Wow! That workshop is a mess. I can't work in areas that messy. How could you build a sound engine on that engine building table?
My shop was a dream I had for many years and once I retired I decided to do it because I wanted to remain active and keep my mind working. It's great therapy except when things go wrong...but then I just walk away for a while. That's why it's taking a bit to get back to the RE since I screwed up the case gasket.
The Commando is my dream bike. It will be a total restoration with some modifications to make it safer and improve performance. Landsdowne dampers, billet trees, 1" bars to allow for modern switch gear, Brembo disc brakes front and rear, electronic ignition, Mikuni carbs. I owned one new in 1975, so it is one of my favorites.
I do have the Norton Notes and pretty much any literature I could find. All valuable stuff. Thanks for the heads up.
Since I got back into bikes in 2013, I have owned about 50 different motorcycles. They run the gambit. I always come back to the British ones because of my youth and they are some of the most beautiful in terms of design and style, the Commando being one of the best in my opinion. The one I have hadn't run in 15 years and fired right up with the usual work, fluids, battery, carb clean etc.
Well, if you're tossing those Amals anyhow, you know where to send them. My Atlas-engined '67 N15CS "Desert Sled's" carb is so heat-warped and plain wore out that it sounds like a maraca at idle. I have the second around here somewhere, from when I changed her from dual to single carb with a 1-into-2 manifold from a superb local bike breakers in Austin, Texas, now sadly long gone, but it ain't much tighter, as I recall.
That Sled had a hard and active life herding cattle and generally tear-assing around on a ranch near Hearne, Texas before I got her for $100 as a basket case. I banged her back together using random found bits (including my ultra-manly oil feed and return system looted from a discarded
Lady Kenmore washing machine--
Que es mas Macho?). After that it was my daily driver for a good chunk of the '90s, first in Austin and later here in our Nation's Capital. It did overland enumerations for the U.S. Census searching for unrecorded habitations in the remoter bits of the Texas Hill Country and Bastrop County (ask me some time about that abandoned drive-in theater that looked like the set of
Mad Max), took me on several vacations up to Maine and once all the way up to the Canadian border, and never ever let me down even once. It'll still run...just...but is more needful and deserving of a healthy portion of TLC than any vehicle short of maybe the
Spirit of St. Louis. At this point it's sort of become my bad vehicular conscience, and I guess I had no real business looking over that grungy old Sportster for sale nearby last weekend with that Sled still in the shed. Oh man...
Topic: Waiting for parts (Read 4686 times)