Original Factory Drawings

The short answer to your query, Robert, is yes.

This was a topic on the forum many years ago, centering on who owned these treasured drawings. Club threatened with legal action! 

As far as I remember; is that AJD (Anna J Dixon) saved the factory drawings from the skip when Joe Francis closed. Please correct me if I am wrong about any of this.

I also understand (Again, I could be wrong) that AJD donated the drawings to The Norton Owners Club. There then came a dispute with Andover Norton as to who owns the drawings?

Somebody please take up the outcome from here.

From investigation, I do know that AN will only remanufacture where commercially viable, whereas the NOC should be providing a service to its subscription paying members?.

To better answer Robert's question: Are sections of Factory Drawings available to view and what years / models do the saved drawings cover?

Tim The 16H is a side valve single from way back. It is NOT a lightweight.

AJD was NOT involved with the factory drawings purchased in 1991, by the then Committee of the NOC and Included my self and Richard Payne.

Some times one wonders where such tripe comes from?

If the OP contacts Tony Ripley (email address on the back page of Roadholder) he will be able to guide you through the process to gain access to the drawings the club have.

Having the drawings Tony sent me have been very useful for my lightweight project.

John

It's a good question, though. Lots of owners must have machine tools of some sort.  We must respect that knowledge is one of the most valuable commodities owned by our suppliers, but it's fragile and all to easy to lose.

The drawings that Joe Francis had came from Plumstead. I believe that they were the toolroom copies.

Production was transferred from Birmingham in 1962 and there had been no side-valve production since 1954...It's quite likely that no drawings for these obsolete models left Bracebridge Street.

My recollection from thirty years ago is of seeing mostly Lightweight drawings, but apparently there was some Slimline Dommie stuff too.

 The Factory Drawings …..Some more facts.

As Tim has stated, these were actually Factory Blue Prints and being mostly rolled-up  there were enough of them to fill a large room from almost floor to ceiling.

This is what I saw after coming across them stacked up in Martyn Maynard’s home, one weekend, back in 2009.  At that time, the then NOC Executive Committee was in possession of them and Martyn was the Events Officer.  The EC offered the whole set to anyone willing to take these prints off the hands of the NOC or they would be thrown away. So Martyn, having a big van, loaded-up and shifted them into his lounge.

I examined quite a number of them and discovered these to be almost unreadable due to fading, oil and coffee stains. Many were also torn.

I don’t recall finding any with information related to bikes other than Norton Twins.

Enter AJD into the fun and games…..no other NOC member, who visited Martyn’s abode that weekend, was willing to take away this huge bundle of potentially scrap paper apart from Anna….. and she had a van as well.

As far as I know, Anna removed the pile but then passed them on to another member of the NOC.  Who knows where they are now???

The Club is very lucky to have such drawings as Tony has retained. That somebody has taken the effort- and make the sacrifice to store- is to be applauded. However if they are not used, ie viewed for reference and restoration- then they may just as well be in a Pharoe's pyramid.

From Phillip's description, the sheer physicality of the documents at that time seems daunting: what is retained is less clear. Producing and publicising (within the Club)  a database of these, along with the procedure(s) for accessing or obtaining a copy should be a must: easier said than done I know, and I am sure that other members would happily assist in the cataloguing. I have no idea whereabouts they are held: I live in W London and would be willing to participate, and give back to the Club that has been so helpful to me with my life-long passion for Nortons of all sorts.

Finally, I have occasional contact with AJD through LinkedIn, and would be happy to broach the matter with her if felt appropriate.

To clarify a couple of things. (sorry to be pedantic) As someone who used to work in a drawing office the drawings in discussion are not blueprints, they are Diazo prints, sometimes known as dieline or whiteprint. Also as mentioned above, they are not really manufacturing drawings but workshop and toolroom drawings. 

There were 1767 drawings purchased in 1991 as mentioned by Al Oz earlier. These were all inspected, cataloged and those that were good enough to be deemed worthwhile scanning were scanned. This generated a total of 1685 drawings. (940MB).

Many of the drawing are of such poor quality that it is very difficult to read them. 

Drawing number ranges basically are:-

06-0000 to 06-1483

07-00002 to 07-00406

10101A to 26544

E1731 to T2256

Although there are large gaps and a few numbers well outside these ranges.

As John Crocker stated above, these drawings are available on request to members of the Norton Owners Club by submitting a request to technical @ nortontownersclub.org along with a reason for the request.  Please give me a PART NUMBER not just a description of the part.

But as correctly stated by Richard Payne, we do not have many really early drawings.

I have no knowledge of any other drawings hidden in sheds or lofts. If you have a collection, please let me know. I am not interested in any rumours about who may have some as we have been round that route may times.