CONFESSION TIME. I HAVE BROKEN MORE Nortons with the model name 650SS than any other. To be truthful, I’ve enjoyed many involuntary periods of roadside relaxation with a worryingly large number of bikes, ancient and modern – although more of the former, as you might expect. But Nortons? I broke a piston on a Navigator, a primary chain on an Atlas, and fell off a Commando when its exhaust pipe came clear of its exhaust port, repeating a trick first perfected with a 650SS – and there were others, which memory has thankfully deleted, but the 650SS in particular?
Picture this. It’s 1972 or so. It’s evening rush hour on London’s North Circular Road. No one had yet dreamed up the M25. A friend had asked me to ride the bike he’d just bought unseen over the phone from a dealer somewhere in North London back home to Norwich. It was winter. It was cold and it was wet, but 19-year-old me was happy as the proverbial sandboy, astride the fastest roadster Norton of them all: a 650SS. The rain dripped from my goggles onto the chest of my ex-army combat jacket, confirming once again that it had never ever been in any way waterproof.
The more the traffic snarled up, the more the Norton expressed its irritation by running badly. What was a stutter became a misfire, then intermittent cutting out, then it stopped completely. It started again after only 100 kicks or something similar, but died again, leaving me stranded at the roadside. No AA membership. No cell phone. But I did remember the name of the supplying shop and found a phone box. Got the train back to Norwich, paid for by the somewhat irritated trader. It was the head gasket, he told me. And it was my fault for thrashing the bike. My pointing
