What is the lay down transmission?

Joined
Jul 8, 2011
Messages
2,668
Country flag
Questions posed by an acquaintance. Requestion help from the forum.

What is the lay down transmission???A

MC,BURMAN,STURMEY ARCHER??

Is it correct for 56 Dominator99
 
What is the lay down transmission?

The laydown gearbox was made by Norton but was I believe a copy of a sturmy archer. 1956 was the last year of its use in Dominator and other models in the Norton range.
Al
 
My ES2 has the laydown gearbox. The gear selector mechanism is different from the AMC box but the bulk of the gearbox is pretty much the same as the AMC box. So much so that at first glance it looks like they share the same internals. The AMC box is obviously a development of the laydown one. The previous gearbox used in Nortons was the "dolls head" gearbox which looks upright so I assume that's how the laydown gearbox got it's name as it is layed down in comparison to the dolls head one.

Ian
 
The NORTON lay down gearbox was first used in the Model 7 Dommie Twins for 1949.
ES2s and Model 18s and 16H followed suit in 1950, Inters and eventually Manxes a bit later
And as mentioned above, was last used until somewhere midway through the 1956 model year.
It is pretty much the same inside as the previous upright Norton box - except that ALL the operating mechanism is inside, and lubricated.

If you want to get technical, it (and earlier Norton boxes) are faintly based on the old Sturmey Archer boxes.
Except that NOT ONE PART is actually the same as any Sturmey Archer box.
And, for a bit of trivia, it was actually built for Nortons by Burmans - Sturmey having ceased gearbox manufacture in the early 1930s.
Nortons bought the design from Sturmey back then, and came up with the dolls head, then upright, then lay down designs in turn...
Hopethishelps.
 
Back
Top