rx7171 said:
...Blunders by management who thought they were making kitchen appliances, with stupid union activity to boot.
While management certainly contributed to Norton's demise in a very significant way, they didn't kill it. I think that was the doings of
some union workers. It wasn't management welding gas tanks poorly, not properly assembling the bikes, etc. Many who worked there did great work and to great pride in it, unfortunately, not everyone.
Things have to be looked at in context. There was tremendous labour unrest in England through the 60's-70's. Just 15 years earlier England had come through World War II, and it, along with it's allies, spent that 15 years a) trying to stop the spread and rise of communism/USSR and b) helping Germany and Japan rebuild, buy new modern equipment, etc. In 1970 alone, over 10 million working days were lost through strike action in England. In the 60s new technology put an emphasis on efficiency and productivity. Unions had to work hard to organise re-training for members made redundant by new methods and techniques. No one was happy.
Automobile production in Western Europe had just increased 10-fold from the beginning of the 50's to the end of the 60's, motorcycles were enjoying a major resurgence as well (especially in the large US market) and British bikes were selling well. Then came the Japanese bikes and British labour unrest, at a time when British manufactures needed to re-invest in modernizing pre-war equipment, they had inexpensive imports from low-wage countries and disgruntled workers demanding more pay or they'd not work, or worse, it was a perfect storm.
Definitely, Nortons had several design flaws that kept them from being as competitive and reliable as they could have been with just a handful of relatively easy fixes, but these weren't the problems that led to Nortons falling apart early and often. If the bikes had been put together properly initially, as is done now when they're restored, then there would have been far fewer problems (timing issues, poor quality metals, weak coils, etc.). Many were fixable with just little trouble. Some were not as they were due to
some extremely poor workmanship and sabotage that was part of a common union tactic to blackmail management into submission at that time in England.
My original 1973 Norton 850 Commando that I bought in 19973 came from the factory with two major areas of what can only be considered sabotage by the factory workers:
1 - the tab washers for the inner chain case were not tabbed over
2 - the con-rod nuts and not been splayed
These are not minor oversights, they are each severe and significant and either will eventually lead to the destruction of expensive parts and did on my bike.
The first to go (@ about 5,000 miles) was one of the bolts that hold the inner chain case to the crankcase. It backed itself out (due to none of the three tab washers being bent over). The bolt got caught between the engine sprocket and the primary chain, taking out both plus breaking the inner primary case. Expensive!
The second to go (@ just over 10,000 miles) was a connecting-rod nut backing itself off the connecting-rod bolt. These were supposed to be splayed (hit with a cold-chisel) at the factory during bottom-end assembly, not one of the four nuts had been splayed in any of the eight (total) spots available. Again, this lead to very serious consequences. The bolt backed itself off about 600 miles from home and got caught between the flywheel and the crankcase as I was slowing down on the highway (on a bridge with no pull-off area actually) to identify the noise from the bike. That resulted in a star-burst in the crankcase!
Mine is not the only tale of such totally unnecessary sabotage. A friend worked at the local Triumph/MG/Jaguar dealer at the time and they had a new Jaguar sedan that the customer was totally frustrated with. It would make a noise, as if something were loose in the rear-end going over bumps and rough roads, but they just couldn't figure out where the noise was coming from. Finally, after several trips to the dealer, two mechanics (versus the previous one) took the car for a drive. The second mechanic sat in the rear to listen for the noise and successfully identified that the noise was coming from the lower rear C-pillar of the roof not from the rear suspension, etc., as had previously been suspected. When they removed the headliner of the car and the rear trim panels, etc., they discovered that one of the assembly-line workers had tack-welded a welding rod (with a washer welded to the other end) to the inside of the pillar and on rough jolts it would tap against the pillar.
The workers got the results they were looking for, but didn't have the foresight to recognise that if they crippled the company they'd be out of a job, let alone recognize that they'd virtually destroy the entire British motor vehicle industry. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
If I sound bitter, I apologize, but their actions cost me thousands of dollars I could not afford to spend from 1973-1976, not to mention time and aggravation. This at a time when I was trying to put myself through university, having worked as a truck driver, stevedore, and for the railroad to buy the Norton. I worked two jobs, twelve hours a day, to save the extra money and most of it was gone after my second year of university at which point I quit university, sold the bike, and moved out west, thanks to the worker sabotage of the Norton plant workers forcing me to rebuild the bike twice within two years.
somewhere in the middle of that, I bought my Commando. guess what, that shagged itself out too. Twice. :lol:
