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| Andy Wilson's Norton Dream
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 Andy Wilson, had entered this years Manx Grand Prix races, and was one of
the many riders left frustrated by the cancellation. However, he was
particularly let down after putting so much effort into building a unique
Norton Rotary F1 racer.
Inspired by Norton stalwart Huw Huws from Wales who has been riding an F1
for many years at the Manx and his own long time fascination with Norton's
from Commandos to the rotaries of the 80's and 90's, he began the lengthy
task of building an F1 race bike twelve months ago.
It started with a very expensive van load of bits in June last year, bought
through an advert in Classic bike magazine. What was acquired was the bare
bones of his race project. The Spondon frame and swing arm, plus about 75%
of the engine components were the main contents of several large cardboard
boxes that he started with.
It soon became quite obvious that a good number of the missing pieces were
going to be somewhat difficult to track down.
Andy received enormous help and assistance from Graham Wilshaw at Startright
Motorcycles in Leeds, Huw Huws who very kindly lent me lots of his "one off"
parts to be copied during his winter rebuild, the staff of the Norton
factory who (despite not inconsiderable problems) were consistently very
helpful during his many factory visits and frantic phone calls, Peter Gibson
who crafted the exhausts and several other impossible parts, Phil Allen for
supplying carbs and remembering so many details about the factory racers,
and even the great man Brian Crighton who gave Andy advice and came up with
a Roton seat and tank.
On top of this are all the friends and local firms who have done machining,
welding, paintwork, fabricated billet yokes to accommodate the Suzuki TL1000
forks, made up linkages and cables, bushes and bearings etc, whom without
Andy would never have achieved his goal.
Unfortunately we are not going to get to see this fine piece of engineering
at the Manx Grand prix this year, but I'm sure Andy will be back in 2002,
with possibly a few more mods to the Norton.
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