End of year business travel and Christmas festivities behind us I managed to put in a couple of hours work yesterday to take stock of where the project is standing and what is next to do.

The switch to the Norton engine has proven to be more complex than I had anticipated but then again that is my eternal optimism to blame and nothing else.

Starting at the rear I have finally arrived at a straight chain drive line without cutting metal off the shock absorber or rubber off the tyre side. Just need to turn off 3 mm from the distance piece locating the sprocket on the gearbox shaft, and moving the 3 mm distance piece, between the gearbox mounting lugs and the engine plates, from the right to the left side and, voila, the chain line is straight.

Now we are at the primary drive. As the crankshaft will be a modified Triumph T140 I will have to find/make a belt pulley to fit the splines. After quite some research I ended up at Tony Hayward in the UK who sold me a T140 drive pulley with 29 teeth and a Norton clutch basket with 55, using a 10mm pitch belt of 32 mm width. This will replace the originally planned 8 mm pitch 40 mm wide belt, and so it gives me enough room to fit the pulley on the crankshaft and run the belt symmetrically on the clutch basket. The entire drive line should now be straight and clearing all potential obstacles. At least in theory.

I have ordered engine parts from both here and there. Crankcases and cylinder barrel from Steve Maney. Pistons & rings and piston pins, camshaft with plungers, pushrods and head gaskets from Jim Schmidt @ JS Motorsport, connecting rods from R&R Racing Products, numerous bits and pieces from Colorado Norton Works, RGM Norton and of course from Andover Norton.

Here is the timing side. As you can see, the Norton logo is pointing upwards. That is because the engine will be tilted 20 degrees forward in the frame and then the logo will be horizontal. In the recess to the right the ignition rotor and sensor will be housed. The rotor is attached to the end of the camshaft.

This is a view from the front. You can see the two tunnels rising from the crankcase, this is where the pushrods will be moving up and down. To the left you can see there is a gap between the timing side cover and the crankcase. I don´t know why this is except it is the oil pump housing somehow interfering. This is the next thing to find out and rectify.

Again the timing side and now with the cover removed. Bottom left is the oil pump assembly.

And this is from the rear. At the bottom you can see the crankcase breather. Before fitting it I had to have my friend Klaus mill the mating surface flat. Took him an hour and a half one Saturday morning. Paid him with a bottle of Amarone……

The breather is there allow the pistons, as they move downwards, to pump out the air inside the crankcase so that ( the air ) does not have to be compressed/decompressed with each crankshaft revolution, stealing power and forcing oil out between the joints. This breather is a reed valve job that will allow the crankcase to be virtually emptied of air and so eliminating these problems.

Parts parts parts. I don´t know where they are all going to go. I have ordered them and so I need to find a good home for them. Preferably in my engine.

Another thig that needs to be done are new engine plates. The NRE and the Norton have quite different attachment points so the plates made for the NRE cannot be used. I asked my frame maker, Denny Barber, to cut me plates to suit the Seeley frame and the Commando engine. However he must have been confused because what he sent me does not fit at all. Well, it does fit the engine but not when tilted 20 degrees forward. So what to do? I used my drawing for the NRE engine and drew up the holes fitting the frame ( top and bottom right ) and the ones for the gearbox – the slotted one top and the round hole at the bottom. I  moved these 10 mm upwards so that the bottom bolt can be pulled out without interfering with the frame – otherwise the gearbox cannot be removed without lifting out the whole engine, engine plate and gearbox. This also seems to give another benefit as the gearbox sprocket is now better in line with the swinging arm and rear wheel axle. Next I took Denny Barbers engine plate and positioned it over the gearbox holes and so providing a position for the three engine mount holes. Again I moved the holes upwards by 10 mm to allow the bottom bolt to be removed without interfering with the frame, so allowing the engine to be removed without touching anything else. Using the centre hole I then tilted the top and the bottom holes 20 degrees to allow the engine to tilt 20 degrees forward. This I will take to my local aluminium laser cutter. He scans the drawing and produces a true copy. And the we will see if all the holes line up.