Roger Bird is a volunteer at the Brooklands Museum where one day he was allowed to to ride the Norton sidecar outfit LPD1; this made such an impression that he ended up owning the machine and researching it's history. In the process he collected a wealth of information on 1920s flat tank Nortons and the people involved with these motorcycles and as Roger likes to share his knowledge he wrote this book on the subject.
The book covers the careers of four of the most successful Norton tuners and riders at Brooklands and continues with a detailed description of their machines. Most interesting, some of the tricks used by Pat Driscoll to tune an M18 engine to produce twice the power output of a standard machine are discussed in detail. Briefly, find yourself a steel crankshaft, an 8,5" conrod, 9-1 compression ratio Martlet piston, IT cams, an M19 cylinder, an early ES2 cylinderhead and an Amac 25 TT carburetter; and make sure assembly is absolutely spot on. Be careful though, the photo above shows what happens when it all goes wrong.
The book is illustrated by numerous pictures of 1920s Norton racers, many of which I had not seen before. All in all a very recommendable book and the title could have been "Norton at Brooklands in the 1920s".
Information on how to obtain your copy of this book can be found via this link.
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