Norton Atlas - shaken, not stirred

krafty said:
The wonderful folks at Checkered Past Cycles in Galesburg, MI have the bike now and are working through a few issues.

You are in excellent company then.
 
Well, I just received a box o' goodies - 2 fenders and a pair of Brituro torpedo silencers just arrived from the previous owner. The silencers are repops but are pretty nice quality and definitely better than the generic mufflers on the bike right now.

The fenders are both used, the one in the back appears to maybe be an aftermarket repop from the era - it doesn't seem 100% right but it's in decent shape. The front one is original and is a bit rough but solid. The plan will be to put the one in the back on the bike for the time being and when time and $ cooperate have the other one restored and installed.

There's a chance we'll get to fire up the bike on Tuesday.
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Since you don't want to see my ugly mug, here's a picture of a guy named Ted taking my Atlas on a test ride. In this picture the rear shocks are still too long (the previous owner had bought a set and fitted them not realizing they were so long that they kept it up off the center stand).

Checkered Past ended up rebuilding the upper end of the engine along with re-sealing the whole thing to take care of a bunch of leaks. They finished locating some missing airbox bits for me and also fitted the proper torpedo silencers. They also mounted the correct-sized Dunlops for the bike, getting rid of the ugly, low-profile sportbike tires that were on it before.

Still to come is an un-hacked rear fender, which I have and will be fitting in the next few weeks. It needs a bit of clean-up and I don't have the budget to get it re-chromed at this point, so it will be a tad bit ugly but functional. Like me.
 

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Nothin' wrong with that machine! There is always something else you want to do on these old bikes...I guess they are never really finished. :) Ride it and have fun!
 
Finally had a chance to install the proper uncut rear fender on the Atlas over the weekend. Still working on the brake light switch flakeyness, but it is getting better.

Sent from my XT1049 using DO THE TON mobile app
 

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Ahhhh, that's better! So how's it treating you...getting much time to ride it?
 
Not much time so far. The flaky brake light switch is a problem, so I've been keeping near the shop. It's still in need of a few mixture tweaks, I need to solve the speedo issue (reading super-high for some reason) and I need to re-mount the gas tank with some different spacers to keep it from occasionally vibrating on the frame. Which is bad. It doesn't help that I've been having ignition problems with my MG, carb issues with my Beetle, and it's summer and we have a 9 year old. :) Time is at a premium right now.
 
Beautiful work! I'm hoping to have my Atlas-engined hybrid running before summer's out...
 
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