WAS PAUL DUNSTALL MAD ?

Bruce MacGregor · Nov 6, 2013

Back in the day I bought a new 1971 Norton roadster. I soon found that it was not as fast as the Kawasakies 500 triples.
a few years later I put an 810 kit & med hot dunstall street cam on / in the bike. it was faster but not fast enough, next came the 2 into one into 2 exhaust system & decible silencers. It got a little faster. Next came the Dunstall big valve head. That made all the difference. The bike turned consistant 11.7's and could hold it's own with the then new 1000 Kawasakies. I sold it in the early 80's I never had any problems with the Norton or Dunstall parts and it was a daily rider up until I sold it.

I haven't had any problems with my Drouin supercharged 850 either. It still runs great after ~8 years. I hope I can say that about my Duc.

ILLF8ED · Nov 6, 2013

Bruce MacGregor said:
Back in the day I bought a new 1971 Norton roadster. I soon found that it was not as fast as the Kawasakies 500 triples.
a few years later I put an 810 kit & med hot dunstall street cam on / in the bike. it was faster but not fast enough, next came the 2 into one into 2 exhaust system & decible silencers. It got a little faster. Next came the Dunstall big valve head. That made all the difference. The bike turned consistant 11.7's and could hold it's own with the then new 1000 Kawasakies. I sold it in the early 80's I never had any problems with the Norton or Dunstall parts and it was a daily rider up until I sold it.

I haven't had any problems with my Drouin supercharged 850 either. It still runs great after ~8 years. I hope I can say that about my Duc.

Mentioning Kawasaki H1 500cc....at age 20 on my completely stock 750 combat 201123, used to street race at Palm Springs in 1973. From standing start light to light the combat could always beat the H1s. I know the older I get the faster I was, but speed notwithstanding the combat always won the race.

acotrel · Nov 6, 2013

A friend of mine has always been a dedicated two stroke racer. I once discussed with him my lack of belief in the commando engine. He told me that back when commandos were new he worked for S.R.Evans, a dealer in Melbourne - doing the pre-delivery work on both Commandos and H1 Kawasakis. The fellas used to take the new bikes down to a boulevard which winds alongside the Yarra River, and give them heaps. He said the 750cc commando could hold its own against the 500cc H1 Kawasaki. I believe a lot of this s tuff is a bout perceptions. When I was racing in the late 60s, I always raced a Triton simply because the two strokes were so plastic. We believed the Japanese bikes were superior, and in outright speed that is probably true, however as a package the commando was not too bad. We'd all moved on by the time they arrived.

Bruce MacGregor · Nov 6, 2013

I should mention that it was a pre combat, stock 1971 750. It was faster thru the twisties but was nip & tuck in a 1/4 mile with a 500

dennisgb · Nov 6, 2013

acotrel said:
Are you claiming that Paul Dunstall was mad because he attempted to improve the 750 commando, or because he had a backyard business where his livelihood depended on getting money from motorcyclists ? I suggest you are looking at him through American eyes. Colin Seeley also operated out of a factory down a lane. A friend of mine worked for him, and lived in a van outside the factory while also racing at weekends. Perhaps we were all mad back then ? I don't think people today recognize how it was back then, the whole of the British motorcycle industry was run on a shoe string. The Dunstall aluminium barrels were a good attempt, probably better than the Alfin Wellworthy barrels which some of us fitted to Triumph 650s ? With anything like that, you have to be prepared to do the re-engineering if there is a problem. My Alfin barrels cracked through the cast iron which was part of the liner around the stud holes - that's when I gave up.

I think it's a lack of understanding the time period. Here in the US in the late 60's and early 70's we worked on the side - racing closed body "C" and "B" sports race cars. We ran Lotus engines and chassis with fiberglass bodies on the few tracks there were in the midwest for Le Mans type racing. I was the pit crew, the mechanic, and the guy who held up the signs to signal the driver. I towed the cars across the country and worked into the night fixing them so we could race the next day. I built the engines and tuned them in my garage. Motorcycles were another side line for me, but building and racing cars was a big part of my life. We didn't get paid and funded everything ourselves. No sponsors until you hit the big time...we never made it even tho we won a lot of races. I loved every minute of it

Rohan · Nov 6, 2013

Re:

nortonfan said:
Ron L, You have mentioned the head work as being the most beneficial.
Also you have noted that the 810 displacement did not do much.
.

Thats not quite what Ron L said - he said it gave it more like Combat performance ?

Dunstall claimed a top speed of their fully tricked 810 of 133mph, I think it was.
That was with a half sports fairing, etc.
And road tests of the time repeated that 133 mph.
Within a whisker of what was claimed for the Z1 900.

Aco's comments about Brit accessory makers running on a shoestring is about spot on.
If you visited any of those folks, or see them profiled in magazine tests, they rarely have luxurious big factories.
Its always small garages down narrow lanes.
Even Nortons factory was sometimes described as that - the bicycle factory across the back lane was twice as big as them...

Ron L · Nov 6, 2013

My view on Dunstall story is a little different. I understand and appreciate that Paul Dunstall worked out of a small shop in a back alley. But in those same days I saw the Hrudka Brothers hawk their Mr. Gasket products out of their garage In Cleveland and sell to all the racers. Jeg Coughlin Sr. ran a little Speed Shop in Columbus. Both of those businesses flourished and are huge today. These guys became successful with quality race parts that won races.
Dunstall took the factory race parts after Norton quit racing and fielded a successful race team. When he tried to build street racers and café bikes, he did not produce quality parts and the business did not flourish. I don't believe it had anything to do with being a backyard business. They were poorly designed parts with poor quality. An obvious recipe for failure.

wakeup · Nov 6, 2013

Ron L said:
...... They were poorly designed parts with poor quality. An obvious recipe for failure.

Spot on RonL. I bought a basket case 650SS, the engine had been rebuilt by a thoroughly competent and experienced friend. He told me that it had a new Dunstall racing cam. The day before I bought the basket case the PO had bought a pair of Dunstall mufflers. When I got them home they were still wrapped in cardboard. The mufflers started going rusty within one month. The cam lasted 4,500 miles.

There are loads more tales about the go faster goodies available in the 70s, 99% of it was suitable only for landfill. There was some good gear available but it was never cheap.
cheers
wakeup

dennisgb · Nov 6, 2013

Dunstall did advance the technology of the day and produced winning race machines. When you consider the time period much of what he did was revolutionary in some senses. Quality issues aside, he was very creative and a heck of an engineer. The translation to selling to the public might not have been executed as well as his racing and tuning prowess...but still some amazing things came out of his shop back in the 60's and 70's.

Rohan · Nov 6, 2013

dennisgb said:
Quality issues aside,

Quality issues plagued a fair chunk of the british motorcycle industry though. ??
And industries further afield than that too.
Manufacturing back then simply wasn't set up for constant quality monitoring. ?

Nortons too had batches of all sorts of parts that had quality problems ?
There were soft cams, and non-hardened gears, and bent gearbox mainshafts, and porous heads.
And stray parts all over the place machined outside specs.
Frames with specs all over the place.
etc etc.

One of the stories that came out of the demise of AMC, prior to the Commando,
was that one of the AMC factories had some automatic machinery in it, that made some little component.
Someone was sent up there to see why about 90% of its output was rejects.
He found that the factory guys there weren't authorized to adjust it.
And didn't have the tools to adjust them anyway.
It was recommended this should change.
6 months later, he wen't back to see how it was going.
Nothing had changed....

BTW, this meant that someone had to manually wade through all the output, and judge which 90% were rejects, and which 10% were good.
Not like today with CNC machinery (Computer Numerically Controlled), where everything is monitored, and will be within spec....
(I'm sure someone will add to this bit ?).

wakeup · Nov 6, 2013

dennisgb said:
he was very creative and a heck of an engineer.

Presumably that why he gave up motorcycles and became a ....real estate agent, was it?

Rohan said:
BTW, this meant that someone had to manually wade through all the output, and judge which 90% were rejects, and which 10% were good.
Not like today with CNC machinery (Computer Numerically Controlled), where everything is monitored, and will be within spec....
(I'm sure someone will add to this bit ?).

I don't know what Nortons and then AMC had in the way of inspection, but I am aware of what a modern highly controlled machine shop has. Admittedly producing parts for the defence industry. Where I used to work, they had about 8 CNC mills, (2 x 5 axis, 6 x 3 axis) and 4 CNC lathes. Most of the contracts required someone to put their hand on their heart, and sign a document that said, in effect that part such and such complied with the requirements of the drawing and associated specifications. To achieve this and to be able to demonstrate it to auditors and the customer we had 3 (and sometimes 4 when it was working) CNC co-ordinate measuring machines, all of which produced a paper report which we had to keep. All of this had about 5 people running machines, and 2 or three people running inspection per shift, 2 shifts per day, routinely 5 days per week, on the sixth and seventh day routine maintenance happened, with spare capacity for panics. There was a support staff of about 5, production engineering, overload programming, planning etc. The place was quite profitable. The whole workshop was clean, air conditioned +/- 2 degrees C, the inspection area had its own separate air con, and was temp controlled to +/- 1 degree.

That's what you have to do if you are going to make machined parts, in a highly competitive, highly controlled environment.

This place developed over a period of about 10 years, from a workshop with predominantly manual machines, manual inspection, lots of arguments, maybe 30 people, single shift, 5 days per week and loosing money, to what I described above.

cheers
wakeup

swooshdave · Nov 6, 2013

Defense industry? I bet the margins were a wee bit steeper than for motorcycle parts. :roll:

rvich · Nov 6, 2013

Forgive me if this has been mentioned previously:

roadster-t17381.html

wakeup · Nov 6, 2013

swooshdave said:
Defense industry? I bet the margins were a wee bit steeper than for motorcycle parts. :roll:

Yes of course they are. What I was trying to indicate is how seriously the inspection of parts is taken these days, compared to 50 years ago. Whilst I'm certainly not suggesting that motorcycle parts manufacturers would go to the lengths I described, the customer, (lets say Mr Garner) would need something like the process I described to have a level of confidence that all of the parts he is paying for comply with his specification (the drawing etc).

Nobody, least of all me, is suggesting its easy.

cheers
wakeup

RennieK · Nov 7, 2013

Ron L said:
My view on Dunstall story is a little different. I understand and appreciate that Paul Dunstall worked out of a small shop in a back alley. But in those same days I saw the Hrudka Brothers hawk their Mr. Gasket products out of their garage In Cleveland and sell to all the racers. Jeg Coughlin Sr. ran a little Speed Shop in Columbus. Both of those businesses flourished and are huge today. These guys became successful with quality race parts that won races.

We can find hundreds of comparisons like these but the markets are quite different than strictly Norton motorcycles. Gaskets for 289's and 427's spanned years of auto production in huge market places.

Ron L said:
Dunstall took the factory race parts after Norton quit racing and fielded a successful race team.

Dunstall's successes in racing dommies started in 59, 60 and 61 before Norton sold off their interests in 62.

http://www.woodgate.org/dunstall/history.html

Ron L said:
When he tried to build street racers and café bikes, he did not produce quality parts and the business did not flourish. I don't believe it had anything to do with being a backyard business. They were poorly designed parts with poor quality. An obvious recipe for failure.

I just think this last bit is too broad a statement since he did sell his parts from a catalogue for over 15 years. Apparently his 1st catalogue in 1961 was a huge success so his business ventures were spawned quite early.
Dunstall recruited many experts to help him realize his dreams. Eddie Robinson designed the 810 barrels. Sometimes you have to go with the best your team can produce. As for cams if you read these threads you don't need to go to far back to see how long a good cam lasts without the proper oil.

I guess when he saw how easy it was to make money in real estate compared to the ever changing motorcycle accessories industry he didn't have to give his head much of a shake to see where the bread was buttered. Can't fault the guy for that.

dennisgb · Nov 7, 2013

wakeup said:
swooshdave said:

Defense industry? I bet the margins were a wee bit steeper than for motorcycle parts. :roll:

Click to expand...

Yes of course they are. What I was trying to indicate is how seriously the inspection of parts is taken these days, compared to 50 years ago. Whilst I'm certainly not suggesting that motorcycle parts manufacturers would go to the lengths I described, the customer, (lets say Mr Garner) would need something like the process I described to have a level of confidence that all of the parts he is paying for comply with his specification (the drawing etc).

Nobody, least of all me, is suggesting its easy.

cheers
wakeup

ISO certification requires this...I think from your desription this was an ISO certified shop. Nothing like that existed back in the day. Inspection procedures were at the machine and generally once every eight hours parts were measured or lot samples taken and measured by hand or in jigs. On critical parts measurements were taken more often. Human error came into play and sometimes issues were unknown and not part of the testing and measurement process until discovered.

dennisgb · Nov 7, 2013

RennieK said:
I guess when he saw how easy it was to make money in real estate compared to the ever changing motorcycle accessories industry he didn't have to give his head much of a shake to see where the bread was buttered. Can't fault the guy for that.

I second that. Also, by the time he went into real estate the landscape in the performance upgrading of motorcycles had changed pretty dramatically. From the early days when he was just a kid souping up and combining parts from different motorcycles to factory high performance motorcycles and factory sponsored racing teams. The major motorcycle manufacturers spent millions every year on developing performance race bikes as a proving bed for new designs. Most manufacturers sold their own performance upgrade parts and it became a major part of the business model. Dunstall was the one who help them to see that this was a valuable way to improve the product. He was there in the infancy and learning process...taught them all how to do it. A major contribution in my opinion.