Norton V8

After boasting, after drinking, after spannering, after crying and after trying, Alan Robinson relaxed after levering a Rover V8 lump into his Norton chassis. McDiarmid attempted, afterwards, to ascertain whether, after all, he'd thrown the baby away and kept the afterbirth

Have you ever watched a 747 Jumbo take off? 320-odd tons of fat cats and duty-free dangling between skinny wings at barely more than a crawl— they must be joking! I didn't believe in a 3Vi-litre vee-eight motorcycle, either, until I sat on one. Then I still didn't.

Neither did Alan Robinson's mates. "Nah, sunshine, can't be done—you must be nuts." Or a compulsive masochist, or both. In fact he's neither— although he's come to it as the project embroiled him — and, as obsessions go, his makes a far nicer noise than any number of Sistine Chapel ceilings.

The story began in '81 as Alan, from Melton Mowbray, was wandering along Douglas Prom, eyeballing specials; his mate, whom Alan moderately describes as pissed but not actually sadistic, slurred something fateful about "why not a V8" Our hero, already hooked on big-inch vees having owned a '69 Mustang, not only took the bait but made the mistake of broadcasting the project. He was committed.

Stage one was easy. A second-hand 1976 Range Rover engine was picked up for a song and a hernia; a bit of optimistic measuring said it'd fit in a Norton Featherbed frame. Then the clever stuff started, all of it Alan's own work, bar a few gears in the starter drive. Fortunately, being a month-on, month-off electronics engineer on a seismic survey ship, he's both technically literate and has plenty of time on his hands, both for the project in hand and for surreptitious trips to the funny'farm. Along the way he's taught himself welding, bought a lathe, taught himself to use that and developed a Vernier-equipped magpie's instinct for touring breaker's yards for just the right bit.

To start with the engine: at present it's stock unit developing about 120bhp, or maybe slightly less as the exhausts ("two or three chopped-up Imp systems") are slightly restrictive in order simply to fit; you'll have noticed that there ain't exactly room for a lodger in there. In Rover Vitesse form the same mill churns out an easy 200-brake; not only is there an abundance of other tuning kits available, but it's possible to bore and stroke the unit to five Litres
. I'll repeat that: five-thousand-cee-friggin'-cees. Ogri, where are you?

Much of the effort has gone into making the engine tidy, and narrow, at least compared to a bus; in fact it's actually slimmer than a Z1300. And I'm talking real, meticulous effort here, not ten minutes bodging with an angle grinder: a measley quarter-inch of girth was saved, for instance, by using a modified Mini timing cover and chain rather than the stock one. On t'other side is a 30mm toothed-belt primary drive, running a torque-reducing 1:1 reduction rather than the 2.3:ltherestofthe transmission was designed for. Gearbox is a Commando four-speeder, with a roller-bearing mod to the end of the layshaft and an outrigger bearing outboard of the drive sprocket. Alan's calculator told him that despite the huge increase in torque the transmission would handle the smaller, more regular firing impulses. It was wrong.

On top of the engine sits a dummy tank hiding the carb, a twin choke Weber (ex-Granada), oil filter (ex-Fiesta), fuel pump (ex-Mini), radiator header tank (ex-almost everything), horn, rectifier, ballast resistor, plus masses of wiring and relays. A water pump (ex-Capri) and alternator (ex-Citroen 2CV), both much modified, live behind the engine on a one-off common shaft, with much ingenuity as to water-sealing. The oil-pump, just to complete the family tree, once belonged to a Rover 2000 but is now so modified you wouldn't know it. Fuel for real lives in the seat hump and under the seat.

You'll have gathered by now that a certain amount of labour and inventiveness has gone into the NorVer, as Alan preferes to call it, or the Rorton, as seems more apt. You ain't seen nothing yet. The radiator created a problem: in order to accommodate front wheel travel, the bike started with a pair of Cortina heater matrices either side. The lump overheated. Alan took to scouring scrap yards for higher-output units, plumbing by turns no less than eight into his Maxi to test their cooling capacity. Eventually he discovered that new Metros were running a new generation of thin, hyper-efficient rads which would allow full front suspension bounce. Just the job, except it was too wide. The rad was shortened, but the end cap, a plastic crimping, could be mated back on and anyway the exit pipe pointed the wrong way, even on Tuesdays. This is how a Cortina came to lose its rad bottom tank, which was then cut in half, shortened, reunited, supplicated over and finally stuck on the Metro rad. This is a service rarely offered by Halfords.

If you think that's intricate, cop the starter drive, or rather the Mk III version. (Mk II employed Honda 50 transmission gears driving through a sprag clutch from a 250 Honda, via one-inch toothed belt, but "it kept seizing"). This drives through a ring-gear and pinion; it is inherently quite a robust affair but without some pretty trick controls would hurl itself into teeth-stripping engagement as soon as the starter button was pressed. Owners of early electric-start Ducati twins will know the syndrome—that's why the first oil change sits there winking silver at you.

Alan figured the answer was a half-second delay built into full starter motor operation, during which time the gears could be programmed to engage slowly and gently. Unfortunately you'd get some funny looks if you went into a shop asking for half-a-second of delay; people seem to want lots more or none at all. Some fancy electronic design went into the problem, involving integrated circuits, Zenor diodes, resistors, capacitors and god-knows-what. All the bits were duly assembled with the exception of something called a 10 microfarad capacitor which defied all attempts to unearth. At this point most of us would throw a  wobbler or simply retire to the pub; Alan stripped the family telly and found what he was looking for.

In the face of this the chassis is surprisingly unremarkable. The Rover lump fits in the Featherbed cradle — which rather makes you wonder what the McCandless brothers were playing at designing it for a skinny Norton single — albeit bare of ancillaries and sump and having to 'wind' it in on the crank. Extra bottom frame rails are employed to handle the extra mass. The swing-arm is longer and wider than standard to take more rubber, whilst the wheels, brakes and forks are nicked off Alan's Darmah. The latter wear external fork springs from his Bonnie as well as the stock Marzocchi coils. If my arithmetic's correct that makes the machine responsible for immobilising two bikes as well as half the cars in the East Midlands. Wheelbase is a lazy 59 inches.

The result is easy to find: look for a crowd and the beast's invariably in the middle of it. Any more massive and it'd be a Black Hole. After two and a half years 'toil, Alan had only finished the enterprise at midnight on the day he was to leave for the Island, so he was starkly terrified of entrusting it to the hands of anyone else, let alone an addled hack like me. He didn't know it, but I was just as intimidated by the prospect.

When the brute's fired up, the first emotion is mild disappointment that the V8 grumble isn't louder, despite colliding with the environment through a pair of Contis. It's also astonishingly smooth. Engage first with a clunk, let out the clutch with a touch of throttle if you must but it really isn't necessary—this thing will break urban speed limits on tickover. The engine, geared to pull 154mph at a leisurely 5000rpm in top, is all you'd expect of it—more grunt than a Walls sausage. In a top-gear roll-on it'd nail anything to the scenery.

The riding position, like everything else about the bike, is utterly dominated by the engine, which sits wide and warm between your knees. If you can imagine making the best of a crotchful of hot coals you get the picture. Low speed manoeuvring is hindered, quite apart from the 600-plus pounds weight of the machine, by minimal lock and abject dread at the prospect of picking it up. Although it'd take a while to develop any confidence in the bike, in the brief time available it proved itself reassuringly stable, if as agile as a JCB.

Sadly we didn't get to explore the full potential of the NorVer. Alan had already expressed some reservations about the competence of the primary drive belt to handle all that clout, and exiting a turn during the photo session it let go. The revs soared — if that's the word where only five grand or so are concerned—the hydraulic tappets got overexcited and the session came to a valve-bashing end. Alan looked sick at a fate — temporary, I hope — which so magnificent an obsession didn't deserve; I just looked for a hole to hide in. ■

Source  bike 1985