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So fast they have only just beet the old rotary lap speed. given course changes an tyre improvements in my head they have not managed that. We have heard this rubbish before remember the rotary engine they were going to make after Brian left.

How embarrassing if Brian manages to beet this years  Sg Norton lap speed with a bike over twenty years old at the classic tt. Steve Hislop raced a Duckhams Norton and recons he could have gone 2 seconds quicker than he did on the nrs  in our house I know who the moneys on to be the fastest Norton round the tt course.

Stuart Garner was on Twitter the other day saying the lads were trying to get a bet on so they must think it has some chance of some sort of result.

And I like Cameron Donald so I wish them all the best for this year.

John Britten done what Norton are trying to achive, with a lot less resources than Norton have now.
That puts thing into perspective!

Nice to see they are going in the right direction either way- and probably with less money than the original jps bikes were running with.

will be a massive achievement if they manage to race a full Norton bike in the next few years.

I hope the new Norton company do succeed with their proposed new road racing machine. The rotary Norton was great, a refreshing change from Japanese dominance and Steve Hislop's win was truly awesome. Good luck to them!!

john Britten was a genius, they don't come along very often which is why he's still being talked about!

wasn't Norton's budget for the original rotary's eyewatering under the jps banner? I know this wasn't the case for the TT campaign but they surely had the bikes to do the job at the time?

Cameron Donald has said that they are looking for a 128+ lap in practice for the Norton, and that a Race Result is not really their main objective, as the bike is still very much in development.

Apparently they have been receiving co-operation from Aprilia and Paul Bird Motorsport on the development of the MotoGP based  engine.

I see the Norton last week.
It was testing on our Brands Hatch GP trackday.
Looks and sounds great. And seemed to be pretty quick. I was in the Inters group so didn't see it that close.

Hi All

Abus paid £5000.00 sponsorship for the 1992 tt bike's hardly big money

The Rc and Rcw engines were  built out of from parts out of the reject bin.

Within the rotary's 1st year it won national class races with the rc588 air cooled engine {engine  from a police bike)on buger all budget.

With the water cooled Rcw588 engine {also the engine  from a police bike) and new frame it won the British championship in this bikes debut year. I would call the sponsorship average compared to other teams of the era.

In 1992 the Nrs won the tt, with a engine  and frame 1991 that was a  totally new design in 1991, no jps money in 92.

In other words the Sg2 should have won races by comparison.

We are not the ones drawing the comparison, Gauner like to do this, bragging about a 123mph lap with a 1000cc bike? putting the 19 on his bike is demeaning to the Shenston Norton Bike.



Regards Rc588

 

oops one my mistake no comma  Abus only payed £5,000.00  to sponsor the tt bikes Hislop rode.

Regards Rc588

I was in my teens when the Duckhams bikes were racing the bsb, were they not twin shockers? Great looking bikes as well. I would have loved to seen hizzy win in 1992, I can remember listening to it on the radio all be it only just hearing it for all the strange under water tones that came with listening to tt radio so far away in that era of time fantastic. Off topic a little it would be great if Norton could do what Triumph have with a come back but maybe on a smaller scale maybe adding one or two bikes to there production range. I hope in the near future we will, I've had a few new era Triumphs and it's nice to have a British built bike.

RC588 Brian Crighton was a genius and as Cookie says 'They come come around that often.

I respect John Garner for what he is trying to achieve and wish Norton luck.

Have to say though, the 588 was the best sound ever!

Superbike

The duckhams bikes were indeed twin shock, Hislop was invited to race the spare one, and why the comment was made he would have lapped the tt 2 seconds quicker than on the NRS.

At the classic TT this year they will be racing Borleys bike and why I made the comment, in my eyes it will be extremely embarrassing if the old Norton beets the sg 4 lap times.

Theirs no new F1 engines they simply don't exist it will be done in true rotary racing tradition making do with what you old parts they can get hold of.

Regards Rc588

I was there for Hislop's win, and saw the bike in the paddock, it was certainly not pretty; no mega bucks effort as has been said; just the intelligent efforts of a very under rated engineer, and a brilliant rider (Hislop) who was quite pleased to have ridden a norton as his Dad did.
Garner should sort out his money paying customers first (google it) before trying to do something like this.
Borley's bike will rock at the Classic TT, no doubt, and on a tiny budget in comparison.
I find it a little sad that nothing is ever said about Spondon engineering in all Garners press spiel, he talks about Norton's in house chassis, but its a fairly ancient Spondon beam that still houses the Aprilia V4. Spondon disappeared after being bought by Garner, and that was that, a couple of decades of amazing innovation swept under the mat!!

Yeah why did he close spondon that was a shame I had spondon framed gsxr 1100 some years back. One of the ex spondon guys went on his own Gia engineering he's called turns out some great stuff. It would be a bummer if Phil Borley's bike laps in quicker it will be great to hear the rotary sing on the island once again.

He closed Spondon so the expertise could be used in house. They can not keep up with demand as it is, without building what Spondon use to.

(31-05-2015, 10:17 AM)Rc588 Wrote: Superbike

The duckhams bikes were indeed twin shock, Hislop was invited to race the spare one, and why the comment was made he would have lapped the tt 2 seconds quicker than on the NRS.

At the classic TT this year they will be racing Borleys bike and why I made the comment, in my eyes it will be extremely embarrassing if the old Norton beets the sg 4 lap times.

Theirs no new F1 engines they simply don't exist it will be done in true rotary racing tradition making do with what you old parts they can get hold of.

Regards Rc588

Hi Rc588

The one in this article - http://www.motorcyclenews.com/sport/tt-r...lassic-tt/

Whats the history of this machine?, it looks newer than the ones in the background that we all recognise, or is it just new bodywork/decals

thanks

wish the new Norton all the best but from what I have read re orders of 'new' Nortons, things aren't great at Donnington

sorry the copy and paste is a bit of a read- but very interesting reading. Presuming this is in fact- THE Brian Crighton.


Brian Crighton says:
August 19, 2012 at 8:48 pm
I was one of the three original people involved in the new Norton project instigated by Stuart Garner. I had several meetings with Garner explaining that he needed huge amounts of money to be able to produce good quality motorcycles. At the time the only motorcycle that we could make was a copy of the NRV588 Rotary which I had built for the National Motorcycle Museum of a bike I designed for the 1994 race season. I said to him that I needed a proper test bed facility and all the necessary equipment to achieve this. He said there was no problem at all with financing this and I questioned him as to whether he had sufficient funds to finance this and the Norton factory start up. He always maintained that the money was no issue. I therefore agreed to take on the role of Technical Director of Norton Racing which was the only Norton company at the time. In my contract it stated that I was to receive 10% shares of the company for my expert involvement.

After starting, it became obvious to me that the guy was just full of bullcrap and I didn’t get any testbed or any facilities for building the two NRV588 Rotary’s. I said for the bikes to be reliable I needed to develop new rotor bearings which were the weak link in the engine. There weren’t even ramps in the so-called workshop so I built the bikes in my own workshop at home. Garner kept asking me when was I going to go to the unit at Donington to work on the bikes and I told him that if he thought I was going to crawl about on the floor to build bikes he must be joking. Eventually he agreed to get me some ramps and some equipment… Sentence removed from original pending corroboration.

Now we’ll talk about the Isle of Man TT. The first I heard about it was when I’d arranged to do some testing at Donington Park with Lee Dickinson to ride the bike. When I arrived in the garage I was introduced to Michael Dunlop and told that he had come to test the bike as he was riding it at the TT. I was obviously very unhappy about this as the bike was never designed for the TT circuit and was a lightweight quick turning short circuit bike completely wrong for the TT. I also said that the rotor bearings would not stand the long straights etc of the TT circuit due to overheating. I had several meetings with Garner telling him in no uncertain terms that if we go to the TT we would be made to look a laughing stock as the engine would break but as usual he would not listen to somebody that knew what they were talking about. Consequently Spondon Engineering had to rush and make two more chassis with bigger oil tanks and geometry to suit the TT Course. Due to this, the bikes were still being built up when we arrived at the I-o-M. The rest is history about this saga as everything happened the way I said it would and the engine failed in practice. Garnder said in MCN etc that every engine we had blew up at the I-o-M in fact, we only ever had two engines and only one blew up twice. Once at Jurby and once on the practice lap.

Now for the 961 which came as a protype from Kenny Dreer of America. I said that it would need a lot of redesign and extensive testing before it ever went on sale. But again, Garner thought he knew better and basically copied the bike and put it into production. Although according to MCN reports etc. the bike was supposedly completely redesigned. This was untrue. Inevitably, there were reliability issues.

Because Garner’s attitude and the lack of sufficent funds to finance Norton properly, I resigned. I didn’t want to be professionally associated with Garner. Obviously the 10% shareholding I signed for in the contract never materialised.

Lots of well known people in the motorcycle industry bought into the idea of Norton, but in my opinion we were all conned. Many left when they found out the truth. Staff also experienced problems when it came to getting paid.
I also feel very sorry for the people that have paid upfront in full for their bikes and have not received them: it’s the same old story.

Look at all the promises that have been made by Garner regarding a new 700cc Rotary that he says in the comics has been made and is ready to test on the dyno? What about the MotoGP bike he said they were building? It’s all just spin. The new TT bike that they said had been designed inhouse was in fact a road Aprilia engine put into a sawn off NRV frame – not a Norton at all and how lucky was Garner that the Senior Race was cancelled.

I think MCN have been misled by Garner into printing all sorts of claims about how many bikes they’re building a week etc. Sentence removed from original pending corroboration. They have to sell papers and the Norton concept helped them do that.

Obviously I have kept quiet about all of this, and more, hoping that someone who was owed lots of money would close the company, which still appears to be insolvent. 

Brian Crighton

Brian’s post has been edited with his approval. NICK.

Quite a damming assessment by a respected engineer.
It is however nearly three years old, an lot has changed?