British racing green with silver (2018)

cliffa said:

Thanks Ken, nice bike. I’ve never seen a Spondon caliper before - pretty neat! And it fits straight on the Norvil leg?

Cheers,

cliffa.

Click to expand...

Yep. It was made to be a bolt-in replacement for the AP Lockheed caliper.

Ken

oldmikew said:

Ken that is a very neat looking wheel and installation... So it is a standard wheel modified to take a norvil discarrier and then turned round in the forks... So question how do you stop the lockring from coming undone ?

Click to expand...

Actually, it's an unmodified standard wheel. The splined disk carrier is not an original PR item, but a replacement from Norvil/Fair Spares that has the stock Commando 5-bolt pattern instead of the PR 6-bolt.

It's a MK3, which doesn't have the threaded ring found in earlier models. Norton re-designed the hub for the 1975 models.

Ken

lcrken said:

Actually, it's an unmodified standard wheel. The splined disk carrier is not an original PR item, but a replacement from Norvil/Fair Spares that has the stock Commando 5-bolt pattern instead of the PR 6-bolt.

It's a MK3, which doesn't have the threaded ring found in earlier models. Norton re-designed the hub for the 1975 models.

Ken

Click to expand...

Many thanks Ken...

PJFlynn said:

New steel tank here soon from andover. Looking for paint code or pictures of original British racing green. With silver decals.71commando.

Click to expand...

heres what the seller says is an original painted 69

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1969-Norto...bullet+-grips+-boot+-goggle&_sacat=6000&rt=nc

PJFlynn said:

New steel tank here soon from andover. Looking for paint code or pictures of original British racing green. With silver decals.71commando.

Click to expand...

Sorry for the very late reply but...
British racing green is/was, from my recollection, a fair bit darker that some of those shown.
The Wikipedia page on this is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_racing_green
and it suggests that the code is British Racing Green, Code 284-8120: Light Brunswick Green 71%, Middle Brunswick Green 19%, White 7%, Black 3%.
..not that the lighter greens are unattractive - they're just not British!
'nuff said

rvich said:

View attachment 5905If you can't trust Jag to get BRG right then who can you turn to?

Click to expand...

Well, now that Jaguar has been owned for 10 years by the Indian company Tata - who knows?? (maybe payback for the colonisation years)
Although your paint patch is well before offshore ownership commenced.

I finally found the old paint sample I previously showed the photo of. The following photo was taken in natural light, with partial shade. I shot from an angle to reduce glare. The prep job was poor but the paint is still glossy enough to reflect if shot straight on. This might give a better example of the sample. The Jag green is the lower sample of the two. The upper one is a BMW color.

rvich said:

I finally found the old paint sample I previously showed the photo of. The Jag green is the lower sample of the two.

Click to expand...

...pretty good match with this photo from Wikipedia - thanks

Anyone, from individuals to giant corporations can devise a colour, and call it British Racing Green. This has always been the case. Look at racing cars (typically F1) from the late 50s and early 60s. The shades of BRG varied from the palest green (British Racing Partnership), to a dark metallic green (BRM and Aston Martin) with everything in between. When a giant corporation (like Norton Villiers!!) decides to paint something "British Racing Green" it is THEIR version of that colour. Nowadays of course that can be matched easily, but specifying BRG can open a can of worms...........
Best of luck!!
cheers
wakeup

"Nowadays of course that can be matched easily, but specifying BRG can open a can of worms..........."

I learned the hard way. My paint work came back more of a muddy olive drab-army green, rather than the sample I sent. Be careful choosing the color.

lcrken said:

This is one I did for my grandson to ride. It's a Mazda Miata color that was their idea of BRG. The color was used as a tribute to classic British cars.
Paint color is PPG 47037, 1991 Mazda Neo Green, Mazda Code HU.

Ken

Click to expand...

Ken, If I remember correctly, back in the mid-70s, your production racer was a BRG/"mid-dark-green", right? What was the vendor for your components? Did you obtain those items in their colour, or did you paint them yourself? If you painted/had them painted, did you attempt to match the Fastback BRG at that time?

BTW, I recently found a copy of my receipt from "Newtown Products, (Redditch), Ltd" who supplied the original NorVil items for my 850 PR. I ordered them through the NV purchasing office when I worked there. I don't remember if they obtained them for me "at cost" or if there was an employee's discount but my tank was £12.50, including fuel cap. But I didn't get a super deal -- they charged a 10% surcharge for the special Signal Red colour! The glass fibre front mudguard was £3.75 (plus the surcharge which took it over £4). How did I ever raise those breath-taking sums?

Best regards, Bruce Henderson (now in North Carolina)

Blewdy Yaink said:

Ken, If I remember correctly, back in the mid-70s, your production racer was a BRG/"mid-dark-green", right? What was the vendor for your components? Did you obtain those items in their colour, or did you paint them yourself? If you painted/had them painted, did you attempt to match the Fastback BRG at that time?

BTW, I recently found a copy of my receipt from "Newtown Products, (Redditch), Ltd" who supplied the original NorVil items for my 850 PR. I ordered them through the NV purchasing office when I worked there. I don't remember if they obtained them for me "at cost" or if there was an employee's discount but my tank was £12.50, including fuel cap. But I didn't get a super deal -- they charged a 10% surcharge for the special Signal Red colour! The glass fibre front mudguard was £3.75 (plus the surcharge which took it over £4). How did I ever raise those breath-taking sums?

Best regards, Bruce Henderson (now in North Carolina)

Click to expand...

Hi Bruce,

long time no see. You remember quite correctly. I painted my PR several different colors in it's first few years, and one of them was Cadillac Fireflake Green with gold leaf lettering. I'm not sure what you mean by vendor components. The bike came from the factory with all the bodywork in yellow gelcoat, as did all the PRs, but the original owner, Dan Gurney, had it repainted in a dark purple, because he thought bright yellow was too noticeable to the police. After I bought it from him, I repainted it in yellow, then in green, and then later in silver, and finally back to yellow again. Somewhere in there I also painted it with another Cadillac Fireflake color, some shade of red, but I'm not sure where in the sequence that happened. I wasn't trying for a BRG match, just wanted to try a flashy green. The GM Fireflake colors were a very fine metalflake, and I liked the look of them. As I recall, I was using all DuPont acrylic paints at the time.

This is the only picture I have of the bike in green and gold



And this is a later one showing it in silver. Note the left side shift conversion that I used for a while. I did eventually go back to the original right shift.



These pics are the bike back in yellow at Willow Springs in 1982.



This is the bike in it's final racing configuration at Daytona in 1990.



And this is how it looks now, no longer mine, restored in a local collector's private museum. I do still get to visit it once in a while.



Ken

Thank you for your kind and complete reply, Ken. Yes! That's the green I remember - it looked so good that I thought that it must have been manufactured with the green as gel coat and purchased as a separate item. That was the thinking about the "components" question - I didn't realize that you'd painted original Production Racer parts.

Great history, too. That time I was at Duarte and racing AFM (and ACA) was one of those times in life that you remember as paradise but don't realize it at the time. My 850 PR stayed home when I was at Shenstone on the Rotary project, then I worked for an international consulting group with lots of world-wide travel, followed by time with Land Rover's engineering group and Special Vehicles, so my races were few and far between. First time I looked around, it was the 2000s, I was nearing 60 and lots in the world had changed.

I wonder if Cadillac knew that they made a good BRG! BTW, the first Commando prototype PR (in my other thread) from the 1969 Cycle World article and my 850 PR are the only ones that I know of that rolled out of a Norton factory in red.

One last question, what was the gearbox in your racer at Daytona? There's a sticker but eyes in their 8th decade can't quite make it out.

Best wishes, and good things in life. BH

The gearbox is a Quaife HD 5-speed, originally built mostly for sidecar use, I believe. I bought it from a guy who had raced Norton powered WASP sidecar outfit, and was selling it and all his spares. This is a better picture of it, sitting in the bike I'm building now. The cover on the side is not original. I had to add it to clear the hydraulic clutch conversion.



Ken

rvich said:

Finding the "correct" green is sort of like the long running effort to get the right metal flake blue.

Click to expand...

Boy, do I ever hear that.

Danno said:

Boy, do I ever hear that.

Click to expand...

Beautiful, Danno. I so wanted that colour on my first Norton ... but the dealer could only get red flake, which is a pretty good consolation prize! Love it, love it. (My first Norton 131*** within the first 500 of the serial number block for the S. A good chance it might have been a Plumstead motorcycle.)

Thank you, sir. In no way is the Titanic the last word in Fireflake Blue. Via wet-sanding of the 'flake coats, it turned out a bit lighter than I envisioned, but the 'flake color was pretty close to the original. But it's only original once.

Thanks for that info, Danno. As you indicated, I've heard other people indicate that the blue isn't the biggest issue in getting Fireflake Blue to look "original", it's the flake. I don't know if you've read posts (on other fora, I'm not sure whether or not he contributes here) from Bret Budgor, I think from Maine, USA. He is a full time custom motorcycle painter. He says the "modern" flake paints have flakes that are too small and that makes the finish more subtle and causes the color to appear lighter. I've never had him paint anything for me and I've never seen his work, but he says that there are some "old school", repro flake formulations out there that contain flakes that match the size and colour of the original paint and, with careful selection of the base colour coat, it's possible to get a match in colour, brightness, general "flakiness", and overall appearance to the original finishes. Of course, it's all the balance in the match.
Of course, it's hard to evaluate colours in pitchurs on them InnerWebs, but, again, I'd compliment you on your work. It sure looks good to me.

To bring this thread back to greens, there was (apparently rare, but treasured by those who had motorcycles painted the colour) a metal flake green called "Emerald Green", it's listed in the colour chart as available for a '70 Roadster; I've never seen this combination in the flesh but I have seen one or two later Roadsters. To top it all off, one owner has an original "S" in Emerald Green -- it's outside the recorded range of "S" model serial numbers, but records show it dispatched to Berliner in green (also odd in that Berliner felt that warranty costs were too high on the "S" exhaust pipes and deferred from accepting more "S" models once the Fastback came out. Emerald Green seemed to have been a deeper, more lustrous colour than the brighter Fireflake Blue and Red. There was also what was meant to be a "True BRG" (however someone wants to define what that was/is) available on Fastback models - that was my favorite colour for a Fastback (YMMV).

How do you get the “old style” flakes through a spray gun without blocking it up?

Bernhard said:

How do you get the “old style” flakes through a spray gun without blocking it up?

Click to expand...

You need a spray gun tip sized appropriately. And keep shaking the gun to keep them in suspension. It was a popular practice in the 70's with lacquer before metalics were available. But as Danno said, sanding a metalflake coat will make it blotchy because the flakes at the surface will reflect more light.