1933 Model 18 Norton

A Norton Model 18 road test from a 1933 issue of "Motor Cycling". (thanks Dave)

1928 16H Norton

An advert for the 1928 16H Norton; note the double barrel silencer and the round oiltank.

The 1931 Norton brochure

Sent by Wim

Competition machine wanted

Sent by Howard

Simon: 

"This letter from Nortons is noteworthy from two additional points of view:

1. It is signed by GWW who was of course Graham Walker working for Nortons at the time.

2. About twenty years ago my next door neighbour was a nephew of Mr and Mrs Longman and he told me in no uncertain terms that he and the family were not too enthralled with the behaviour of one of Longman's employees, who, after Mr Longman died, was allowed to carry on the bike side of the business while Mrs Longman occupied herself with selling paraffin and charging accumulators (for radios etc).  Basically, they felt this chap - also now dead - took unfair financial advantage of Mrs Longman's good nature.  My neighbour also said that when Mrs Longman finally toppled off the perch, it took him and his cousins three weekends and several skips to clear all the motor cycle stuff which, he said, 'nobody wanted.'  This I find hard to believe as I believe Mrs Longman died in the seventies and there would have been plenty of people interested had the right contacts been made. As the saying goes, enough said!"

1921 advertisement

Sent by Alf. From The Motor Cycle, November 24th, 1921

Spare Parts Order

Contributed by Rob

A late 1920s spare parts order form; a lot of words were used to explain that parts should be paid for before they are despatched from the works.

Getting the best out of a side valve engine

A reprint from Motor Cycling, 1936, by Hartley.

A very informative article (contributed by Simon) that describes the forgotten art of side valve engine tuning; the author suggests that your 16H can be as fast as a standard Model 18. Many of the other suggestions are well worth a try when rebuilding your Norton engine, whether it is an SV or OHV.

Simon: "Back in the dim distant past Stan Johnson - vintage Norton tuner par excellence - put a hot 16H engine in his Vintage ES2 (John Wilkinson used to ride for him). It finished third in one of the Vintage races at Brands Hatch beating all sorts of regular front runners as well as the also-rans (like me!!). Stan has been dead for about 20 years and Wilkinson died as a result of a disagreement with a Spanish policeman in Bilbao - the policeman shot him..."

(Click the images for a larger version)

Bennett's 1925 TT Norton ?

From "The Classic Motorcycle, July 1991, pp 53-57''. Sent by Hans. Click the images for a full-page version. Refer to this blog entry for more info on this bike.

...and Simon's comments. From "The Classic Motorcycle, August 1991, p 26". More comments in this blog entry.

The Motorcyclist Review

From "The Motorcyclist Review, August 1927". Sent by Simon.

The Motorcyclist Review was a monthly paper which ran from about 1925 to 1930. There is a full set of them at the British Newpaper Library in North London, where many other periodicals of interest can also be viewed - free! The CS1 on which Stanley was 'snapped' after his Dutch TT win carries the registration number OP8644 which is the number of the CS1 featured in the Motor Cycling road test of 9th November '27 and the 'Racer in the Rough' article from the Motor Cycle of 17th November '27.

Double knockers in 1937...or not?

From: "Motorcycle Sport, July 1983, page 305-306". An amusing story by "E.U." Click the pictures for a full-page version. Contributed by Alf.

The 1928 catalogue

The 1928 brochure in German; it folds into the shape of a flat tank and shows the flat tank models only, not the CS1 and ES2. Flawil is a town in Switzerland (sent by Markus).

Joe Craig on the CS1 - Moore variety

By Simon

Various authors of Norton books and articles in recent years have remarked on the lack of success of the works CS1s in '28 and '29 compared to 1927. Vague references have been made to cylinder head problems and one chap even went so far as to suggest Walter Moore deliberately engineered the difficulties so that he could justify his departure to NSU in 1929 (a highly fanciful notion to which I do not subscribe!). It should be stressed that these problems are not associated with production versions of the Moore CS1, which were generally accepted as being fit for the purpose for which they were sold. So where did these stories start? Seemingly with none other than Joe Craig!

At the invitation of journalist, former TT winner and publisher of the TT Special Geoff Davison, Joe contributed an article to Davison's 1948 anthology 'The TT Races - behind the scenes.' In it - after several pages of introductory woffle - we come to the nub of the matter. As Joe put it, '...the main troubles of the engines of 1928 and 1929 emanated from a marked tendency of the cylinder head and piston to attain a temperature out of all proportion with the power output...' In the Isle of Man, if one got as far as Ramsey in one piece, climbing the Mountain at high revs in second gear would as often as not result in piston seizure. It seems that Moore's efforts to solve the problem were centred on the piston, which was given increased clearances but to no avail. In Joe's view it was just getting far too hot and expanding accordingly. The source of the problem was poor scavenging and combustion. What apparently happened, after the 1927 season, was an extensive re-design of the head and it seems that those responsible (no names are given!) had not realised the critical influence on performance of the inlet port shape. Norton's engineers, in an effort to follow the valve spring manufacturers' recommendations for improved reliability by using longer springs, had simply altered the head casting, making that section which supports the springs protrude rather more into the ports than was desirable for a racing engine.

On his return to Nortons in the late summer of 1929, Craig and Carroll had a good look at the problem and having identified it, went back to the original 1927 port shape - and one assumes - valve spring length. The valve springs were given a slightly easier life by a rather gentler cam and the result was there for all to see - second and third places in the 1929 Ulster Grand Prix, run at a higher speed than ever before. The lessons learned were applied to the Carroll engines which followed in 1930 and the rest, as they say, is history.......

I have never seen one of the original 1927 works CS1 heads despite years of asking round and of course, the problem is that present owners of such heads might not realise what they had unless they had amassed enough CS1 heads to notice a difference. I even checked the CS1 engine in the Science Museum in London in the forlorn hope that it might have been one of the original type but no luck there either: it seems to be a standard production unit. So if there is any CS1 owner out there who thinks he (or she) has a different cylinder head to the usual type, let's be hearing from you!

(postscript: There are few photos of the '27 works engines which differed from the production versions in a few respects - quite apart from the cylinder heads. The timing cover was a different shape and was in two pieces rather than a single casting, the lower part covering the oil pump was as on the '26 TT OHV engines. The technical artist Francis Simpson did two drawings of the TT engine which appeared in the TT Notes and News (the Motor Cycle, June 30th 1927), above)

Stanley's 1933 TT winning Model 30 Norton

From: "The Motor Cycle, January 18th 1934, page 74-76". Click the pictures for a full page version. Contributed by Alf.

The Norton Scrapbook - a Curate's Egg?*

A book review by Simon Grigson

The latest glossy offering from Morton's Group by James Robinson, Editor of The Classic Motorcycle.

I have just received a copy of the Norton Scrapbook and from my view-point as one who has a considerable interest in the pre-WW II era, I find it disappointing, especially so as the Editor has access to what must surely be the best possible archive of motor-cycling history in the world.

Whilst I appreciate the scrapbook theme may have some merit, excessive use by the layout designers of the theoretical adhesive tape to 'attach' the photos to the page has been vastly and carelessly over-done - to such an extent that some images of complete machines, or machines and riders, are seriously impaired.

As regards the overall make-up of the collection, I find it hard to understand why we are presented with eight pages relating to the 1939-45 WD 16H and Big Four machines - a couple of pages would have sufficed - yet there is but one, yes ONE photo relating to Nortons at Brooklands. Bearing in mind that Nortons were probably the most successful marque to be raced at Brooklands in the 1919 to 1939 period, with dozens of wins and world records, this is a fairly serious omission by any standards. Incidentally, the somewhat uninspired print selected is that much used photo of J.L.Norton, D.R. O'Donovan and R. Judd with the 1922 prototype OHV engine crudely shoe-horned into one of O'Donovan's sidevalve Brooklands steeds.

I suppose it is inevitable that there will also be errors in the text and captions and in the section covering the period up to 1939 there are certainly a few which sprang to my attention. Possibly someone with more in-depth knowledge of the Edwardian and thirties periods might pick out a few more. And last but not least, concerning the early Moore-designed OHC CS1 engine, of which a photo taken in 1960 has been selected (see Built for Speed/John Griffith/Motor Cycling), the 'cricket bat' nick-name has been used yet again - a relatively modern invention which was not current pre-war, according to my sources. The earliest mention of it in print I have seen is in Bob Holliday's two Norton books, which came out in the seventies. If it's any consolation to James Robinson, Bob's books contained considerably more errors than the Scrapbook!

Summing up, this is not a book to which I shall refer very frequently but equally, it is cheap and cheerful and will be retained rather than sent to the nearest charity shop.

*For those unfamiliar with the phrase, have a look on Google and all will be revealed!

A Glimpse of the Vintage Years of Motorcycling at Brooklands

Roger Bird is a volunteer at the Brooklands Museum where one day he was allowed to to ride the Norton sidecar outfit LPD1; this made such an impression that he ended up owning the machine and researching it's history. In the process he collected a wealth of information on 1920s flat tank Nortons and the people involved with these motorcycles and as Roger likes to share his knowledge he wrote this book on the subject.

The book covers the careers of four of the most successful Norton tuners and riders at Brooklands and continues with a detailed description of their machines. Most interesting, some of the tricks used by Pat Driscoll to tune an M18 engine to produce twice the power output of a standard machine are discussed in detail. Briefly, find yourself a steel crankshaft, an 8,5" conrod, 9-1 compression ratio Martlet piston, IT cams, an M19 cylinder, an early ES2 cylinderhead and an Amac 25 TT carburetter; and make sure assembly is absolutely spot on. Be careful though, the photo above shows what happens when it all goes wrong.

The book is illustrated by numerous pictures of 1920s Norton racers, many of which I had not seen before. All in all a very recommendable book and the title could have been "Norton at Brooklands in the 1920s".

Information on how to obtain your copy of this book can be found via this link.

Lovetts Motorcycle Catalogue for 1928

These are a few pages from a 1928 catalogue from a London motorcycle dealer, sent to me by John in Canada.

As Others See Us

This is a 1936 Norton brochure (contributed by Wim); too large to reproduce properly on a Blog page but the introduction (copied below) says it all:

"Here are a few letters of appreciation that we have recently received. We did not ask for them - they were sent spontaneously - obviously as the result of the enthusiasm aroused by the splendid performance of the "Unapproachable" NORTON. As you read these letters it must be perfectly clear that only a machine quite out of the ordinary could provoke such genuine approval."

This photo from the brochure shows Jimmy Guthrie on what appears to be a trials version of the M30 International. Fitting an obsolete acetylene lighting kit must have been less work than fitting a magdyno!

1928 CS1 / ES2 folder

This folder is in French; I don't speak French but it's not too difficult to understand that the two Nortons depicted were very successfull in the 1927 season

Note that both bikes have front mudguards held by flat strips as favoured on the factory racers while the rear mudguards are held by tubular stays. Were they actually built like this or is this an example of an artist at work?
(Contributed by Wim from Belgium)

Praise for the flat tank Model 18

Martin from the UK sent another contribution; "I am now prompted to send you a charming little cartoon of a lad and the object of his fantasies, a flat tank Model 18... This was published in 1963 in a book by a well known journalist, Maurice Wiggin, and included a chapter on his motorcycling exploits in the twenties. I attach a copy of the picture drawn to illustrate the section referring to this fine machine, and also a scan of that page to which the picture refers..."

Do click and read the text, it sums up completely why you should own a flat tank Model 18 Norton."...it was rough, noisy, intractable...the Norton was the great racer, the man's machine, the TT hero above all others...hairy, smelly and slightly piratical...the Model 18 was the king."

More Norton posters

More Norton posters from Howard's collection; strictly spoken they are a bit too young to our our taste, but they are too nice to miss!