Project Norton

With a shiny new toy in the workshop in the guise of my BMW R100S, as well as a new workshop, the Norton again found itself forgotten. Although I realise I am very lucky in having plenty of room, moving workshop was much, much more work than I’d anticipated and also led to reworking the other shed. Now I have a clean workshop to build and strip the bikes and engines, with all the welding, grinding, spraying and blasting in the dirty shed.

But with the cylinder head fresh from having the rocker box stud locations fixed, I looked at getting the engine together – primarily so that things wouldn’t get lost! But engines don’t like balancing on a bench and in my new pursuit of being more professional, I discounted the idea of wedging bits of wood under the crankcase and found an old tow