Classic Norton Bikes: 1934 Works bike …

–SG– I not too long ago got here throughout Alain Daigne’s 2012 French publication ‘Manxman’  – a group of seventy pictures of racing Nortons from 1900 to 1970. Two of the pictures are of the 1934 works bike – photographed like many others over time in opposition to a sheet held up in entrance of the workplace door.  Grateful to Richard for what he has to say about it: 

“The bike within the photos is the 1934 works racer as utilized by Jimmy Guthrie to do the 1934 TT double. This was the 12 months that the works engines have been fully up-dated utilizing full magnesium castings and bronze cranium/ aluminium cylinder heads and aluminium barrels. The crankcases used the entrance high bolt to connect the engine to the body for the primary time, and the entrance down tube was fitted with 2 separate mounting lugs. The decrease lug was fitted with the standard triangular engine plates and the upper lug had separate straight plates to the highest crankcase bolt. The next 12 months, 1935, the crankcases have been re-designed and used the only set of entrance engine plates that have been subsequently used on all racing spec. Inters and post-war backyard gate Manx. This meant the 1935 body misplaced the decrease lug, though the 1934 double lug frames have been nonetheless used with the later engines in some occasions. The opposite firsts for 1934 have been aluminium petrol and oil tanks, and the Norton designed gearbox which have been put into all of the vary for 1935. The exhaust system is a straight-through pipe however a megaphone was used for the 1934 TT and most different main occasions.”