Malcolm
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Fully British-built TT bike for Norton by 2017
Norton will roll out a fully British built motorcycle at the Isle of Man TT within the next two years, according to the firm’s CEO.
Stuart Garner, owner and Chief Executive of Norton Motorcycles tells Bike Social that a 100% British-built Norton could be ready to compete at the TT as early as 2017.
The iconic British marque returned to Isle of Man TT racing in 2012 with a chassis built by Garner’s team in the Norton factory then based at Donington Park. As Norton doesn’t currently produce an suitable for an Island racer, they turned to Aprilia and opted for the super-powerful V4 motor from the RSV4 superbike.
They have since heavily revised the V4 powerplant for their SG race bikes, but Garner has long maintained that the plan was always to move to a motor built in-house and now says the firm is ‘about a year away’ from reaching this stage.
“I think we are about a year away from having a fully British built bike”, Garner said speaking to Bike Social. “That is a massive achievement for our little business to be able to put a bike on the grid that is 100% Norton, including engine and chassis.
“To think that we would be putting that bike against some of the global giants of the motorcycle industry is a huge achievement and while we haven’t posted a time, or result we’re in there pitching and starting to compete on terms. It would be a brilliant result for the team.”
While Garner reckons the project is about a year away from completion, he says that that doesn’t necessarily mean the bike will be ready for next year’s TT in 12 months’ time.
“Whether we quite make the TT with it next year I don’t know, it’ll certainly be ready for 2017. We’re pushing on with that and developing it and it will go racing when it is ready. We’ve learned a little bit of humility about saying ‘we’re going to go and do this and this on this date’, because when your plan hits life, and hits the engineers, poo happens and you have to be flexible and be able to say ‘Ok, it may not be 2016 but we are very certain it will be 2017’. We’re in there, we’re developing it, let’s see. It remains the number one focus of our project, to deliver a fully British Norton to the grid.”
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23-05-2015, 05:05 PM |
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arceye
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RE: Fully British-built TT bike for Norton by 2017
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.
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30-05-2015, 07:09 PM |
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Rc588
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RE: Fully British-built TT bike for Norton by 2017
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
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30-05-2015, 09:47 PM |
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muz66
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RE: Fully British-built TT bike for Norton by 2017
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!
Get on with it or shut up about it!
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31-05-2015, 08:21 AM |
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Dingocooke
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RE: Fully British-built TT bike for Norton by 2017
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!!
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31-05-2015, 10:42 PM |
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Evilkinevil-15
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RE: Fully British-built TT bike for Norton by 2017
(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
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02-06-2015, 01:44 PM |
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cookie77
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RE: Fully British-built TT bike for Norton by 2017
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.
(This post was last modified: 02-06-2015, 05:38 PM by Malcolm.)
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02-06-2015, 03:38 PM |
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