Norton combat commando 850

The new models succeeded in racing — winning the Senior TT in — but they moved rather more slowly in the commercial market. The company had some success making the Wankel -engined Interpol 2 motorcycle for civilian and military police forces and the RAC. This led to a civilian model in called the Classic. Subsequent Norton Wankels were water-cooled. The Commander was launched in and was followed by the Spondon-framed F1.

The team, headed by ex Honda-team manager Barry Symmons, Honda engineer Chris Mehew and chassis specialist Ron Williams, were tasked with producing a chassis that could be produced cheaply and an engine which would have a long term reliability.

Prof Blair commented that the Japanese had abandoned development of the motorcycle variant of the Wankel engine on two main counts: 1.

As the team had realized, there was just too much heat to be confined in a motorcycle chassis. The pollution created by the engine burning both oil for lubrication and fuel for power was just too great to meet the impending pollution regulations without a large and expensive exhaust scrubbing system. The F1 was succeeded by the restyled and slightly less expensive F1 Sport.

Chief Executive Phillippe LeRoux attempted to diversify the company to a group with interests in property and leisure, [24] meanwhile supply of Norton Classic was being delayed by supply problems with petrol tanks and headlight shells.

At this point the UK Department of Trade and Industry started to investigate improprieties in the investments of financier Philippe LeRoux and his associates [25] following which LeRoux resigned his position as Chief Executive.

McDonald sold the company to the Canadian company Wildrose Ventures in for around half a million pounds. The assets were simply not transferred [27] [30].

Wildrose Ventures was ordered by the Alberta Stock Exchange to cease trading. The Skalbania connection was reported as being severed by July of that year [31]. By the service side of the Shenstone site was closed and transferred to a small factory at Rugeley , Staffordshire. The focus of manufacture was moved to the manufacture of components for light aircraft engines based on the rotary design. It was reported in that a group of former Norton employees built nine F1 Sport models from existing stocks of parts.

During the late s, Kenny Dreer of Oregon evolved from restoring and upgrading Commandos to producing whole machines. He modernised the design and in the early s went into series production with the Commando , but then suspended operations in April Garner is developing a new 15, sq ft 1, m 2 Norton factory at Donington Park to develop the Dreer-based machine. The new operation at Donington Park has gone into limited production producing a motorcycle based on the Kenny Dreer Commando.

The new motorcycle only shares the outline of the Dreer bike; all aspects of the motorcycle have apparently been re-designed in order to move into production. An updated and revised version of the rotary by Brian Crighton, an engineer who worked on the rotary machine in the s is also being developed.

To expand the range of machines available, the company has acquired a significant interest in Maxsym Engine Technology [35] with the aim of using the Maxsym parallel twin engine, originally developed for Moto GP as the basis of a new range of Norton motorcycles, with options including 1, cc Superbike, and cc Supersport variants. Garner responded that this finance would allow Norton to double annual production from to 1, machines.

In a surprise move, Norton acquired Donington Hall as its new corporate headquarters in March Norton Motorcycles purchased Donington Hall from British Airways for an undisclosed sum, and will vacate the current Norton factory at Donington Park, which has about 40 employees. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email.

Search for:. Norton Motorcycle Company From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Norton Motorcycles UK Ltd. Contents [ hide ]. Main article: Associated Motorcycles. Main article: Norton-Villiers. Main article: Norton Villiers Triumph. Bagikan ini: Twitter Facebook. Like this: Like Loading Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here The Commando head also has slightly different centres for the four bolts adjacent to the spark plugs, so that it is necessary to 'pull' the holes to fit on a cc or cc barrel.

I have seen this done once, but it can only be described as a bodge. Commando cylinder heads were not stamped RH1 from the beginning, and it would have been after when they started to make so many variants, which were as follows The and heads are not easily interchangeable; they have different bolt patterns.

The s and s have a different bolt pattern, the four outer ones being spread more on the Dwaine Williams says " you can just drill the holes over on a to fit an ".

Others have filled the holes with 'dowels' and redrilled the holes, but then there's the problem of head gasket and squish bands to deal with. I, and other racers Todd Henning for one , like small port heads for their flexibility and flow speed. Perhaps the easiest way is to port the head and manifolds to 32mm, making a nice smoooth taper from the manifold surface to the valve guide area, similar to a Combat design. A Combat head is marked with a large 'C' on the top in the middle near the top engine steady on the two I have and has a milled 0.

Earlier s have very small ports and fairly rough casting. Both my S and Mk. The Combat engine had higher compression due to a shaved head, a long duration high lift cam that was really good at the high end of the power band and added about useable revs to the motor.

Which led to serious over revving and the pistons to separate from their crowns. Led to really bad ignition timing with a bad auto advance system that led to hard starting, poor running and early exit for the bottom end of the motor which was weak from the factory.