Early commando restoration to original

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Rosey said:
Matt
Hi ,I have a sales brochure in B + W from 1968 with green globe on it I think that is the year there is no date on it. It shows the Commando with fork shrouds top and bottom not gaitors.
I can send you a copy as I am in Sydney.
Brett
Click to expand...

Brett
I have dug up every bit of information I have on the early Commandos including my original Norton workshop manual which was printed in England by Burman, Cooper & Company, Birmingham. The manual in itself would be a collectors item, covered in greasy finger prints from my very early days using it. It covers the very early Commandos back to the first, No. 126125.

There is a photo of an extremely early Commando, along with a chap wearing the traditional dust cover showing how to check steering head bearings. The forks are as per Atlas with "road holder" badges on top cover. But rubber gaiters for the stanchions. So I would be most interested to see your brochure showing otherwise.

Phil
 
" Not sure where they were going with that. " THATS what they all say . :twisted: :P
Early commando restoration to original


" L.A.B. "THE year is 1967, the Sixties are swinging, the mini is mini and a young ad exec in London has a cool idea for selling the new Norton Commando motorcycle.
Michael Wolff, of Wolff Olins, wants to use a solid green circle as the signature on what was to become one of the world’s coolest motorbikes. No name, no logo, just green.

The blob would go on the speedometer and tachometer, on badges, key fobs, T-shirts. Green balloons would float above football stadiums, a green vinyl single would promote the Norton.

“It was a symbol of almost arrogant simplicity. It represented nothing. It was just a thing in itself. Michael Wolff believes that people are as moved by apparently meaningless objects as by logical argument, and that this influence has barely been exploited,” explained a Wolff Olins publication of the period.

Notice the past tense. Norton hated it. And while a modified green blob can still be seen on the clocks of old Nortons, the rest of the campaign was scrapped." . "

Early commando restoration to original


Early commando restoration to original


Go On , be a devil : or :( theres maybe ;

Early commando restoration to original


Early commando restoration to original


Early commando restoration to original
 
Thanks so much guys. Really appreciate it.
I will hopefully have some photos of its current state up soon with the help of ol'Chris. ;)

If I hadn't already covered the frame in two pack black I might have mixed up a batch of silver and procured some orange vinyl but alas........... Lol,
The only big ticket item in need is a tail piece with the raised section for the round badge.
One will turn up somewhere I'm sure. Can get repro ones but I would like and original one.
I'm about to start electro plating everything I can to get that new look. Tedious but worth it i reckon.

About the article/brochure with the atlas forked commando. I found it googling one day by accident and have never been able to find it again. I think I will leave my bike how it is anyway even if I can't prove that it came like that just for a conversational piece and I like the way it looks.
 
I've got that manual.

Early commando restoration to original


It's got a bit or rat piss on it from being in storage somewhere in central VA for years.
 
RandomMan said:
Thanks so much guys. Really appreciate it.
I will hopefully have some photos of its current state up soon with the help of ol'Chris. ;)

If I hadn't already covered the frame in two pack black I might have mixed up a batch of silver and procured some orange vinyl but alas........... Lol,
The only big ticket item in need is a tail piece with the raised section for the round badge.
One will turn up somewhere I'm sure. Can get repro ones but I would like and original one.
I'm about to start electro plating everything I can to get that new look. Tedious but worth it i reckon.

About the article/brochure with the atlas forked commando. I found it googling one day by accident and have never been able to find it again. I think I will leave my bike how it is anyway even if I can't prove that it came like that just for a conversational piece and I like the way it looks.
Click to expand...

There is a NOS tail on UK eBay
 
Matt look up my postings here, I posted some photos of my green 68 with lower numbers than yours, its never been apart and is correct. If you need more, I can help, Or look at the 2014 NOC calendar, its featured this month :D
 
frankdamp said:
I switched from the Commando Program to the AJS Stormer as soon as Commando actvity moved to Plumstead after the '67 Show. I had the imprssion that maybe the first 50 or so were done like the show bikes (silver with an orange seat) but with a classic-style "Norton" script in black painted (or maybe a decal) on the tank. The dumb-s--t green globes that N-V paid some ridiculous PR firm £20,000 to develop as a "new symbol" for the revived company were gone very soon after the show. The symbol soldiered on for a while in various paperwork items.

I actually overheard a show visitor ask "why are the trafficators (UK term for turn signals) green?" Someong in the biker press commented that the company must have been sponsored by the Irish Republic's government, since the colors (subsituting silver for white) were those of the Irish Republic's flag.
Click to expand...

Frank,

I really enjoy your actual Norton information and recollections...I wish you posted more often.
 
DogT said:
I've got that manual.

Early commando restoration to original


It's got a bit or rat piss on it from being in storage somewhere in central VA for years.
Click to expand...

DogT
Yes that is the manual alright. Yours is the only other one I have ever seen. You've got rat piss, I've got grease.
I also have my original Commando Parts List which was published by Norton Villiers Australia Pty Ltd. They were in Gillies St, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia.
They show a phone contact and a telegram contact.
I must send my ex wife a telegram, thanking her for my release.

Back in 1981, whilst in England with my brother on a holiday, I went to Fair Spares run by Les Emery. I was sourcing parts for a Commando restoration project. There were brand new things there from Norton, still in their Norton box, like BRG Fastback tank and back piece, which I bought. Les was intrigued with my Parts List book as he said he had never seen an original one before. He kept asking me where did you get this? I might send him a telegram saying he can now buy it from me for $5000. :D

My Parts List book does not include the gaiters as even being a part. The exploded view (Group 14) shows the later fork style with no gaiters. The book is post early Commando models.

Page 34 of your workshop manual (and mine) shows item 23 and names it spring cover tube. It appears to be the outer cover as per Atlas. I think the drawing was in fact borrowed from a previous Atlas manual as fork internals were identical. I also notice headlamp brackets in this drawing are the wrong shape with singular holes instead of slotted. As far as I know Atlas/Commando headlight brackets were identical so perhaps the "artist" had had a few too many the night he produced the drawing.
 
DogT said:
I've got that manual.

Early commando restoration to original


It's got a bit or rat piss on it from being in storage somewhere in central VA for years.
Click to expand...

Hi Dave,
In your manual there are pictures of the timing where i can see the sprocket and chain the goes to the rear points?.
Ciao.
Piero
 
DogT said:
Phil, are you talking about this parts book?


Both of those books are available on line, let me see...

http://britmoto.com/
http://www.eurooldtimers.com/eng/manual ... 1970-.html
I don't think either of those include the 68 workshop manual, but I've seen it on line. edit, here it is thanks to LAB britmoto.com/manuals/Manuals/Comm_man.pdf in the britmoto page.
Click to expand...

Dave
My Parts Book was published by Norton Villiers here in Australia. Perhaps that is what intrigued Les, I don't know. Mine does not have the 69, 70 supplement. I bought mine back in early 73, when I owned a Combat, my very first Commando. The parts list and the workshop manual ended up getting an AWFUL lot of use, as Combat catastrophes unfolded.

I looked with interest at the on line manuals you have provided. No, they are not yours or mine. Also, no sign of rat's piss or greasy finger prints, that just wouldn't do! I do note the 750 manual lists 25 Moxon Rd Punchbowl, Sydney, as head office for Norton in Australia. I have fond (well not so fond) memories of nearly whole days waiting there whilst my Combat was being fixed for various things under warranty.

Yours and my workshop manuals are more for posterity than anything. But handy on occasions such as researching early fork covers.

Phil
 
Thanks, Dennis.

Off topic from here!!

My time (about 20 months) at Marston Road was an intersting episode. Before I quit my job with Wickman Machine Tools to join N-V, I had already interviewed with Boeing reps in London. As with any large company (about 105,000 at the time), the system ground very slowly. I finally got a job offer from them about 14 months into my Norton career. The salary was 3.5x what I was making at N-V and friends already in the Seattle area gave me data that suggested the cost of living was only about 2x that in the UK.

It wasn't really a question, apart from leaving all our UK family. It turned a bit sticky after I'd been there three years or so, when I got laid off! I managed to snag an interesting job with a contractor at NASA in Virginia, with expenses paid relocation.

Three years in that obnoxious climate was more than enough. I remember going to work one morning shortly after our move. At 07:15, it was foggy, 85 degrees F and there was a thunderstorm raging. For an ex-pat Brit whose only experience in the US was in the Pacific NW, it just didn't compute.

Fortunately, after a bit less than 3 years, Boeing came calling to see if I'd go back. I finished up with nigh-on 30 years with the company when I finally bagged it. We're still in western Washington State, in a smallish seaside town on the fringe of the San Juan islands called Anacortes. My sister, who still lives in the UK, reckons Anacortes is where God goes on vacation.
 
Mine is number 123671, titled as a 67 and I purchased it in 1994 from a guy in Queens,NY. According to the previous owner, the bike was sitting for many years in a basement in Brooklyn and it was raced. The rear loop was cut right behind the seat and it had a latter tank but he had all the Fastback parts neatly stacked, he didn't like the looks of the tank and tail section plus you couldn't mount the tail section in that state of modification.

Letter from N.J.Hinton of the Norton Owner's club:

Early commando restoration to original


Early commando restoration to original


Anyone know a Byron Black?
 
black cat said:
Mine is number 123671, titled as a 67 and I purchased it in 1994 from a guy in Queens,NY. According to the previous owner, the bike was sitting for many years in a basement in Brooklyn and it was raced. The rear loop was cut right behind the seat and it had a latter tank but he had all the Fastback parts neatly stacked, he didn't like the looks of the tank and tail section plus you couldn't mount the tail section in that state of modification.

My Roy Bacon book indicates first Commando number was 126125???
It seems DogT's records indicate the same.

Roy is adamant your bike is a late 67 Atlas. Very puzzling. More puzzling than Matt having a Commando with solid Atlas fork covers instead of gaiters.

If we didn't know better, you could almost assume there was a transition period between the two. The twilight zone!!
Click to expand...
 
There probably was a twilight zone and probably also a zone where people made the Atlas/Ranger/P11 into Commandos somehow.
 
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