880 Norton Sprint Special - "real - time" build, lots of photos

The gap I have now is just over 1/8"; here I had the spindle screwed all the way in (and it still comes up about 1/32" shy), then I backed it out about 3/4 turn to flush with the hub outer face that I cut back, flush with the clamping ring



It's a fiddle to get that torque arm bolt in, it has to be done before installing the shocks, then lift the swingarm to where the bolt just clears the top of the oil filter and slip it in place from the backside. What a chore...



Nice and neat

Got my rear wheel back (new tube & rim strip), installed it and set to work on the rear brake cable situation. This Honda wheel has the brake on the right side, whereas the Norton wheel had it on the left; so, I had to come up with a cable long enough to cross over following a clean path, then had to figure out how to anchor it at the brake arm end.

I will most likely have a custom cable made up; but in the meantime I set to scrounging the shelves and bins, starting with a stack of nearly 60 different cables. From the "possibles", I had one that would have eliminated most of the adaptation, but was about a foot too short. A Norton clutch cable would have worked nicely, bit they're a couple of feet too long. Finally found a good condition cable about the right length, but it needed significant adaptation.

From the tail end to the front, it's a standard Norton trunnion and clevis with the Honda lever's hole bored about 1/16" larger to fit the trunnion. Then comes the cable, set in a second trunnion, the cable's threaded rod end held captive by a locknut. A nice coincidence is that the cable still had a good condition rubber gaiter.



Next came the abutment which I fabricated by welding a particular spacer to the head of a bolt, sliced the spacer to allow the cable to be slipped on and off, then bolted the abutment in place on the torque arm with a sleeve on the backside that forces it to stay put in the slot of the torque arm.



The cable loops up behind the z-plate, staying aft of the rear frame downtubes, looping over the wheel well, and dropping right into the root end abutment at the rearset brake pedal. The clevis is field fabricated, and the root end abutment needs some sort of capture for the cable sheath so that it won't come adrift in a weird scenario and leave me without a rear brake.



The brake pedal is very effective and has a great range of adjustment which I will play with once I ride it. It will all be much nicer with a custom cable and a proper clevis at the pedal.

I also painted the front brake caliper halves; I'll be rebuilding them tomorrow...

I went ahead and installed the caliper seals, bolted it back together and installed it. I happened to have a brand new modern brake hose (I forget WHY I had it); it fit perfectly, but I need thicker copper washers for it to seal at the Brembo master cylinder. Anyway, at least it's installed-



Danged if the postman didn't deliver my throttle cables, even though the USPS tracker said "Out For Delivery" this morning and he's been here and gone without them...

I've got nothing else to do but install the cables and I fire it up. I don't want to risk setting the idle too high with the slide stop screws.

Painter #2 is preparing his quote for the tank cover & sidecovers. I'll pick the better of the two tomorrow and hopefully have the bike complete next week.

Looking real nice. Love the progress of your build.

Looking great Paul! Finally got my book order in

Thanx guys.

Spent all day helping a friend TRYING to get his Point Of Sale system working after a recent upgrade to a new computer and new version of the software. Clocked over 10 hours in the last 3 days and it's no closer to being stable. There are three fingers pointing at each other - hardware (new Dell Optiplex), POS software (SellWise) and operating system (MS Windows 7 Pro). So far it's nobody's problem but my client's...

Anyway, just got home and my throttle cables were in the mailbox, so maybe I'll be making nice vroom vroom sounds in a little while.

Sorry, can't let my post count sit on "666".

Top throttle inner cable came up a bit short, so I sorted all the ones I have and came up with the best one, then took off the locknuts for the carb top adjusters, and used the best 2-into-1 cable mating plug to get the absolute longest overall inner cable length. Even all of that came up JUST shy, so I opened up the throttle and figured out I could cut back the throttle stop end of the twistgrip where the cable slots in; that allowed the twistgrip to turn just a bit closer to the stop, which gave me about a half turn of freedom on the main twistgrip adjuster. Whew! Over an hour to sort all that out.

Next, double-checked all the drain plugs and connections, then dumped in a couple of quarts of Castrol GTX 4T 20/50 in the tank...



Short version of a long story, I couldn't use my starter rollers after having loaned them out. So, I limbered up my kickin' leg. About 20 kicks later...

There be a gremlin in here somewhere...



No spark, and I'm POOPED. At least I nipped up some fuel dribbles and the oil filter (nice puddle, thank you)



I'll work on the electrical gremlin tomorrow, I have another Sparx box just in case.

One thing leads to another. Loaned out my starter rollers, and they didn't want to crank; finally sorted out that my battery was too old. Got that sorted, then realized I couldn't deploy the rollers without a front brake! (Also cut off excess chain & installed it, then tightened up axle & tranny). Managed to scrounge two thick copper washers and FINALLY get the front brakes to the point of bleeding. Well, what do you suppose? The calipers are weeping and won't seal, even with the new o-rings. I can't catch a break.

This engine has so much compression, I can't kick it over more than one compression stroke. I need to fire it up with the rollers to run it in some, then it should be okay.

Here is why the backside caliper was leaking-



I guess I pinched it putting the puck in. Now I have an excellent front brake.

"Third time's a charm"... Good thing I had a collection of Sparx stators, I found a good one.



Now I have reliable spark.

Gave the rollers one more try and got some signs of life, but the rear axle needs the chain tensioner blocks to keep the rear wheel from skewing under the torque of the roller starter.

Chopped new blocks to suit the new axle and it turns out the two swingarms I have are slightly different size internally



Drilled the axle holes using the mill, it's way better than a drill press



Sized the two blocks down to nearly the final size, I'll dress them to final size on my belt grinder when I install them

Spark! Keep er goin paul, lookin good

Got back into Enrique's shop and fabricated the chain adjuster caps this morning.

Milling the step-down after cutting off 2 slices from the bar stock



They're going to need 1/2" longer bolts to allow the axle to slide fully forward



At present they accommodate the chain about mid-range of available adjustment, so that's fine for now

Painter is moving slowly.

He glassed in the ragged gas cap cut-out on the tank cover. So far, that's it.



Turns out the ignition rotor was 90 degrees out. I think the fixing bolt bottomed out before the rotor was snug on the taper, and it wandered off timing.

So close to being able to start and test the bike, but I've got "Mr.Mom" duty, and need to go pick up my daughter at guitar lessons...

DANG!!!

It's the little foxes that spoil the vinyards, biting me in the butt!

Got the ignition rotor sorted, the bike fired up, sputtered and wouldn't fire again. Then it occurred to me - I hadn't tested the alternator rotor! I took 2 thick washers and sandwiched the rotor in my vice, then took a large pair of channel-lock pliers and was easily able to rotate the bloody thing almost 90 degrees.

Didn't take long to sort through another 2 rotors to find one that definitely wouldn't budge. Spiffed it up and mounted it, re-checked the timing and it was very close. Pure coincidence. I adjusted the ignition stator to spot-on static time and nipped everything up.

The last two nights, it's taken me a long time to fall asleep while thinking about all the details that could be contributing to the bike not wanting to fire right up. Then it occurred to me that I hadn't checked the needle specs on the carbs. Sure enough, they were 2-indent needles for Triumph, not 4-indent needles for Norton 850. Also, the spray tubes are standard Triumph profile, not the cut-away Norton profile.

After digging for an hour through all my carb stuff, I found a nice boxed matching pair of 932s with modern slides of the proper 3-1/2 cutaway, although the jets and needles were incorrect. A bit more time pulling apart my 3 other spare pairs of carbs and I found a SINGLE 4-indent needle. AAARRRRGH! Picked up the phone and got a new pair of proper needles on the way.

Meanwhile, I'm seeing that the difference in a 2-indent and 4-indent is such that I can go ahead and install the 4-indent in one carb, on it's middle clip groove, and the 2-indent needle on it's top groove in the other carb, and they'll be very close (2-indent needle will be as lean as it can go).

Yellow dots indicate the identification indents , green lines indicate the clip setting grooves, red lines indicate the two grooves that will allow "close match" settings (I intend to use the upper close match, as the lower close match is relatively farther apart)

I dropped off the fuel cell with the painter, so he could finish prepping the cover



Gas cap opening needs some re-shaping, good thing I brought it in!



Obviously, the mold was not a perfect match, but you won't have this view when it's on the bike, it will all be behind the forks

Sorted some mounting tabs for the front fender and installed it; the Yamaha fender had too many long loop brackets, so I went with this cleaner one.



It's getting much closer now. Should have had it running by now, but I need to keep my impatience under control...

Just want to say I have started reading Pauls book and would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone that has a passion for motorcycles.

Paul, thank you. It's not just the content, I really like your writing style.

Any updates?

Book? What book...?

And Paul, do you happen to know if the green on the 880 is akin at all to the "chromatic green" that some Matchless/Norton hybrids were painted in...? I've been trying to find an example of it...have a G15CS in non-original red paint and may, just may, someday try to get it painted back to one of the factory colors. All I can find info on is the red, however.

(On the other hand, I am most likely to leave it looking as-is and just flog the hell out of it...)