Your Commando engined featherbed interests me. My friend raced an Atlas very successfully in A Grade races in the late 1960s. He still has it. Your bike is probably better. Actually, I think the Commando is a bit of an indictment of the motorcyclists back then. It was apparently built with isolastics because the CB750 Honda was very smooth running. I rode one of those Hondas when they were new. It was a stiff, bad handling piece of shit - a 650 or 750 Norton was much better, but they vibrated. Your bike is the next logical step, if the effect of the CB750 competition was not a factor. The rigidly mounted motor in a featherbed is never a problem, unless you should have been riding a motor-scooter in the first place.
Al I have ridden a Commando/Featherbed that the motor wasn't balanced at all, it had a stock Commando motor in it, I was up at BJs in Brisbane getting some parts and there was a fellow who was standing beside me and was listening to me talking to the shop boys, they knew my bike well as most of my parts came from them, well the other fellow took a lot of notice about my Featherbed and when I was leaving he asked about mine and told me he built one but can't ride it much because of the vibrations it had and asked if I could come over and have a look at it.
So a few days later I went over I rode mine over to compare, his was completely set up different, for one he used the Dommie engine mount set up with the motor sitting straight up and the motor not balanced at all, just a stock 850 motor he hadn't even touched the motor, his Commando was involved in a major accident and was wrote off.
I took it for a ride and I tell you I didn't go far on it, it was so bad and felt terrible to ride, unsafe really, so much virbrations, in the engine mounts, foot peg and way up in the handle bars, it was so bad my feet were moving on the foot pegs, everything on it was not right.
I then took him for a ride on mine and scared the living shit out of him taking him through a few sweeping corners in his area at speed, I could feel him tension up on the back.
Well we sat down and I told him what was needed to be done he asked me to do it for him but at the time I wasn't interested as I had a few things on the go as well working, but I gave him a list of things he needed to do and the people to see I also cut new engine mounts for him out of the same patten as mine as I had access to a profile cutter where I worked at the Tec College, after helping him out with a few things I never heard from him again, so never did find out how he went with it, that was back in the late 80s.
Ashley
