Vintage Thing No. 28 - Norton P53 Commander

This bike belongs to one of Pete Low's mates (sorry, I didn't catch your name) and he brought it along to the Calstock Bike Show (see post for 12th August). He'd only just got it and was very pleased with it, for it had been standing outside a house in London for two years and he paid 800 quid for it. The engine ran well and the only major fettling he had to do was to the brakes, which needed overhauling.

Overall, he was delighted with his purchase, which was worth the price for the engine alone. However, he was disappointed with the brakes, which were sourced from a Yamaha XJ900.

I have a slight history with Norton Motors in that I was interviewed for an industrial placement during my industrial design sandwich course. I was due to work at the Shenstone factory for a summer when it the engineering training board that was to have subsidised my pay realised that Norton Motors had not been making payments to its scheme. I believe subscriptions to the engineering training board, or whatever it was called, were legally required once production was under way. Norton Motors had been a research company developing the Wankel engine for so long that nobody had noticed the company when it started selling motorcycles to police forces. And Norton forgot to tell anyone as well. So there was a big fuss and I ended up working for John Mockett instead, which was probably a far better fate.

One thing that struck me during my interview and tour of the factory was the number of people who had worked for Yamaha NV in The Netherlends. This studio was closed when Yamaha entered difficulties during the early eighties following an ambitious new range of radically new bikes, such as the YZ550, that were flops. Japanese companies don't go under, they get rescued but a casualty of the rescue was the European design studio. Sourcing brake parts from Yamaha probably seemed like a good idea at the time but for a bike of the Commander's performance and weight they weren't up to the job.

My interview at Shenstone was an odd one in that I had four interviews, all one after another, just me showing my portfolio to a member of Norton staff. To be honest I thought three were dickheads and can't even remember their names but the fourth one (actually it was the third) was with Doug Hele. Doug was completely different. He was down to earth and genuinely interested in what a student had to say. That session passed in a blur for me. I didn't find him intimidating as the others had tried to be but what struck me most was his quiet intelligence. Doug Hele didn't have to try too hard. He mentioned his work with British Seagull, the outboard motor manufacturer and I later learned that Doug had been tempted back to Norton Motors to help solve slow running problems on the rotary engines. Instead of making the flywheels even more heavier, which had been the approach up then, Doug embarked upon a programme of minute changes to port design and timing and solved the problem by proper design and not by bodging.

Norton rotaries are rare beasts and sound unlike other engines, being somewhere between a four stroke and a two stroke - a three stroke maybe. It's a design that still has much going for it but I don't think Norton managers had the faith the engineers had in the engine.

The fairing design of the Commander was a great success, coming from the drawing boards of Seymour/Powell a product design company that took on some of my fellow students from Lanchester Polytechnic.

Nortons were really about race bikes in the eighties and nineties so a tourer seems an odd choice. But it was really a civilianised version of the P52 Commander police bike. On my tour of the factory, there were plenty of police bikes at the works.

My interview took place in the winter of 1984-85 not long after the miner's strike. Quite a few police bikes had become damaged during the dispute and these were being repaired at the factory. One rider had survived an axe being thrown at him. It cartwheeled harmlessly over his shoulder but hit the front of the fairing and smashed the top box behind him. When it came to escort duties the Norton proved much quicker than the BMW flat twin. The bikes had to paired together, for if BMWs were paired up with Nortons, the latter's superior performance could provoke engine blow ups as the slower bikes were ragged to death trying to keep up. At least, that's what they told me at the Norton factory. These were all air-cooled motors.

Later water cooled engines met noise emissions standards and added to the air of sophistication. Cubic capacity is 588cc - an ancient engine size for Norton's dating back to the Model 19 of the roaring thirties - but Wankel rotary cubic capacities are often increased by various factors to allow comparison with conventional engines. In the Commander, output was 85bhp at 9000 rpm with 75.4Nm of torque at 7000rpmand a kerb weight of 235kg.

When I visited the factory, they were making lost of engines for unmanned target towing drone aircraft so maybe government surplus stores would be good source of spares. It just seems such a shame to shoot at such a Vintage Thing.

With different brakes and forks - they're XJ900 components, too - the Norton Commander could have been the best tourer of its generation.

Vintage Thing No.25 - Norton-JAP V-twin

Just look at this beauty! As a Vintage Thing it's practically over-qualified. This gorgeous 1000cc JAP v-twin powered, wideline Norton Featherbed won best competition bike at this year's Calstock Bike Show and when they fired it up in the tent there were huge grins all round. It sounded like a racing Morgan trike, which isn't surprising since they use the same engine - really crisp and nothing like the "potato, potato, potato" of a Harley V-twin.

These engines also went into Brough Superiors and many Shelsley specials. John Bolster used two of them chained together in Bloody Mary and went on to use no less than four of them in the ultimate Bolster hillclimber. However, the resulting 4-litre eight cylinder monster proved too difficult to start. Without electric starters, bumping it was the only way to do it and if one engine didn't catch it just right, the shocks to the chain transmission system would snap the links easily.

As for the frame, the Norton Featherbed frame is the most famous bracket for engine and two wheels of them all. It was never officially called that. The nickname came about because it was such a revelation to ride after the rigid tail post-war Nortons and it became the frame of choice for anyone who wanted to get the best performance out of their engine. Don't tune your Triumph - put the engine into a Norton frame. Since Manx Norton singles were the engine of choice in Formula 500cc car racing after the war and - for some never explained reason - Norton wouldn't let you have an engine unless you bought a complete bike, Norton rolling chassis were happily not difficult to come by.

The overall look of this bike is just right and I love the twin magnetos on the crankcase. These allow each cylinder to be individually timed. Why would you want to do that? Well, these engines are hand made Vintage Things and by individually timing each cylinder you can allow for any production tolerances. And you can retard or advance the ignition to allow for the front and rear cylinders running at different temperatures. It's not such an issue with more modern machinery. With this sort of engine, you are in much closer touch with the designers and builders.

Look at the way the front exhaust pipe goes through the engine plates. Conventional wisdom has it that the rear cylinder runs hotter than the front one due to its masking effect. But sometimes the front one runs hotter because it, too, can be masked by the front wheel. Funny old things, these Vintage Things.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to speak to the owner/constructor but Pete Low did. He said that the conrods were out of Noel Pope's record breaking machine and the gearbox had to be subtley angled to get the correct chain alignment. It's one of those machines where the more you look, the more you see.

Although I prefer disc brakes that big drum brake is entirely in keeping with the period look of the machine. This bike reminds me of a Triton on steroids. Tritons are among my favourite two wheeled specials. They just look so right to me and this bike also does it for me. It could have been ridden to the show by Ogri.

Starting it proved a little awkward but entirely worthwhile. Even if you have the weight, you need to apply it to the kickstart in exactly the right place. Pete said he'd've volunteered to have a go as the bike wore out various members of the public, "but I don't think my knees would stand it." Mindful of the stories of Bolster's JAP V-twins, we just hoped the ignition was timed correctly since a kick back from a machine this size would have put you through the roof of the tent and possibly on the other side of the River Tamar. Happily, all was well, and the bike eventually burst into joyous, riotous life.

As Pete said, "Wouldn't Hob be tempted off his Egli-Vincent by this machine?"

Of course, he would. In fact, I fear the owner may have already sold his soul to the Horsepower Whisperer to get this bike together.

Calstock Bike Show 08

At the Calstock Bike Show it was so wet underfoot even the pedestrians were aqua-planing. Never mind the bikes doing it - if you proceeded at anything above walking pace and braked injudiciously then you lost all steering and down you went in a great plume of water. And it proved incredibly difficult for the girls and boys of Calstock to stop aqua-planing once they'd got a taste for it.

Was this show one of the summer's best kept secrets? Pete Low - he of Ginetta G21S and Armstrong MT500 fame already on this blog - told me about this show last year and now that he's moved up to Essex he was determined to come back for this year's event. Last year he got roped in to do the judging. He knew the organiser Malcolm Wright through the Armstrong Rider's forum and positively raved about what a good event this was. As I hadn't seen him since he'd moved up country and decided to go along and see for myself.

Calstock is on the River Tamar just below Gunnislake. It's an ancient port with the Cotehele estate to the west and Morwellham Quay just round the nest bend of the river. There's no road bridge but a spectacular railway viaduct over the Tamar, which comes in useful for projections of laser shows. The Bike Show is combined with Calstock Regatta and to be honest I was a bit dubious about that. I am not aquatic and thought maybe this event was not for me. In the end, I discovered I was wrong on both counts.

I would say that the weather was the worst we've had all summer. Staying dry was not an option and today I have a heavy head cold. I'm still really glad that I went, though.

The entertainment didn't stop at admiring the automotive art, either. A medieval battle re-enactment society put away its armour since it was staring to rust and gave us a demonstration of cannon and mortar fire power across the Tamar. This was upstream from the regatta, which, to be honest, I didn't really notice. Although, it wasn't a large show, there seemed to be so much to see and do. There were tented shops, bars and a band pavilion for the kind of rocky, punky music this kind of event requires.In the evening there were fireworks and a laser show that caught every drop of rain and mad it glitter. And more bands. And more rain.

Despite the atrocious weather, everyone seemed really cheerful. Or perhaps it was because of it. We were all there because we had common interests and were determined to make the most of it. We complained a little about the rain but later began to laugh in disbelief as it came down in silver-plated pushrods. And not pushrods lightened for competition purposes, either.

The ground was already waterlogged so some tents ended up in puddles but in a humanitarian gesture the people of Calstock threw open the doors to the Village Hall for those who'd been flooded.

Pete kept bumping into people he knew like Phil from the Plymouth section of the BSA Owner's Club. We spent a very pleasant afternoon staying as dry as we could and admiring the rolling sculpture that stretched out in every direction. Here's Phil in the evening about to set off home to Millbrook on his Super Rocket, making the most of a less-moist spell. Pete was judging again this year and had been on the campsite since Thursday night, wheighing up the entries and - it seems - telling anyone who would listen what a great read The Horsepower Whisperer is! Thanks mate.

Next year, I'll take my bike - weather permitting.