The Norda

Brake stays are on and ready for cleanup. Forks also got lowered 2" internally. They will be painted or powdercoated black.
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On a historical note people building tritons in the 60s was popular enough that a magazine had motor plate patterns in an issue.
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Nortons were notoriously unreliable. Triumphs handled poorly compared to Nortons. Someone had a great idea! I built a TriBSA a few years back for a guy in Washington. It was a unit Triumph 650 in a BSA A7/A10 frame. Another fairly popular platform in the UK but most were preunit Triumph engine in the A7/A10 frame. I was still able to order conversion engine plates from Classic Bike Parts in the UK which made the fitting them together a lot easier. The front brake mounts look great!
 
Rider52 said:
Nortons were notoriously unreliable. Triumphs handled poorly compared to Nortons. Someone had a great idea! I built a TriBSA a few years back for a guy in Washington. It was a unit Triumph 650 in a BSA A7/A10 frame. Another fairly popular platform in the UK but most were preunit Triumph engine in the A7/A10 frame. I was still able to order conversion engine plates from Classic Bike Parts in the UK which made the fitting them together a lot easier. The front brake mounts look great!
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Yeah, the triumph swingarm pivot was not the most rigid. A cast piece only mounted to a single round tube.
 
No, I don't. But patterns for engine plates are different. Especially since the article goes into details on how a person could cut the plates without a bandsaw.
 
When I started club racing here in the US in 1977, the classes were production, cafe and F#. That made my bike, CB400F with a pipe, a cafe racer that fit in 410 Cafe class. There were no Superbike classes at the club level, yet. So we can bandy semantics about all we like, but that doesn't make you any less of an internet troll, trying to trash up this excellent period build with your need for acknowledgement as a superior arbiter of historical trivia.
Have a nice day.
 
I think your build is pretty bad-ass also, Rat Ranger. You've come up with a lot of creative solutions along the way and I think it will be a great machine when finished.
 
Back to the build at hand, I am pretty sure that putting the SOHC 750 in the featherbed frame will vastly improve the handling. I have raced both the CB750 and a Triton and the Honda was a top heavy overweight pig with a flexy frame and swingarm. The featherbed was much better than that. I don't think the added weight of the Honda will improve the handling of the Norton, but I expect the handling will be better than the stock Honda. While I never raced a 4 ls front brake, I have raced plenty of TLS drums and the Honda single piston brakes in both single and dual configurations. Although the Suzuki 4LS brake is pretty porky, I very much doubt that it is any worse than the Honda discs. All of my opinions are based on racing applications and bet that as a street bike this build will be awesome and never exceed the capabilities of the bike.
 
Thanks guys. I'm not worried about the guy's complaints. Having ridden everything from stock vintage bikes to ducatis, supermotos, and sportbikes I'll stick with what I said earlier, it's not hard to make a vintage bike handle better than it did. Modern shocks and forks are a massive improvement, as well as modern tires. Gotta be careful changing geometry, which I'm working to not change on this frame.

As for the brakes I've read about featherbeds having issues with the downtubes bending from modern brakes. But that is a known weak area on them.
 
Not much to update at the moment. I've been busy getting quotes on a few big things I need for the house. HVAC is having issues and is over 30yrs old, breaker box needs an upgrade, and sewer line is getting roots in it. I was hoping to have longer between paying off the truck and replacing the HVAC.
 
No updates at the moment. HVAC for the house took priority for cash and time. Had to break out the old condenser slab, cut roots out and redo it. Then all new system, installed with an air purifier. Wife has bad allergies and the purifier was cheap. Overall not terrible, but $6k I wasn't planning on needing to spend yet. Old system was over 30yrs old and not worth fixing again.
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