COMMANDO PART 4: Moving Right Along

With Spring very much in the air, my project was picking up some pace. Warmer weather, longer days and my shorter, flexible working hours made for more shed time. I invested some of this on riding my Triumph to a classic vehicle show in Corbridge. This was 50 or so miles of very pleasant riding up through the Northumbrian countryside. The bike thrummed along with its usual even beat and I reflected that the Norton would do well to match the Triumph’s reliability.

Corbridge, on the River Tyne, was an excellent setting for the show, which featured a sunny day, live music and a Norton Owners Club stand. As I had hoped, there were several Commandos on show so I could chat with the owners and get some pictures showing assembly details such as control cable routing. A couple of the bikes were Mk3 Interstate models; one was a real gem having covered 250,000 miles with its original owner.

Meeting another RealExpert named Richard was a considerable bonus. Richard Johnson races classic Nortons and provides engine repair services through his business, ‘Top End Engineering’. I had already found a pair of +40 NOS pistons on eBay, probably the only real bargain of the entire project, but I needed to get the barrel rebored. Richard, in Morpeth, wasn’t exactly local but was near enough and he was happy to take on the work on my barrel and head. This, I thought, just needed new valve guides and the seats recut, but as we will see later, there was a serious problem lurking there. As luck would have it, he was racing at