What did you do with your P11 today. he he

Schwany said:

I'm thinking it might have already been living the dream in the USA. Racing in the desert leaves witness marks on something as heavy as a P11. It also beats the heck out of lighter weight off road bikes that are built right for racing off road. Done it when I was in top form. I couldn't do 50 yards in the desert now. Too comfortably numb and out of shape for the whoops. lol

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Living the dream maybe, but then someone woke up as it was out of favour, unloved and incomplete by 1988...

Enter our hero, starry eyed (partially blind?) and wallet at the ready........

EstuaryBoy said:

Living the dream maybe, but then someone woke up as it was out of favour, unloved and incomplete by 1988...

Enter our hero, starry eyed (partially blind?) and wallet at the ready........

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If it was in pieces when you started, then heck yeah it could have had a rough desert life. Excellent job putting it back together.

I live in a place with no paved roads, just dirt. I put knobbies and longer travel suspension on my Sportster and call it "my p11 training bike". Going from Honda XR's to the Sporty was a real adjustment just in terms of weight alone, but also in terms of readily available torque. After 7 years of riding a Sportster on dirt and gravel, I am now used to it--by the time my P11 is rideable, it's going to feel positively light and snappy!

Schwany said:

If it was in pieces when you started, then heck yeah it could have had a rough desert life. Excellent job putting it back together.

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Not totally 'in pieces', but a 'rolling restoration' with multiple parts in a separate box, and a few 'essentials' not present at all..

A bit of a jigsaw puzzle with no picture on the lid of the box! ;-)

EstuaryBoy said:

Not totally 'in pieces', but a 'rolling restoration' with multiple parts in a separate box, and a few 'essentials' not present at all..

A bit of a jigsaw puzzle with no picture on the lid of the box! ;-)

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I understand that.

It was an interesting puzzle putting a P11 together when in my 20's in 1972 when I started with one without the internet and still using rotary dial telephones on a land line. It was missing the entire front end, fuel tank, seat, oil tank, primary covers, tach, speedo, levers, carburetors, short seat loop, battery box and brackets ground off, and the list goes on. Fortunately the engine and gearbox were covered in the pre-Commando Haynes manual which is all I could get locally. The engine and frame numbers matched though. Couldn't get OEM parts back then where I was living, so I built a mongrel. It did have a K2F so I sort of had a leg up on ignition. Anywho, learned more about Nortons than I ever wanted to know back then. Replaced everything I didn't like about what I did originally around 1987. Then replaced all that again within the last 5 or 6 years. Still screwing around with it some, but it is basically done. It is a now a P12SSS.