the Nazis. The UK Poles were predominate in Air Force roles of all the European expatriates. After May 1945, Leo was demobbed with '000s of other soldiers and found employment as a janitor - sweeper and cleaner at Norton's Bracebridge Street factory.

One day, in the Experimental Shop (the test facility with the wet Hennan & Fround engine dyno) Joe Craig the Master of All Things Manx came in and found Leo chatting with a young English engineer - (sorry can't remember this chaps name) and being Joe Craig (JC) he gave them a verbal blasting for "wasting time etc' etc' " - but to the young man's credit he stood his ground and informed JC that here before them they had a valuable expert in cylinder head design, the very substance of what that had been discussing.

End result is that that the penutlimate head for the Manx was designed by Leo K. JC died in a car crash in 1956, shortly after his wife had passed away. JC was not a qualified engineer but a very dedicated and focused man on the singular objective of making the Norton Manx single the most successful racing motorcycle of its time. And in its day it was. Hats off to Leo K.

Mick
 
Where are repeating this story of Leo from though, Mick ?
Leo's widow is said to have stated in an interview somewhere that Leo was hired by Joe Craig as an engineer, ever the one for spotting talent. And that the story of being 'discovered' as a cleaner was just a story. Bert's version of events, perhaps ?? Cheers.
 
Slightly off topic, but still interesting. Leo's wife , Nancy passed away not long past, but I came across a reference to Leo in Geoff Duke's book some years ago and went to see Nancy to show her the reference where Geoff Duke had said that his peak as raider was 1951, assisted in no small part by Leo Kuzmicki.
Nancy wrote me a letter saying that it was nice that Leo had received some posthumous recognition and that she remembered Geoff Duke as a very pleasant young (!) man.
Some other oddments I recall is that Leo told me that Tony Vandervell sent for him in the early 50s and said to him "I am going to build a GP car to beat those bloody red cars and you are going to design the engine for it". - no option or "Would you like to..."
Leo's specific expertise was in the understanding of flame propagation in cylinder heads.
Also Leo spent time in the same Soviet Gulag as Solshenitsyn although they only overlapped time wise for a few months.
Under stress at breakfast one day, he shouted "What sort of nation is it that gives you one egg every six months?". His sentence was increased by 6 months for that. As Leo said, most people in the UK don't realise how lucky they are, until you have lived in a totalitarian state, how could you?

Sorry if I have drifted off topic.

Wayne Giles
 
Interesting reminiscences! I guess history repeated itself at Norton-Villiers. When I was there, our Managing Director, Dr. Stefan Bauer, was also a specialist in internal combustion engine science. In his case it was combustion chemistry. I think he was with Rolls Royce Aero Engines before taking the helm at N-V. A brilliant man, but not really cut out to be an MD in an engineering company.
 
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