The Commando Frame - NOC Roadholder May 2018

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Always a downside to losing a world war .. but what has got to do with either AMC , Plumstead , or Norton or for that matter Dr Stefan Bauer
 
oldmikew said:
Actually it was the economics of scale that caused the problem - huge expenditure for tooling that could not be recovered for there was not a sufficient internal demand. The AMC box is superb for its time, but they could have bought in from Burman at a very significantly lower cost and have left working capital for the tooling needed for new models or engines.
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Says who? I wonder where all these allegations stem from? Britons are experts in heaving the "obvious answers" even without knowing what was actually going on.
Who testifies that the Burman offering was at a "very significantly lower cost" than cost of in-house production? I don't believe it. Maybe a clapped-down gearbox like the B52 could be offered at a favourable price, but if asked to produce a new gearbox I am sure Burman had asked for the total bill. They would have been silly not to.

Besides, your assertion there wasn't sufficient internal demand is rather questionable. By 1957 the entire AMC fleet of heavyweights as well as all large Norton models were equipped with the new gearbox. Production numbers approached 30 000 units a year at the time according to records of former employees. Shortly thereafter came the middleweights (G2, G3, Jubilee, Navigator) and the lightweigts (125T, 150T and 250T). When you consider the number of gearboxes thus produced from 1957 to 1966, and the amount of outside work AMC took on (e.g., producing gears for Ford and probably for Villiers), I believe the investment in tooling paid off.


And much later the bean counters made another outstanding contribution to the Norton engine. They stopped balancing the rods , vibration was now resolved by the isolastics. Main bearing failures ...
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Interesting and new information to me. Who is your source?

-Knut
 
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oldmikew said:
Always a downside to losing a world war .. but what has got to do with either AMC , Plumstead , or Norton or for that matter Dr Stefan Bauer
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If it wasn't for him the Commando may never have been born and we wouldn't all be chatting now.
 
cliffa said:
Ah yes, Britain got the B.S.A. Bantam, and the U.S. got the worthless remnants of the jet and rocket propulsion programme and its scientists. :(
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I don't think they were considered worthless at the time. The US was very eager to hunt down the experts and ship hardware to the States for evaluation.
-Knut
 
Knut The info about the rods along with a lot of other Commando faults was in an article in Motor Cycle Sport I think from the late 70s written by an insider . Shocking and I could tell you worse. As for the rest well ,as you say we Brits are experts . I did not work at Plumstead but I knewpeople who did and have absorbed a lot of information over the years from various sources.. I think the tooling for the AMC gearbox was around 2and half million Pounds - a huge capital sum in the 1950s. Burman was only one name put forward . You dont have to take my word ,just go do some reading .

Incidently the old AMC works was closed due to compulsory purchase for the construction of a dual carriage way. THis must have been on the cards when Manganese Bronze picked up the pieces , so a very shrewd move
 
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I think Norton were paranoid about the smoothness CB750 Honda and might have had good reason. But everything considered, the CB750 is not what motorcycling is about. There has never been a motorcycle with less soul. What existed prior to the Commando was the Norton Atlas. My friend has one which he raced in A-grade races against the Japanese two strokes in the 1960s. It is excellent. But as a commuter, it would be an absolute shit. There is always a problem with bikes - you always need two - one to ride to work and the other one to play with. I cannot understand why anyone would buy a modern sports bike to ride to work, when a CT110 Honda or similar is quite sufficient.
 
Knut yes AMC did make gears for Ford but that is surely a sign of overcapacity , and probably not very sensible - Detroit know how to negociate a hard bargain
 
Hello all, new to the forum but thought I would jump in at the deep end. Be wary of magazine articles - stuff in there is to sell mags and is typically sensationalism. So the non-balancing of con-rods is non-sense, unsurprisingly. They may not have balanced some of the cranks but vibration caused by rods witha significant imbalance would create a rocking couple which is not whatthe isolastics were designed for. There is plenty toread on the interweb but much of it is rubbish and I'm glad to see knowledgable people putting an end to the 'Britain did not get any aide after the war' myth.
 
So you are saying that the British post-war motorcycle manufacturers had equal access to the machining centres the Japanese and the Germans used to create their bikes ? Back in the 1950s, Norton considered building a four cylinder race bike - what stopped them ?
 
Chris ton a bike said:
Hello all, new to the forum but thought I would jump in at the deep end. Be wary of magazine articles - stuff in there is to sell mags and is typically sensationalism. So the non-balancing of con-rods is non-sense, unsurprisingly. They may not have balanced some of the cranks but vibration caused by rods witha significant imbalance would create a rocking couple which is not whatthe isolastics were designed for. There is plenty toread on the interweb but much of it is rubbish and I'm glad to see knowledgable people putting an end to the 'Britain did not get any aide after the war' myth.
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Well the source for the article in a very reputable magazine was a former NVT senior employee ,he thought it significant and your credentials as an engineer , a historian and economist are?
 
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Well, if you would not mind producing or referencing the said article I am sure it would make interesting reading. My credentials? I did not know any were required. But I do know enough about engineering to realise ythat a rocking couple (from a sufficient imbalance between reciprocating assemblies) will cause the engine and therefore the isolastic assembly to oscillate with angular velocity about a longitudinal axis mid point of the cranksahft. This would result in angular contact of the isolastic thrust faces and so transmit vibration to the rider. However for this to happen the rods would have to be massively out of balance.The isolastics are only work when allowed to move in the vertical plane. Mis-matched connecting rods did not cause main bearing failure, if that was the case then every parallel twin with a 270degree or 180degree crank shaft would suuffer from main bearing failure. Oil starvation at high rpm was the cause of failure in early Commando engines.
 
oldmikew said:
Knut yes AMC did make gears for Ford but that is surely a sign of overcapacity , and probably not very sensible - Detroit know how to negociate a hard bargain
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If you need a certain amount of qualified staff and machines to produce your mainstay goods, and can't utilise the capacity to 100% but only to 80%, then it's sensible to take on contractual work to exploit the free capacity, even if profit margins are low. I believe the margins were greater in the 60's than they are today. Presently, if you are lucky, you will be allowed to post a 10% profit, but for mass-produced goods the margin will rather be in the order of 5%. However, even a demanding buyer is keen to keep his suppliers happy to ensure timely deliveries and components with few rejects. I have worked for the automotive supplier industry myself and have some insight. Having a reliable supplier is more worth than haggling over a few shilling.

In letters written by residents of Plumstead who lived and worked at the factory in the 60's, they tell a tale of low work ethics and nonsense going on, e.g. tossing oily rags at each other, damaging semi-finished goods, and slowing down the assembly line. Maybe middle management didn't keep the workforce on a tight leash? The working conditions (no daylight, extremely old-fashioned assembly line, and an impractical facility) certainly didn't aspire to high motivation. Still, when reviewing the pictures and their stories at the site "Working at AMC", it is evident that many of the skilled workers were very proud of their profession and loyal to their employer. Some families worked at AMC for generations, and numerous apprentices were trained in 3 year educational programmes. A racer and AJS dealer since 1958, Colin Seeley worked closely with AMC for more than a decade and is full of praise for the craftmanship delivered by AMC. As a racer, he had good relations with Jack Williams, the competition shop manager and engine specialist. His son, the famed racer Peter Williams went on to work for N-V at Plumstead as well. It can't have been all that bad.

-Knut
 
Knut,
I think the astonishing thing about the web site is that it exists at all? None of the other Britsh factories seem to have engendered such a strong desire to set recollections out at the level of workforce. I had no idea that there were factory reunions nearly 50years after closure. I also note a number of well known local families were represented For them it was a way of life and certainly better paid than working for Fords across the water. So I am not surprised there was a narrative of we/they bought it on themselves in letters to the local press. And yes they were proud of what they did and made. It caused much resentment when management decided to opt for two coat enamel finish instaed of the traditional three. For with it went a claim to be a quality product-said by Jock West to be one of the reasons why he decided to leave . Look at the short video clip of early commando producttion note how the bikes are lovingly polished

I do not think Plumstead the workforce ever welcomed the presence of Norton on the closure of Bracebridge Street they just wanted to go on making AJS and Matchless. Notwithstanding the formidable production racing success of Nortons which it might have seemed sensible to concentrate on , no the AMC competition dept breath on the AJ 31CSR which was then raced with some success.


You mention middle management issues.. try this . If you read Dunstalls Tuning Notes you note he reccomends pegging the main bearing outers. In fact it was a commonplace to change bearings on Dommies that were being raced every few meetings. The Atlas engine -road going ,had a reputation for low mileage 20-30000 before bearing failure. There was a reason . The bearings were pushed into the cases cold by a hydraulic press , the operative used so much pressure that the cases used to flex and bend under load...
I very much doubt the bloke would have got away with treating one of the beloved Matchless or AJS engines like that and of course no one bothered to tell any one .

The Article I mentioned was in Motorcycle Sport .It was written after NVT had collapsed and left Marston Road
I think 1978 or 79 . Sorry I cannot be more specific but it deals with Andover and Wolverhampton days.

It was apparantly still cheaper for Burmans to make the gearbox than AMC and this despite the massive capital investment which Heather had pushed through.

The great tragedy of the British Motorcycle industry was that it was prodigously talented , yet this talent was alienated and ignored

My uncle told me this story of setting up the timing on a Merlin engine during WW2 . His mate a Londoner had done it many times,but whenever asked he would always say 'youll have to find out mate' some how AMC and then NVT management seems to have pushed th workforce in to this default
 
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cliffa said:
Ah yes, Britain got the B.S.A. Bantam, and the U.S. got...
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Guess what.
The Commando Frame - NOC Roadholder May 2018
 
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oldmikew said:
The great tragedy of the British Motorcycle industry was that it was prodigously talented , yet this talent was alienated and ignored
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seems to me that triumph is very much in the game today,

to some extent ..so far, even norton
 
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