Hello All,
Has anyone out there in Nortonland ever tried building up an engine by mating a late Norton single with a (Dare I say it?) BSA Gold Star top end? The cylinder studs almost line up and special studs could be made up by a decent lathe man to pull the head down onto the barrel, provided that the Norton stud holes are filled with weld and new holes drilled and tapped to line up with the BSA stud spacing. My reason for asking this? I have a 1960 model 50 bottom half and a BSA top half, I wanted to build up my model 50 into a big bore 19s displacing about 650cc, however, Norton single engine bits are pretty thin on the ground here in California, and I have a bunch of BSA Goldie bits, I was knocking about in my mancave and just on a whim I put one of my BSA alloy cylinder barrels onto the model 50 cases and the spigot slipped right into the case mouth, naturally, the train of thought got started up and now I am posting my query.
I know that at least one Norton/Matchless hybrid has been built, as my copy of Roy Bacon's "Norton Singles OHV and SV 1931-1966" has a picture of such a machine on page 52, this engine is stuffed into a BSA Goldie scrambles frame. This image is what inspired me to build my own version using bits I have accumulated in some forty years of tinkering with rusty old bikes.
Regards,
Albert
