Monday, January 13, 2025

Ron Wood's Norton

Images from a July 1975 Cycle magazine article. I've not seen this race bike as a rolling chassis, I had no idea the actual frame construction, 3 inch diameter chrome moly tube with a wall thickness of .049". Translating from a photograph into CAD we get 56.5 inch wheelbase, 26° rake and 3 inches trail. Wonder how close that is to the actual geometry?


 

2 comments:

rats said...

I never saw one with its pajamas off, either. Happy to read that it is not just a work of kinetic art!

?? said...

"Cycle" 1974, Mr. Phil Schilling.....

"The Norton vertical twin should have died and gone to legend a generation ago. In a world of perfect logic, engine designs should never maunder on for decades and finally be crushed by onrushing technology. Good ideas deserve better. Good engines should go to harvest in the fullness of their autumn; most mechanical things which struggle on simply die cold and wretched in December.
Seasons do not cover England in perfect symmetry. Spring is cold and damp, and so is fall and winter. Onrushing technology there slows; the present walks in cadence with the past. And mechanical things like the Norton twin soldier on and on...through the Fifties...into the Sixties...and reach the mid-Seventies. In other places, someone would have raised the last hurrah at an earlier stage-when the original 500 twin turned to a 600, or 650, or 750, or 850. But somehow, no matter how deep Norton reaches into December, the final cheer never comes. There's only the next hurrah."