Boxes and boxes...

Here's the latest haul of Norton spare parts that have magically appeared on our doorstep.

First off, the German is overhauling his wonderful Commando's front end, with a fork rebuild kit and new sliders:

The "OVAL" stickers denote a peculiarity of these Roadholder fork sliders, obviously that they have an oval outer section as opposed to round. There are differences year by year and depending on whether your machine is equipped with a drum or disc brake, so pay attention when ordering spares or looking over a potential purchase of a whole bike.

Coupled with the rubber gaiters and the more substantial headlamp holders of early Fastbacks, Alessio is going to have a beefy-looking front end; actually the correct word for it would be the roman slang "ciotto"...

Then there's a smaller box from Andover Norton, containing some exhaust muffler mounting parts, and some Isolastic shims for the head steady (I'll attempt to improve this as soon as possible, it may be a partial solution to a far more substantial problem on my bike, strictly to do with a badly made Isolastic kit - just to be clear, purchased years ago NOT from Andover):

There is also a clutch locking tool (seen on the bottom-left), which would have come in handy several times in the past, and was therefore a long overdue addition to our shed:

As well as a pair of grips for Massimo's bike, the beginning of an effort on our part (myself and the German primarily) to bring it back to a more standard configuration. We'll also eventually get him to ditch that handlebar and rearsets for standard items, and I'd like to trim his front mudguard so it's a little shorter at the back. There's nothing wrong with an aluminum mudguard, but the way it is at the moment looks like the bike has a mullet. Never a good look.

Yet another top yoke bung for Witold's Fastback: there is obviously a problem caused by aerodynamic forces once you go past Mach 2 that dislodge the bung out of the yoke and pulverize it in the reheat/afterburner stage. We need to fix that; probably with some adhesive compound that can withstand transonic speeds...

The last box will be the subject of another post...