STEVES: Mine was a quite rare '65 Norton G15 750...with the Atlas magneto engine factory-installed in a Matchless scrambler type frame. If your Dad had a P11, which is also a beautiful and rare machine, he'll know the G15.
I got it new for $1,210 at 411 lb. dry with a factory rated 60 crank hp (Bonnevilles & BSA Hornets were 55 hp and 100cc short, so the G15 was "King of the Road" in its day...the 60s equivalent of the Busa. Sporties were not even in the running.)
I immediately threw out the fenders, battery, instruments/horn etc., lighting system, exhaust, oil tank, seat, gas tank and engine/tranny mounts. The entire wiring harness, every single wire, went in the garbage. I put on a scavenged fiberglas tank and hump seat, fabricated an aluminum central oil tank that looked a LOT like the big hollow casting at the front of the Busa swingarm, hacksawed out new aluminum engine/tranny mounts that tilted the engine down and forward (well before Norton did it with the Commando), John Tickle vented front brake, oil cooler, and drilled the crap out of everything in sight.
This process lost me 100 pounds, so I now weighed 310 dry.
I bored the cylinders 40 over (as I remember) which netted me 800+cc and installed Dunstall 11:1 pistons (up from 8.5:1). Also a Dunstall cam (called a "3/4 race" cam) and springs. I polished the ports manually...the factory casting was disgracefully full of burrs and ripples. I also lightened and polished my conrods manually. The stock Amals were jetted up and given larger capacity bowls and hung out in the breeze under my knees on 3 inch curved intake manifold extensions, which were ON TOP of the already extended Dunstall intake tubes. I also ran long flared horns on the carbs...so those carbs were seriously out there...I'm surprised in retrospect that the thing started so well.
For headers, I had 1-7/8 I.D. chromed laker-style dumps fabricated to my design by a muffler shop with a tube-bender. These I tuned by squirting water into my carbs on the highway and cutting the pipes where the water made a white ring after hot running. Pretty sophisto eh?
Interestingly (in light of the current debate on this site over engine oils), I always ran Castrol "R," which was Castrol's expensive automotive racing oil. It was vegetable, not petroleum based, and gave a smell that was distinctive to the race track. I used it to help keep the engine together, but it probably gave me a pony or two as well.
I also ran a bolt-on rear sprocket ring, 46 teeth I seem to remember compared to I don't know what the stock was. Any way it cut my top speed from 125 to 112, which was the speed I always went through the traps at.
At the strip I often ran the bike on a borrowed Avon drag slick.
I usually ran around 12.4, with a best-ever of 12.12. And the bike was Canadian champion in the Street Modified Class one year.
I rode this bike to the track and back. I also flat-tracked it. I also ran the bike on the street as my only transportation, rain or shine (the only machine-related tickets I ever got believe it or not were for no mufflers!) As a concession to night riding, I hose-clamped a Harley "Pencil Beam" on my bars and ran it off the magneto with a capacitor...it blew bulbs pretty regularly. But the engine never blew despite frequent heat management problems.
The first stock bike to smoke me (literally) on the street was a Kawasaki 2-stroke 500 triple (cough cough) we called the Hustler. I was awed by that machine. It's probably the bike referred to by Ducmanic above.
My Norton, or what was left of it, was immaculately finished in gold-based candy red and brushed/machined aluminum surfaces, and won best-of-show at Cobo Hall in Detroit (I remember one of the minor show acts there was a young guy with a guitar named Jimi Hendrix) and also best-of-class at the International Bike Show in Montreal and at Speed Sport here in Toronto.
The guy I sold it to in 1977 or so still has it and rides it and keeps in good condition. He has offered, out of a mistaken belief that I must still love my work of art, to sell it back to me for the price he paid. My friends have urged my to do it but I have no interest, nostalgic or otherwise.
I had a lot of fun on that bike, but it took me an hour of maintenance/repair for every hour I got to ride it and I say NEVER AGAIN!
You think we've got trouble with chains today?!
Tell your dad what I did to the bike...he'll laugh out loud.
Sorry for the long post but hey...you asked.
[This message has been edited by Dirty Pete (edited 29 September 1999).]
