Who made these barrels?

I was looking at your original image and noticed that the over head oil line looks home-made. Using rubber gas line and hose clamps and not a high pressure line is just asking for an oily mess. This is just my opinion but I have seen this type of fix give way in short order.

it also has the early headsteady that should be replaced and it appears to have been repaired.MORE TROUBLE IN THE WAITING.

Big_Jim59 said:

I was looking at your original image and noticed that the over head oil line looks home-made. Using rubber gas line and hose clamps and not a high pressure line is just asking for an oily mess. This is just my opinion but I have seen this type of fix give way in short order.

Click to expand...

Theres nowt wrong with em , if yr PARANOID , cut em out with a Disc Grinder , if yr good with one .

Has the Breather as per N.O.C. set up notes , so may be fine . I will test it for you , :mrgreen: so you know . :lol:

Nine Thirty Wot carbs ? ? Gort a snarl to the Ex . ? ?

Having never seen this before, a very Heath Robinson mod, I can only assume that the person who did this had an agenda to strengthen the base to the rest of the barrel, unless there was another reason.

ZFD said:

I have seen quite a number of 750 barrels over the years where the flange either showed a crack or had parted company with the barrel. Not sure if all of these were bored oversize, which will obviously weaken them, but nearly all of these were off normal road bikes, not racers.
On my race bike I use one of the barrels that look like 850s (i.e. with through bolts), but are to 750 spec (part# 06-1705)- remember the head bolts are also in slightly different positions on 750s to 850s. These barrels are about to be available again from Andover Norton- should be finished within this month, together with the new batch of 850s (part# 06-5074).
Another pro- at least for racing- is, that the more solid barrel, bolted to the naturally fragile crankcases, acts like a "stiffening kit" for the crankcases, which is a good thing especially in a race engine developing a lot more horses and torque than a road engine. Then again, it doesn't hurt on a road engine, either!
Joe Seifert

Click to expand...

Cast Iron or alloy, Joe?

Fullauto,

Ours are cast iron. As original.

I wasn't impressed with an ally barrel I bought and talked to the guy who made them for the dealer who sold them. With the liners they had the problem that at the correct interference fit the whole barrel would distort badly. Their "solution" was to put the liners in with near-to-nonexisting interference fit. As soon as we heated the barrel up to 30°C (less than hand-warm!) the liners fell out.

As an ex-Vincent owner I knew the symptom. Vincents were s**t production-engineering wise so most Vincent liners touch the cylinder only in a few places, as you can clearly see when you take them out to replace them- you see the hot spots clearly.

No tight fit= no heat dissipation.

The way to go was nikasil/elnisil plating, but that is not cheap. Then again, have never had a heat problem with the original barrel even in racing, so why bother with ally? Weight? If I go and powder my nose before the race I save more weight! Plus, 99% of our (Andover Norton's) customers don't race their Commandos.

Joe

I bought one of those English cast-iron 750 barrels with through-bolts around 1999--the last rebuild with .020"-over pistons lasted 55,000 miles on my '72 Combat. The base seam with sealer--no gasket--has never leaked--and the entire engine seems more rigid and perhaps a little quieter mechanically--I've been delighted with it


Tim Kraakevik
kraakevik@voyager.net
'72 Combat, '74 RH10 850

Ludwig,

Ask your friend Gerbrand- he saw me eat recently. Though not powder my nose.

As for those cylinder heads, the hot part of the engine is the head, not the barrel, so making it in ally makes sense.

And speaking of weight that reminds me of the guy I saw at a race a couple of years ago. It took at least two seriously overweight cows to clad him in leather, but every bit on his super-duper racing BMW was titanium and/or drilled. Most of us geriatrics in vintage racing are overweight these days. In my mis-spent youth, when all my money went towards petrol rather than food, I was 10kg lighter than I am now. So why bother with a light barrel? If I stopped eating for a couple of weeks I could have the same total weight with the bike without racing a potentially troublesome ally barrel.

And if you are such a fan of cast iron heads I think I still have a couple of those gathering moss somewhere in the stores!

Joe Seifert

ZFD said:

Fullauto,

Ours are cast iron. As original.

I wasn't impressed with an ally barrel I bought and talked to the guy who made them for the dealer who sold them. With the liners they had the problem that at the correct interference fit the whole barrel would distort badly. Their "solution" was to put the liners in with near-to-nonexisting interference fit. As soon as we heated the barrel up to 30°C (less than hand-warm!) the liners fell out.

As an ex-Vincent owner I knew the symptom. Vincents were s**t production-engineering wise so most Vincent liners touch the cylinder only in a few places, as you can clearly see when you take them out to replace them- you see the hot spots clearly.

No tight fit= no heat dissipation.
The way to go was nikasil/elnisil plating, but that is not cheap. Then again, have never had a heat problem with the original barrel even in racing, so why bother with ally? Weight? If I go and powder my nose before the race I save more weight! Plus, 99% of our (Andover Norton's) customers don't race their Commandos.

Joe

Click to expand...

You may or may not be, surprised to know that Norton first used the alloy barrels on the twins in the 1960s on the 500s Domiracers.
Nikasil plating was not generally available at that time and Norton sent the 500 alloy barrels over to Germany to be plated.

Bernhard,

You may not believe this but the Domiracer story is one of my special interests and I have spoken- eye-to-eye resp. by e-mail- with Paul Dunstall, who got all the bits left from the Birmingham Norton factory, Rudi Thalhammer, the only person to ever get a genuine one out of the factory (bad conscience present from Doug Hele), and Mick Hemmings, who still hopes to get one together and has some original leftovers.

I know they had an ally barrel and that it was Nikasil plated in Stuttgart. However, this was the only incident Norton did it- and it is quite simply the way to go with an ally barrel, as I said. What you probably don't know, not a single part inside that engine was not special. Barrel, head, crankcases, crank, camfollowers, pistons, you name it it wasn't even based on production stuff.

The barrels I have seen in the market were fitted with liners and all I said was that did not impress me at all, for the technical reasons listed. Plus, from a practical point of view I believe the cast iron barrel is of more interest to our normal, roadgoing customers. If Belgian ingenuity insists on everything to be non-standard, Andover Norton is not the outfit that can look after them. We are into Genuine Norton Factory Parts, which keeps us very busy indeed- we simply can not look after all the possible variants.

Joe Seifert

ZFD said:

Bernhard,
We are into Genuine Norton Factory Parts, which keeps us very busy indeed- we simply can not look after all the possible variants.

Joe Seifert

Click to expand...

Smart, That's better left to the racer's. :wink:

My alloy XS650 barrel has 750 liners in it. It's going strong with no problems. And many others are too.

Hi, I had seen somewhere that Steve Maney, had tried to nickasiled his ally cylinders but then after went back to liners ??
I had just started my last bike this afternoon, it's a cafe racer based on an Atlas with a commando engine and a Norvil ally barrel , few times ago Ludwig had advised me to fit some inserts instead of the helicoil, but I was lazy and still I am (getting old), so I will see and will follow you the feedback, the next one will be the seeley with Maney jugs......

Very true Ludwig, I was just thinking that when these motors are pushed hard they do seem to show those things that could have been done better. I like your idea, I guess some of these things could have been due to cost and some just engineering. Good to read your posts again, On a different subject, Does anyone know what became of BDM? I know some people didn't like him but I would just like to know if he's O.K.? Thanks guy's and ride safe, Chuck Horton. :wink:

All Japanese bikes, other than mopeds and small capacity commuter machines have alloy cylinders. They are entirely problem free, and the main reason for this is that the liners are cast into the cylinders, rather than pressed.

Carbonfibre said:

All Japanese bikes, other than mopeds and small capacity commuter machines have alloy cylinders. They are entirely problem free, and the main reason for this is that the liners are cast into the cylinders, rather than pressed.

Click to expand...

Most will actually be some modern variant of Nikasil. Im not sure about the jap bikes but many of the high performance Euro bikes have plasma sprayed cylinders which are much better again

Not heard of plasma sprayed cylinders..............sounds impressive.

I can't see why there would be a problem with alloy cylinders. BMW have run them for decades. Initially with cast in liners, then with nikasil.
I'm told that many of the quick Triumph Triples on the racetrack have the liners removed and replaced with an alloy liner that is then nikasil plated.

I would keep an eye out for new barrells.

There is no problem with liners in principle, and I don't have problems with fitting liners to a cast iron Norton Twin barrel, though I am a bit nervous about fitting them to a Norton 750 barrel, as this considerably weakens the cylinder base.
The problem is specific to the NORTON TWIN BARREL in that there is precious little space between the liners and the whole structure, when cast in ally and bored for liners, becomes easy to distort. Which it does, provided the liners are fitted with the prescribed interference fit for the application, as the manufacturer of those barrels confirmed. Which Ludwig's, given the source, aren't (i.e. fitted with the neccessary shrink fit), hence no obvious problems.
I was going to use that ally barrel on the track, and, given the higher stresses and engine/oil temperatures, I wasn't keen to see what happens to pistons in a barrel inside which the liners have incidental/occasional and punctual rather than designed/constant/full contact with it, hence hot spots and insufficient cooling.
I have no problems with liners in Manxes, or other engines. The liner problem I see applies to only the Norton twin barrel due to its design, which was never meant to be made in ally and take liners. It simply does not have the neccessary "flesh" in crucial areas. Hence, after I bought Andover Norton, I examined one of the ally barrels they then offered, and I ceased selling them immediately.
Both my Manxes run with shrunk-in liners in ally barrels, but those can have the neccesary interference fit, hence no problem.