Easy come, easy go

I got ahead of the game the other day. I received a genuine, cast-iron windfall and thought I’d buy the Norton a treat. TAB II Classics is in the back of beyond in Wales, where they create the most fabulous aluminium fuel tanks and seat units for classic motorcycles. On the English Wheeling machine is Aline Phelps, whose father, Terry, used to hand-roll racing and café racer tanks under the TAB name. When he died she took up a sheet of half-hard ally and found she’d got that knack of seeing things in 3D. ‘It’s a gift,’ she admits. ‘I don’t have it,’ pipes up husband Richard, but his work on the linisher creates a mirror-like polish. Add in the gas-welding speed and accuracy of Mark Purslow and they’re an impressive team, even if they are a full day’s drive from where I live.

I didn’t intend to order a TAB II Lyta tank for the Norton, since my machine was converted into a café racer back in the day with a Bill Roberts of Wickford GRP tank and monoposto seat and tail unit, plus the essential megaphone exhausts and clip-on bars. It’s worn but functional and beguilingly authentic, yet the sheer beauty of TAB II’s tanks caught me faster than a wasp in a beer glass. Then the rubber hammer of fate lined up behind me.

My Norton 650SS Dominator has a habit of leaving a calling card wherever it is parked. I’d resolved to sort this out and took the opportunity of fitting a side stand, a modern oil filter and a belt-drive conversion at the same time. The bag of parts was neither small nor cheap, and the job was a lot more difficult than I’d expected. It’s quite hard to get across just how badly these old British bikes were designed and built.

It all went back (eventually) with new engine and gearbox oil seals and the belt drive. With no MoT test, I asked a local specialist to check the machine over for safety and set up the mixtures for the downdraught Amals. There was a strange smell as I climbed off and I asked them to check the belt drive, which is notorious for fitting where it touches. But it wasn’t the belt drive that was smelling…

In fitting the rotor for the alternator, the Woodruff key had pushed out of the back. As soon as the engine was started, it began cutting its way into the stator and the insulation was shredding and burning. So that was it. The cost of replacing the complete alternator was slightly above what I’d saved for the new tank. Windfall gone.

The proprietor once joked that he earns his profits sorting out the mess that incompetent owners make. As I handed over the money, I think we both remembered that comment. Sometimes owning old machinery is like that.

Below New tank is the work of artisans in the depths of rural Wales, and all paid for by a windfall – until fate decreed that more money had to be spent on the alternator.