Just the facts. Sump plug breather

It has come to my attention that JS has copied my sump plug breather and now has it available on his website. My original sump plug breather is available on the NYC website.

He had posted this in an attempt to justify copying my design, and then he took it down.

I spoke to Leo at length about the breather he used on his drag racer. It was an exhaust extractor and was connected to the Combat case through the fitting on the rear . [There is no sump plug on a Combat case.] He only built one for use on his drag bike and never sold it. He also used check a check valve that went to the manifold to boost the extractor at low rpm. There were no reed valves in his breather. It was only applicable to use on a drag bike.

This is definitely not cool. Thanks for letting us know.

That explains the question on sump plug with Dams.

I read somewhere that the early 70's cases without the sump plug arrangement were subject to sump oil starvation, and that made them go boom when raced hard. Also resulted in giving the Combat motor a bad reputation. Is that all BS?

Schwany said:

I read somewhere that the early 70's cases without the sump plug arrangement were subject to sump oil starvation, and that made them go boom when raced hard. Also resulted in giving the Combat motor a bad reputation. Is that all BS?

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All 72/73 750 cases have the dam but no large sump plug, in these engine at high revs the oil pools in the back of the cases away from the oil return drain to pump at the front of the cases so the engine wet sumps.

Schwany writes: "I read somewhere that the early 70's cases without the sump plug arrangement were subject to sump oil starvation, and that made them go boom when raced hard. Also resulted in giving the Combat motor a bad reputation. Is that all BS?"

Seems to me this is off topic. It would be a shame if this thread veers into the technical details of how different breathers function, rather than the ethics of the players involved.

This is a big ethics issue. I get pissed off with this kind of thing...

I just don’t get this dude. It all seems a bit opportunistic, desperate and sad, and has for a long time.

Our Norton world is tiny - why does he continually piss in his cereal?

At least the other Jim answers his email.

Stephen Hill said:

Schwany writes: "I read somewhere that the early 70's cases without the sump plug arrangement were subject to sump oil starvation, and that made them go boom when raced hard. Also resulted in giving the Combat motor a bad reputation. Is that all BS?"

Seems to me this is off topic. It would be a shame it this thread veers into the technical details of how different breathers function, rather than the ethics of the players involved.

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I wasn't asking about breathers, or wet sump issues. I wondered if starving the oil return as kommando pointed out was a Norton design error.

I'm not much for discussing politics or intellectual property infringement. That belongs in court. I wasn't aware of the long history of bad blood between these two Jim's. I sort of ignore that kind of thing. I can't get upset about it. Feelings error in my DNA.

Yes i noticed this while on the said site yesterday. All as fair in love and war i guess.

comnoz said:

It has come to my attention that JS has copied my sump plug breather and now has it available on his website. My original sump plug breather is available on the NYC website.

He had posted this in an attempt to justify copying my design, and then he took it down.

I spoke to Leo at length about the breather he used on his drag racer. It was an exhaust extractor and was connected to the Combat case through the fitting on the rear . [There is no sump plug on a Combat case.] He only built one for use on his drag bike and never sold it. He also used check a check valve that went to the manifold to boost the extractor at low rpm. There were no reed valves in his breather. It was only applicable to use on a drag bike.

View attachment 94455

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What Jim Comstock is saying about my system is correct.

I did not use reed valves, I used check valves.

I was doing this in an attempt to eliminate pumping losses within the crankcase, and control oil migration into the combustion chamber while using low piston ring tensions.

I hand multiple check valves in the exhaust, and inlet manifolds.

In lower rpm, lower throttle opening conditions, where there was a degree of inlet manifold vacuum, I was using that to create vacuum in the crankcase, as exhaust velocity was not enough to create a suitable vacuum.

Under wide open throttle conditions, (no inlet manifold vacuum) the check valves closed to the inlet manifold connectors, and the exhaust manifold extraction vacuum provided the crankcase evacuation.

Closed throttle, high rpm conditions (end of track throttle roll offs) created high vacuum in the inlet manifolds, and served to help oil piston ring/cylinder sealing oil control.

I never had any plans on marketing this.
And, I can’t take any claims to being the originator of this.

It’s been used on various engines for a while.

Moroso sells a exhaust extraction kit for auto engines, which is very similar to what I was doing, less the inlet manifold circuit.

Many engines used a timed breather for pressure/vacuum control as well. (Norton, HD, Triumph and several others have cam driven/timed breathers)

The Comstock reed valve breathers work very well, and I use them on all of the engines I build.
I use the ones he sells through CMW, which attach to the crankcase, and the ones he designed for sump plug use, sold through Kenny At NYC Norton.
I personally lay no claim to originating this particular design/idea of crankcase evacuation.

I just expanded it somewhat with putting the inlet manifold vacuum into the circuit.

What I was doing, in my opinion, would not be very suitable for a street bike.

Comstock’s two systems are, however, highly advantageous for street, or racing engines.

Haven’t seen or tried the JS Engineering sump plug ones, but in the pictures I’ve seen, they appear to mimic the ones Jim Comstock designed, engineered, and produced.
It has come to my attention that JS has copied my sump plug breather and now has it available on his website. My original sump plug breather is available on the NYC website.

comnoz said:

He had posted this in an attempt to justify copying my design, and then he took it down.

I spoke to Leo at length about the breather he used on his drag racer. It was an exhaust extractor and was connected to the Combat case through the fitting on the rear . [There is no sump plug on a Combat case.] He only built one for use on his drag bike and never sold it. He also used check a check valve that went to the manifold to boost the extractor at low rpm. There were no reed valves in his breather. It was only applicable to use on a drag bike.

View attachment 94455

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Time Warp said:

This looks suspiciously like a JC breather shape wise, the bottom at least.
I have two JC Commando breathers bought direct so I took liberties with that shape (It is a wet sump breather separator)

View attachment 94468 View attachment 94469 View attachment 94470

I have shared parts made over the decades and folk from Australia, UK, USA and Germany ripped off my goodwill to the tune of maybe $50k+++ profit to them with no conscience or even a thanks.
Its the way of the world it seems.

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Yes, it's sad. We have gone from a world of a word and a handshake to a world of lawyers and litigation...

Considering all the free help and advice you've given to Norton owners over the years, it's sad that you have to fight to keep just a few Commercial items as your own.
I also remember the Piston Poser email from a few years back, that was a weird one.
The other consideration is, you have made a huge investment in shop & equipment to keep these old Nortons running and to have the capability to manufacture these intricate specialty items.
I'm going to assume that JS has gone to a third party to have the knock off item made.
JS can correct me if I'm wrong, I don't see any shop equipment here that would do that.

Glen

The "court of public opinion" still matters. This has been noticed by a number of folks. I will think differently about JS as a source of parts for my Nortons.

JS made other stuff, enough other stuff so one would think he had no need to nick someone elses design. Hard to understand.

I did talk to Leo Goff about his one way breather in the mid 1980s. I believe he said it was an EGR valve. So in the mid 1980s I went to Napa Auto parts and purchased an EGR valve. It had reed petals. I plumbed it up to the sump of my race bike with a clear plastic hose to my oil tank and it pumped oil into my oil tank pretty as you please. But it didn't seem to work at higher RPM. That was because oil was flooding the intake pipe and preventing the reed valve from working. It worked at low RPM when the pulsations were slow but not when the pulsations were so fast that the oil didn't have time to move. At the time I was only interested in pumping out oil to prevent crank drag friction - I was not interested in creating a vacuum. So at first I thought it was a failure for me and I didn't understand how or why it worked for Leo Goff (I didn’t know the exact details of his breather). Mine failed because the tube was located too low in the sump. For awhile I abandoned the idea and decided to keep my race bike simple without any added plumbing. Later I went back to the idea and tried it again. I wanted to keep it simple so I mounted the reed valve where it was easy – off the left side cam vent, off the 850 timing side case, off the tac drive mount, off the 750 timing cover – it worked everywhere but the bottom of the sump. What I didn’t realize is that my pickup was too low. It was being covered up with oil in the sump and was not breathing. Not ready to give up I tried it again with a more flexible reed thinking there was too much resistance. But still nothing.

So I tried another of many experiments. I removed the reed, grabbed the clear plastic hose with my teeth and blew air into the sump. I could hear the oil gurgling. By then the sump was slightly pressurized with my breath and when I released the holes - oil came spurting back out from the pressure in the sump. I felt stupid – all this time I had the tube too low in the sump. I extended the tube higher in the sump and it worked fine.

Recently I ran into the problem with the dam as I mentioned in my other post. This resricts the height of the tube and when I tried it it didn’t work and had the same oil blockage problem that I ran into earlier. I contacted several people on this forum asking them about it. So far I know that the oil dam can be in the way and interfere with the tube.


Where I am now:

I have to deal with the fallout on this forum because I started development on the reed valve sump breather before Jim Comstock even thought about it. The only person I thought I was copying was Leo Goff and I talked to him on the phone about it and he helped me. He had no objection with what I was doing. I have been developing the reed valve ever since and will continue to do so. I am an inventor. This is what I do. I have two patents to my name and will continue to invent and produce no matter what anybody says. To my knowledge - other things I have invented (or if not invented as least was the first to develop or make commercially available for Norton motorcycles) are:

Lightweight pistons and longer rods.
Various thickness head gaskets.
Slippery synthetic Turcite fork bushings.
Beehive valve springs.
Cam kits with lightweight BSA or Triumph lifters
Crank stub O ring to prevent main oil seal blow out.
.003” thin head gasket ring.
Reusable Fiberglass reinforced silicone gaskets.
install by hand banded viton guide seals.
I was the first to use and display reduced shank head studs (although I was not the first to offer them).
Monoshock racing frames for Nortons.
CRS twin carb kits modified to fit Nortons.
The reed valve sump breather (I was the second to develop it in the 1980s but not the first to offer it).

Jim Schmidt

Jim, you've brought a lot of good parts to the market for our old bikes. What surprises me is that, knowing this item has already been on the market for as long as it has, and regardless of when you may have come up with the idea, why didn't you just reach out to JC to try arrive at some sort of agreement or terms? He's not an unreasonable guy (AFAIK), might have saved a lot of headaches IMHO

I am wondering, why don,t we hear the same noise when new barrels, cranks, cams, ETC ETC come into the market, why only for this product. It is the consumer that benefits from competition and i am all for that. There are shit tons of crap parts out there for sale that Norton people are getting caught with every day, why aren't we giving those suppliers the kick in the guts they deserve. If Jim or anyone else thinks they can improve on a current design and release a quality product to the market then i say go for it and thanks for your commitment.

Well, as far as the sump plug reed breather, I designed it from no one else's product or idea.
I built it, tested it, modified it and tested it again until it worked as it should.
No product similar to this had ever been marketed before.
I have never been concerned that someone would copy my idea to build one for there own use but when someone takes advantage of the time and research I put into bringing this to market and copies it to make money on it, then I do not consider that to be acceptable.

I do recall when JS made a big stink saying I copied his wasted head bolt design. The real story is that I modified the ARP head bolts that CNW had in stock with the guidance of the engineers at ARP after it was found that the head bolts they were supplying tended to come loose with hard use. So they said to cut them down as I did to see if it would fix the problem. I did that to the bolts that were in stock and made almost enough money on it to cover the machining time only. Then ARP went ahead and modified their design and supplied the bolts with the undercut. That was the end of the profit on my part.

Then JS called me out saying I copied his design. I had never even seen his idea of cutting down the bolts to a triangle shank until he made it known.

Of course ARP had been supplying undercut bolts for many cylinder heads long before JS came along so I guess if he says his undercut bolts are the same as the bolts I did with ARP, then I guess it would have been JS who copied the bolt idea from ARP.

Of course that is silly since undercut bolts have been used in applications that require extra stretch for a very long time. Even Norton used them on there con rods and if you have torn down a Mercedes engine you would find almost every bolt in the motor has an undercut shank. Like ARP, not JS's tri-angle shank.

So now we are back to the same problem, JS has a long history of taking advantage of other peoples designs, research and ideas to make a profit. I stay out of it until it hurts my ability to make a living. Then I have to say something. Jim

" Of course that is silly since undercut bolts have been used in applications that require extra stretch for a very long time "
My 47 Vincent has factory installed undercut bolts. The British refer to them as "waisted"
Phil Irving used them in several places on the engine and I'm sure he wasn't the first to come up with the idea.

Glen