FULL THROTTLE
Drop a gear to third to get the revs near to four grand. Grab a handful of throttle and wow, you’re riding a complete rocketship. The resulting acceleration hurtles you forward, riding the wave of torque that makes Brit twins so delightful and Jap fours so bland, no matter how fast they are. This A10-engined NorBSA has mid-range thrust that’s so addictive you find yourself looking for cars to go careering past as you scream out of roundabouts. Hooligan? I guess the old rocker in your soul never leaves you... And this featherbed-framed café racer is more than familiar with being ridden rapidly. First registered as a ‘Norton Special’ in 1968, it was tuned and raced by Neil back in the day, before being sympathetically restored by Steve in recent years. So we’ll hear their stories, before returning for a short sprint in the saddle…
THE BOY RACER
‘I met the man who built this bike, Dennis Livesey, when I was about 16 years old. I had a chopped BSA A10, but when I saw Dennis’s A10 engine in a slimline featherbed frame I was immediately turned into a boy racer. Two years later, after much saving and selling of valuables (one of which was an ex-works Aermacchi 250 Ala Doro that I wish I had now), I paid 450 quid for it.
‘Dennis bought the bike as a Golden Flash in a sidecar outfit. He took off the sidecar on the spot and rode the Flash home. It then progressed over the years, until he bought another frame from the weekly ads and it was registered as a Norton. Dennis and a local character by the name of Bill Woods rebuilt and tuned the engine. Bill had a little motorbike shop which become Bill Heads, where he performed small and large miracles with machinery. He used to tune the likes of Bultacos for the local lads who raced. One of his stories was that of putting a fly on the surface of one of his polished ports. If the fly didn’t slide all the way down it, it wasn’t smooth enough and he would polish it again!
‘One of his larger miracles was that of turning this standard A10 engine with a single carb, alloy head into one with twin GPs on it! He cut off the old manifold and then proceeded, using a gas torch, to rebuild the area around the ports with weld. Enough was rebuilt to machine a new manifold with almost straight inlet tracts, and a new spacer was made to
