When you own a British motorcycle-
 

It’s easy to understand why they went out of business. God knows I love my 1973 Norton Commando and my 1971 Triumph Tiger, but some of the engineering ideas they came up with can drive anyone crazy.

Today I was once again replacing the primary chain case O-ring gasket on the Norton. If you look at any of the Norton forums you will see almost as many threads as to how to keep it from leaking as you do people asking what kind of oil to use. Whoever came up with the idea of using one center nut on the primary case as opposed to a series of perimeter screws needs to be taken out and shot. Oh, and there is no drain plug in the bottom of the chain case. To drain the oil out you need to take out the center nut and pry the case out from the bottom. Then you can only hope that it all drains into the container you put below it.

But, job is done and hopefully no leak for at least another couple of years.

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Nice Norton there Kurt.

British bikes alone kept the oil industry in business.

It was a Triumph 650. The side cover over the primary chain/clutch area used to leak oil badly so I got a bit of glass that had been a truck window. Put some cutting compound on it and worked the sidecover around on the flat surface. Fairly much worked.

I started my biking career on Jap bikes, then Italians then Brit bikes. I now have a bunch of Norton’s and in my opinion, compared to Honda or Kawasaki, they are truly awful to work on. Zero Design for Manufacture. Their complexity baffles me. I love them.

That all sounds correct!
When they run they are so sublime!

Comparing the 71 Trophy/Bonnie wannabe and my 83 VFR750F engineering and characteristics reveals a startling chasm.
Metric tools always fit the Honda, never quite sure what you will need for the Triumph, besides a couple hammers.

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Bonnie 1.0
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Same for my 1976 Sportster. And, really, for that matter, my 2013 Road King, but to a lesser degree. Old Porsches are just so incredibly well thought out, well laid out, and easy to work on by comparison. Simple little things like how some fasteners are installed - if you cannot access the back side on a Porsche, it's typically a captured nut, it's tacked in place, or the hole is threaded. On the Harleys, you just have to take half the motorcycle apart, completely unrelated assemblies need to be removed, just to get a wrench on the loose nut on the other side. Ten minutes jobs turn into three hour jobs. Very, very frustrating at times.

To replace the clutch on one of these:


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you need to get to this point:


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Always good to have this on hand too…

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