1975 MkIII Long-term Rebuild

After posting a picture of a project bike that I picked up last summer, I decided to start a new thread about it. The bike is a 1975 Norton Commando MkIII that was last on the road in 1983. Most of it is in boxes, and everything needs going through to see what is serviceable and what needs to be repaired or replaced.

The prior owner said that it was a bad cam that caused it to be parked in 1983. He started a rebuild back then, but never finished, and the bike sat dormant in his basement. The first picture is of the bike loaded on my trailer. We were going through the boxes to see what was there.

While I have done a good portion of the maintenance on my 1970 Commando over the years, I have sent larger jobs out to 'specialists', for better or worse. I am trying to do as much as possible myself on this one, so it will be a slow slog as I learn a bit more about these machines.

looks promising so far, enjoy

Good luck! If you can work on a lawn mower you can work on a Norton.

Thank you for the well wishes on the project.



The first step after getting the bike home was pulling the bottom end from the MkIII chassis. It is interesting to see the differences in the e-start primary compared to the earlier machines like my '70. Everything looked pretty clean for a machine that has sat for 40 years, though there was a bit of rust on the clutch diaphragm.



With the engine out, I took a pause for a bit, as I did not have the proper timing pinion extractor. A friend who had one graciously offered to help with dismantling the timing side of the motor. With his help, the timing side was taken down and the cases split. Everything came apart relatively easily. I still need to do some clean-up and order up a few parts, but I now have a good starting point for the rebuild.