The tappet follower which was designed (right) after the Norton factory decided to move away from having a lever type tappet was good for several years from the post-war era until they had a minor re-design for the alternator models. It is not difficult to see why the design had a much more substantial thickness as any attempt to remove the thinner item would break the casting....as the factory must have discovered themselves.

 

When Pierre Vernier invented the vernier scale he must have known he was onto a good thing. As I belong to the generation of people who used slide-rules before calculators came along the idea is very familiar. However just as slide rules were referred to a 'guessing sticks' so vernier callipers were called " very- near" callipers. The big change was when they became digital and I now use it constantly.

 

Hired a VW transporter van for the trip to York raceway. As I drive a VW car the controls were intuitive . I would have liked a cruise control however !

 

 

The Norton fitted perfectly and VW have ideally placed securing points for the web fastenings.

 

 

 

My estimate for the loading height proved spot on and the ramp I made up worked a treat- simply a length of steel channel with two lengths of mild steel angle  bolted at an angle to provide the transfer from slope to horizontal. The angle of the slope made for an easy loading by myself.

 

York raceway is fairly easy to find and is on the old wartime RAF Melbourne runway.

 

 

 

Plenty of room to park up but I was a little later than some having probably travelled much further than the average competitor. Sadly a bad misfire proved incurable after a few attempts to sort so headed back up the M1 homewards to take the ignition apart and find the fault which seemed to arrive when the engine was hot. 

 

 

 

Yorkshire was sunny and warm compared with the journey down which was wet and foggy.

 

The actual sprint strip is well laid out and well run with a good length of run off and a country ride along a perimeter road back to the pit area.

season starting

 

Got machine out of garage first time this year.

Seems ages since I sat on the old bike since it has been on the trailer.

 

Not happy with plate holding competition number plate; must modify it soon. 

Had wonderful visit this morning to the Scottish Motorcycle Show in Edinburgh. Spent some time speaking with the " Yorkshire ferret" -AKA Shaun and Ben Waters- do visit the great website .

http://yorkshireferret.blogspot.co.uk/

Bob McIntyre in Joe Pott's workshop in Bellshill. The" Joe Pott's Garage" display at the show is a homage to this time- and is shown around the country apparently- is a must for enthusiasts of this period and the activities in Bellshill especially. It is a fantastic achievement to behold -what I had thought had disappeared- racing hardware faithfully re-engineered. A very fitting tribute to the " boys" who kept the British flag flying and I cannot even imagine anyone else doing it all so professionally .

Certainly worthy of a much wider audience. Congratulations to Shaun and Ben Waters.

The finished bike was on display by the quite remarkable chaps of the Yorkshire ferret team.

Their painstaking efforts and keenness for fine engineering, detailing and employing the highest standards are as much a reflection of their reverence to Bob McIntyre/Joe Potts  and their team as the bikes themselves.

 

 

A blueprint of a standard Manx Norton engine

 

 

The great man, Bob McIntyre  working on a Manx Norton .

 

 

http://members.chello.nl/~wgj.jansen/

Wonderful website on desmodromic valve gear. The 1957 design by Hopwood and Hele to try and keep Norton's competitive was an impressive effort by a British factory.I wonder why they did not work with Joe Potts on a joint effort.

 

Am always tempted by some of the more exotic racing fuels but am happy for the moment to stick with normal pump fuel. Inspite of all the worries about using unleaded all seems well with the valve seats in that regard.

 

Winter work is something I feel you have to stick at as if you leave off too long you forget what bits you were working on !

 

managed after very many years to get hold of a copy of that wonderful book by Philip H Smith " The High Speed two-stroke petrol engine" . As a young man I was enthralled by it when borrowed from my local library and since many of my generation started out on two strokes I am certain others retain a soft spot for them. This page above illustrates a range of piston crowns and for good measure Smith included a Manx Norton one on the bottom right corner. 

 

 

 

I was significantly lighter in my younger days and so the scale of those lightweight machines was an added attraction. The popularity of the disc intake valve provided the answer to a lot of the issues of timing racers using the two stroke principle. What a pity that emission laws have all but made them disappear. There is certainly a need to redevelop the two-stroke in harmony with current emission thinking and technology.