I emailed the factory on Tuesday about oil filter availability and got a reply back almost immediately telling me the parts operation is currently closed but that they would be back in touch.
I’ll share my 961 woes while I’m here, I’ve got a limited edition California, 50 of 50, I figured 50 of 50 for the 50th anniversary on my 50th birthday. It is black and gold, because that’s what I wanted so is the only limited Cali in that configuration. I had it supplied with straight through pipes, decat and remapped from new and she runs like a dream. Now the not so good, one morning my garage smelled strongly of petrol and having checked the vintage stuff, let’s be honest I thought the likely culprits, I was horrified to see it was the Norton. She has 190 miles on the clock and a tank that doesn’t hold petrol. A quick check of the forums and I can see this is a regular problem, my vintage bikes are over 80 years old and don’t leak petrol, not good enough. I contacted Norton who by this time had gone bust, however the new owners sent me a brand new tank free of charge as a good will gesture, so well done them and a big thank you. I have however been working on a repair for the distorted pump flange and carried out the first fix with complete success. My long term fix is to machine up a threaded reinforcing collar to sit inside the tank for the pump to sandwich the original plastic flange and stop it from warping and leaking. The new gasket I made up is holding up on it’s own at the moment but isn’t the full solution. I guess the wise advise is to use Esso supreme unleaded which in most of the UK doesn’t contain ethanol at the moment. I have already reached the conclusion that I will need to run on avgas for my classics if Esso add ethanol at some future date. I guess the advantage to me is that avgas still has lead in it so I can stop having to use VSPe additive as I do now.
last issue with the bike was the rear brake deciding to fill up with air, that really is beyond belief and a pain of a job to resolve but not difficult. I removed the near side silencer, removed the abs sensor, unclipped the brake line and cable from the swinging arm and then the calliper from the carrier. Placing a large open ended spanner between the pads, to stop the pistons pushing out, I proceeded to bleed the system. I inverted the calliper to get the nipple at the top, air rises after all and no problem, I was absolutely astounded by the amount of air which came out. Ten minutes later job done, all refitted and a quick test ride proved problem solved. The question is where does all that air come from?
Sorry for a long answer to a short question.
www.accessnorton.com
