Photo Contest - Commando Engines in Other Chassis - Race Bikes

Photo contest

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lcrken

lcrken

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For a little different take on Commando racers, this one is open to any race bike with a Commando engine. Winner is the one with the most votes at the end of 31 July. Enter as many bikes as you want, but only one post with pictures per bike. Please keep all the pictures of each bike in it's own post. Multiple posts with pictures of the same bike could confuse the system. Edited to allow more than one picture per bike, since some posters had already done so. Feel free to go back and edit your post if it needs more pictures to show bike details. Keep in mind that only the first picture will show up in the voting summary at the top of the thread.

1. Must have Commando engine in non-Commando frame. That includes Seeleys, Rickmans, featherbeds, home-built, etc.
2. Must have been or about to be raced. Road racers, landspeed racers, hillclimbers, ice racers, flat track, motocross, trials, etc., as long as it's racing.
3. Poster must be personally involved in some way with the bike, owner, rider, bulder, mechanic, sponsor, pit tootsie, etc. Edited to also include photos taken personally by the poster, even if no other involvement in the bike. Still no fair just posting a picture of something you saw online.
4. Vote for it on whatever basis you like, photo quality, originality of design, racing history, blingness, or just plain coolness.
 
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One of my favorite Norton race bikes. This is the Jim Schmidt monoshock racer in it's original configuration, as Jim raced it, before I bought it and made changes. This is a photo of it without the fairing, to better show the construction details.

nort%20mono.jpg


And pictures of the bike in its final configuration with updated forks, brakes, and wheels, taken by Biker Station magazine at Daytona in 1990.

Photo Contest - Commando Engines in Other Chassis - Race Bikes


Ken
 
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I took this photo of a couple of very nice guys at Bonneville in 2008. They were pushing this sidecar rig up and down the pits trying to fire it off, so I loaned them my starter rollers. It STILL wouldn't fire, they had to go a long way back to the pits to get it figured out. I never saw them again before I left early due to a death on the salt, and I had already run, so I wanted to stay out of the way. That's my pit just behind on the left, with my trusty Bonneville at Bonneville!
DSC03035.JPG
 
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lcrken said:
One of my favorite Norton race bikes. This is the Jim Schmidt monoshock racer in it's original configuration, as Jim raced it, before I bought it and made changes. This is a photo of it without the fairing, to better show the construction details.

View attachment 16474

Ken
Click to expand...

I would never drill a front disc in that way. Be careful of the theory - the practice might be different. It is good to get weight of a race bike, but my own does not have aluminium barrels. Cast iron is much better when you use methanol fuel because aluminium loses more heat. Theoretically you can damage a piston if the motor does not get hot enough - particularly if the motor is loose when cold. .
 
lcrken said:
One of my favorite Norton race bikes. This is the Jim Schmidt monoshock racer in it's original configuration, as Jim raced it, before I bought it and made changes. This is a photo of it without the fairing, to better show the construction details.

View attachment 16474

Ken
Click to expand...

So, I gotta ask Ken,... Is that engine a stressed member integrated with the frame?... I would have never thought that possible of a commando engine? Thanks in advance..
 
o0norton0o said:
So, I gotta ask Ken,... Is that engine a stressed member integrated with the frame?... I would have never thought that possible of a commando engine? Thanks in advance..
Click to expand...

Not really, although it is a solid mount design, just like featherbeds, Seeleys, Rickmans, etc., and you could assume they all add some measure of stiffness to the chassis. But the trellis frame is plenty stiff enough without needing help from the engine, and it is not designed to use the engine as a serious stressed member.

Ken
 
Almost forgot about this one. It's an ex-factory flat track racer that I bought from John Hateley back in 1976 or 1977. When NVT went bust and dissolved the factory flat track team, they gave this one to John. I bought it mostly to get the short stroke engine. I added the paint job and the Supertrapp silencers, but otherwise this is original TT race condition. For oval track they removed the front brake. I think the frame was by Red-Line, but I'm not sure now. I sold the rolling chassis, and it eventually ended up with an ex-Norton racer who planned to restore it. I don't know if he ever did.

Photo Contest - Commando Engines in Other Chassis - Race Bikes


Ken
 
grandpaul said:
I took this photo of a couple of very nice guys at Bonneville in 2008. They were pushing the Wasp sidecar rig up and down the pits trying to fire it off, so I loaned them my starter rollers. It STILL wouldn't fire, they had to go a long way back to the pits to get it figured out. I never saw them again before I left early due to a death on the salt, and I had already run, so I wanted to stay out of the way. That's my pit just behind on the left, with my trusty Bonneville at Bonneville!
View attachment 16475
Click to expand...
That bike is an EML frame from the Netherlands, early 70s. The owner is the chap with hat, came from Swizzerland or Germany and was clueless what the engine needs to fire. Later in the week, when I had a little sparetime, I set up the ignition and carbs and got the thing running for him
 
WEAL Norton said:
That bike is an EML frame from the Netherlands, early 70s. The owner is the chap with hat, came from Swizzerland or Germany and was clueless what the engine needs to fire. Later in the week, when I had a little sparetime, I set up the ignition and carbs and got the thing running for him
Click to expand...
Your memory is a lot better than mine! I met a hundred people in 2 days, and that was 12 years ago...

Is that you without the hat? What is YOUR name, anyway? (as if I will remember it)

(At least I got the Commando engine part right)
 
acotrel said:
I would never drill a front disc in that way. Be careful of the theory - the practice might be different. It is good to get weight of a race bike, but my own does not have aluminium barrels. Cast iron is much better when you use methanol fuel because aluminium loses more heat. Theoretically you can damage a piston if the motor does not get hot enough - particularly if the motor is loose when cold. .
Click to expand...

Well, when Jim built the bike he was barely able to afford to race, much less buy trick parts, so he used what he could find. If I recall correctly, he used to get takeoffs from modern race bikes for his race tires. He wanted a large, single disk for braking performance and less weight than dual disks, so he used one he had or found, and drilled it for lightness. He used an old style Brembo caliper. In actual fact it worked quite well. Jim was a talented rider, and was very competitive against much more expensive bikes.

Ken
 
lcrken said:
Well, when Jim built the bike he was barely able to afford to race, much less buy trick parts, so he used what he could find. If I recall correctly, he used to get takeoffs from modern race bikes for his race tires. He wanted a large, single disk for braking performance and less weight than dual disks, so he used one he had or found, and drilled it for lightness. He used an old style Brembo caliper. In actual fact it worked quite well. Jim was a talented rider, and was very competitive against much more expensive bikes.

Ken
Click to expand...

I also raced with almost no money and I paid the price in painful crashes. I could say I admire anyone who does that, but I would be patting my own back. When I think back after racing my Seeley 850, I am horrified that I ever did that.
I looked at that drilled disc and my stomach turned. Ross Barelli died in the spectator area at Murray's Corner at Bathurst, when the cast iron discs exploded off his RG500. His father had made them because the chrome spalled off the aluminium originals. When he passed Mick Hone going into the corner, he was climbing off the back of the bike. It doesn't matter to you how good you were, when you are dead.. Ross Barelli was an extremely nice guy and a very fast A-grade rider. I still talk to his brother-in-law and his sister. It is the silly little things which can kill - the discs were grey cast iron - wrong grade.

About that bike in the photo - when I was racing in the late 60s, I could not have afforded to buy it.

A few seconds before a 90 MPH crash - drum heated up :

ibb.co

71c hosted at ImgBB

Image 71c hosted in ImgBB
ibb.co ibb.co
 
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Chris said:
View attachment 16483
This is my road bike lol sorry Ken!
Seeley MK3 I raced it once when I broke the race bike! Avon Venoms in the wet just for the hell of it.
Click to expand...

Don't make excuses about your tyres. When I was young we used to sleep under sheets of corrugated iron. Many guys are very tyre-dependent these days - mine are shit. I usually go faster in the wet than in the dry. If you drop, it does not hurt so much.
 
This is my entry. I did not take these pictures, but I have plenty of others which I have asked Moto55UK if I can post on here and await his answer. However, as he had previously put these two pictures on Access Norton they are already in the pubic domain. I met Mike in 2015 on the IOM, and was absolutely gobsmacked ( and that is a huge understatement) at what he's achieved. He got of his arse and did what I had only dreamed about doing. He built the frame, made his own patterns for the fork sliders, molded the tank / seat unit and i'm sure plenty more. I talked to him at length about it, and he was very very modest about what he'd achieved, but freely admitted it was very, very challenging. One thing which stuck in my mind was his comment that he thought the Peter Williams replicas were a bargain @ £75k. That is probably indicative of the amount of work he put in to achieve his own rendition. See what you think...

Capture1.JPG
Capture2.JPG
 
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