Leanings
LEANINGS
Procrastination
Peter Egan
JUST AFTER SUNRISE, SOMETIME DURing my second cup of coffee, I heard an engine start up somewhere in the distance. I sat on the front porch, tilting my head, trying to place that sound. A tractor? No. Not enough cylinders, unless it was a John Deere. There was a loud flurry of revs, the bellow of at least two big pistons trying desperately to find a logical use for air and gasoline, and then silence.
A minute later the phone rang. “Would you come over here and take a look at my Norton? There’s something 1 don't understand.”
The call was from my friend Chris Beebe, and it wasn't exactly long distance, as he lives just across the river and I can see his farmhouse from my front lawn. If it wouldn't stampede the livestock and frighten the cats, we could forget the phone and shout. Chris is the other member of the Leedle Mill Road Black & Gold 1974 Norton Commando Roadster Owners Club (LMRB&G 1 974NCROC for short). In other words, we’ve got identical bikes.
He bought the bike last winter from a guy in Chicago who couldn’t seem to get it running correctly. It was spitting and backfiring, leaping up and down on its centerstand and generally flinging great furballs of unburned hydrocarbons from its mufflers. Chris trucked it home and discovered that one Amal had exactly the right slide and needle for a 350 Manx and the other was jetted for a LeRhone rotary, as used in a WWI Nieuport with twin Lewis guns. Being a fine procrastinator, he said he’d “fix the carbs later.” and left the Commando carbless in his basement all through the spring and early summer.
And there it sat. until a few weeks ago, when I reminded Chris that the U.S./Canadian Norton Owners Association annual rally was coming up, and that this year it was being heid not in British Columbia, as it was last year, but in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, just 120 miles from where we live. Not only was it close-by, I pointed out, but the roads between there and here were invented by God as partial compensation for giving us mosquitoes, deer flies and tooth decay.
So at long last he ordered some new jets, needles and slides and assembled his carbs. He bolted them on, fired up the bike and found that the engine immediately began drooling oil all over itself. That’s when he called and asked me to come over for a look.
“It’s wet-sumping,” I said, looking at the oil-soaked bike. “When a Norton sits for a long time, the oil seeps out of the oil tank, through the pump and into the crankcase. Then you start the engine and it pumps the oil out through all available exits.”
We drained out some oil, cleaned up the bike, restarted it, adjusted the mixture screws and the Norton settled down to a nice even idle. Chris rolled it off the centerstand, clicked it into first gear and took off for a test ride. I followed him on my own Commando.
The two big Twins boomed and snorted down the highway in wonderful unison, and from 20 feet back I could feel the individual pulses from the upswept mufflers, catching the pressure waves against my chest and listening to that full, round, glass-pack-like sound peculiar to Commandos. We swept down a long hill and Chris opened it up to about 80 mph. while I tucked in behind. As we accelerated through a fast S-bend I mumbled the old familiar refrain: “When everything is right, there is nothing like a Norton.”
Everything wasn't right, of course. Seems the alternator light was glowing a bright red at all times. Also the headpipes were loose at the exhaust ports, the mufflers were rattling because someone had stolen the muffler clamps and more oil was spewing out of the top of the oil tank. We hadn't drained quite enough. All easy stuff to fix, but it would take time. And parts.
“I don't think the Norton rally is in the cards this year,” I told Chris. “We have to leave tomorrow morning, and this bike needs more work.”
Chris nodded. “No sense in damaging it,” he said. “I'll ride my 400 F.”
We left at 6 a.m., me on my Commando and Chris on his Honda Four, riding off into a warm, sunlit morning with small pockets of ground fog still swirling around the river bottoms. We stopped for breakfast at the Red Rooster Cafe in the historic Welsh mining town of Mineral Point, and Chris said, “On the highway, my bike sounds like a turbine and yours sounds like a huge purring cat.”
The Norton rally was a wonder to see. When we arrived, there were literally hundreds of Nortons, mostly Commandos, at the campground. A few Atlases, some ES2s, Internationals, a Manx or two. There were a handful of immaculately restored and dead-stock, original Commandos, but most were simply clean runners, subtly modified to make them more comfortable or reliable for everyday riding or touring.
Chris had to leave early in the day in order to make a doctor’s appointment, but I hung around most of the afternoon in a high state of motorcycle bliss. I later rode home through a perfect summer afternoon, air and roads recently washed clean by a dark thunderstorm to the east.
The next day, I learned that Chris had ridden his 400F straight into the storm and found himself in the roostertail of a leaking cattle truck. When he got to the doctor's office his clothes were soaked with manure and he had to apologize to the nurse and doctor for the terrible smell.
I told him this was just the sort of thing Mother Nature does to a person who rides a turbine to a rally for huge purring cats.
He says it won’t happen again. We’ll see. Next year the rally is near Lake Tahoe.
