Rotary Owners' Club

An ex-West Midlands bike, B950***, originally based at Coventry. Engine rebuild at 2k, engine/gearbox at 12k, engine rebuild at 24k, nothing else in the Shenstone service records. It may subsequently have had a service exchange engine fitted, stamped 'SX----' and not recorded in the factory records....

Hi,
If you can tell me the frame number, I can see from my factory and personal records if there's any history for it.
R.

Terry, For the rotor housing joint faces, use a thin smear of Wellseal. Stationary gear O-rings, use high temp RTV, Loctite 5368 or similar. All other joint faces, use 5368 or similar. Both eccentric shaft nuts; Loctite 270, 150 lb.ft. Clutch nut; 270, 100lb.ft. Orange RTV is almost as bad as the Re...

"A picture's worth a thousand words....." Fear not -that's normal. It's just discoloration by the pre-treatment and plating fluids. The joint face shows clean aluminium as it was ground to size after the plating process was completed. All other machined faces are completed before plating and will sh...

How about a photo?
Depending on the age of your IP2, the coating was probably done by BAJ Coatings (now defunct) at Weston super Mare. One of their chemical dips left a dark grey finish to the un-machined areas.
R.

Hi, Welcome to the forum. Are you sure the surface you're seeing isn't the original silver powder coating that's gone hard and yellow with age? Try scratching the side of an outside fin to see if that's so. Usually, industrial strippers such as Thyssen Krupp in Tamworth get down to bare metal, no pr...

Hi Terry, The pad is that size 'cos it's a close replica of those fitted to the JPS race bikes of the time. Other comments about it were along the lines of "Make it uncomfortable so the rider goes faster to get to the end of the race first". Seemed to work anyway! For one of the Rugeley twin-seat bi...

Tony,
Lookin' good!
Thirty years old design and still a modern touring bike.
R.

Terry, To the best of my knowledge, all of the non-Grey colours were not specific to any make/model of other vehicle. Over the production period, several different paint shops were used so it's quite possible that that one's Candy Red was not quite the same as another's. For a non-rotary project, I ...

Sorry, there are none! But, the vertical axis of the engine is the line between eccentric shaft and the bottom stud. TDC is when the flywheel key is at either 9 o'clock to that line for the l/h rotor or 3 o'clock for the other. Full advance timing, although not critical, is alleged to be at 18 BTDC,...

Terry, Whilst Jaguar Dorchester Grey was the standard colour, there were quite a few that were painted other colours and about six that were polished white self-colour mouldings like the police machines. The Candy Red ones tended to fade to a gold colour in strong sunlight, but the ones in metallic ...

You may be thinking of the prototype numbered PP001 which was used, amongst other things, the brochure photos.
It had a slab-sided tank and a very thin seat.
Now in a rotary enthusiast's private collection in Germany.
R

There are two air-cooled Norton rotaries in the Mecum catalogue. One, as above, is a converted IP2 described as a 'Classic' but bearing little resemblance to a genuine Norton Classic. Badly done too. But, there is also, according to the description as there's no photograph, genuine Classic LE001. Th...

With the 10 ohm caps, you can then use copper cored HT lead instead of the usual resistive cable.
R.

Following the man-who-knows (Julian Kemp), I bought a pair of 10 ohm straight caps from France via Ebay.
Reference is NGK SD10F, still available from France at £4.95 each.
R.

Tch, tch! Bronze plate first and the last plate against the alloy pressure plate should be steel.
R.

There are two popular types of oil seal, known as R21 and R23. R21 is the standard type of seal, single sealing lip with a garter spring on the inner oily side. R23 is an option that has the sealing lip as above and also has a second wiper lip on the other dry, or outer, side. The purpose of the sec...

John,
The spring always faces the more oily side, in this case towards the mainshaft bearing.
Your original seal would have had a spring, perhaps it became dislodged and lost when removing the seal from the gearbox plate.
R.

John,
If the key is loose, smack the radiused edge with a hammer (gently) to deform it so that it's tight in the groove.
Keyway anywhere between 9 and 12 o'clock makes it easier to watch on assembly.
Patience is a virtue!
R.

Now....if you could just recommend a fix for the rattling front forks....... cry Mick. Mick, As a Saab dealer once said to me about a noisy gearbox, "Yes Sir, they all do that" Doug Hele came up with a fix using shims to reduce movement of the damper piston and reduce the rattle. AN may still have ...

There's never been a gasket there, so your sealant of choice.
ThreeBond, aka Yamabond, or RTV silicone works for me.
There's an O-ring where the elbows join to the frame; a smear of RTV there doesn't come amiss.
R.

It's possible the original source might have been Yamaha as IP2 handlebar switches came from there.
Around that time, Norton tried to adapt the Yamaha XS750 into a police bike (without any commercial success) so perhaps the tap came from that model.
R.

Those starter motors were originally made for the Triumph T160. The only change for the Norton application was a new drive end plate and an oil seal. IP2/Classic/Commander motors run in the opposite direction, so had the brush wires reversed and the direction arrow on the casing re-stamped. F1 motor...

Mick Taylor wrote: ↑

Thu Oct 11, 2018 6:46 am

.....lets hope the starter motor is an exceptionally good quality reliable part....

Mick.

Of course they are! All made in 1975 by Joe 'Prince of Darkness' Lucas and built in India.

Mick,
Just dismantle all the primary drive and you'll find it in the back of the clutch drum. Some simple tools and about four hours work, end to end. Seemples!
Now if it were the starter motor that needs replacing, that's very character-building.
R.

Tony, Thanks for the photo; confirms what I suspected - the brass jet is redundant in the Norton rotary application, a left-over from the same carburettor with a throttle spindle and butterfly for car applications. In the flat area of the carb bore, there are two holes drilled at about 45 degrees: D...

I recall also squirting carb cleaner up that passage and not coming to any conclusion; tomorrow will tell.

I'm not clear whether Tony Duffield's comment suggests there was a hole but no jet, or no hole at all in one of his carbs.
Nighty night!
R.

Thank you again Richard, I shall have a crack at converting one of my gaskets today.....I think I'll leave the other side alone, despite the parts list pictures, both gaskets should have the cut-out as they both have a fuel/air flow at idling. Would the Mikuni stockists be these people? http://www....

Thirty years to notice there's another error in the IP2 and Classic parts list! Fortunately, the Commander and F1 Sport lists are correct in specifying 50.0374 as the correct gasket for all SU installations. Andover don't list it as an available part, but easy enough to make from 55.0453 with either...

Mick, That's the outlet gasket and casting. Look at the other end of the carb for the gasket that might be wrongly assembled.. By the way, the gasket you show should have a cut-out from the main bore to match the machining on the outlet casting. Your third photo shows that machining. Did AN supply t...