A Kiwi Commando One owner for 45 years
Syd Martin’s teenage courtship of a Norton Commando Fastback shows no signs of abating.
At 18 I had no idea of the significance of what I had been told and away I went on my very fast dream motorcycle!
“As it’s the 50th birthday of the birth of the Norton Commando, thought I would drop you a line on my ownership of a 1970 Fastback and the history of the bike before I purchased it in 1973 at age 18, until now at age 64. It was manufactured in December 1969 and shipped to NZ as an order by Coleman’s for a Dunedin customer, Alan Bland, who took possession in June 1970. Alan only had the bike a few months when Coleman’s came knocking to buy the bike back. The idea was to take it racing to promote the new Commandos as NZ agents, over the 70/71 summer racing season in NZ. During the short time Alan had the bike it avoided being destroyed in a fire that broke out in a hall when it was on display at a motoring show in Dunedin, being removed by show attendees as flames headed towards it on its display stand. As Alan was working as a mechanic in a Dunedin car/motorcycle agency, he kept tabs on the bike after Coleman’s purchased it back. It was raced around various tracks in NZ over the summer before being released back to a motorbike shop in Rotorua in 1971; this is where I first saw the bike when working as an apprentice carpenter. The bike was sold several times to short-term owners who traded it back to the same bike shop, and in 1973 I managed to scrape up enough to buy it. I had dreamed of owning a bike just like it every time I saw it around town so was super chuffed to actually purchase it. It came with a few scars mainly some rather crude weld marks on the back of the drive side crank case. I was told by the shop owner that the bike had been raced and during a practice for an event it had broken a cam follower resulting in the cracks in the case. Apparently when the top end was taken off they found the only damage besides the cracked case was a small chip in the base of the barrel. It was decided to flush the engine with kerosene, fit new cam followers, weld the cracked case while still in the bike, bolt it all together and go racing with no effects to the performance. At 18 I had no idea of the significance of what I had been told and away I went on my very fast dream motorcycle! Some years later when things were getting a bit tired and I wanted to go club racing myself, on stripping the engine completely for a rebuild to fill it up with Dunstall parts the crankshaft had some major marks on it and bits of cam follower were jammed inside the cases, held there by the external weld job. I had it all cleaned up by Robbie Deans in
Tauranga who was still racing Commandos at the time, about 1976/7. After some club/street racing I decided to buy another Commando to really go racing and just use the Fastback for general riding, as the risk of completely wrecking the fiberglass tank and tailpiece while racing was very high! In 1984 while 2-up with my new wife the Fastback had a mechanical problem which confined it to storage while we built houses, moved around the country and raised kids. There were other bikes bought and sold to satisfy the speed demons while the Norton stayed under cover – by now in a million bits in boxes as we moved around the country with the thought of rebuilding it someday. In fact when the kids were babies 27 years ago I had the tank/tailpiece and side covers redone but got no further. They spent the next 25 years at the foot of our bed in my wife’s glory box wrapped in the finest linen – until now! Then the urge hit to rebuild the Fastback as a father and son (Dan) project. Dan was riding motor bikes, had seen the boxes of bits and lots of old photos of me racing, and was keen. We started from scratch and did a complete nut and bolt rebuild with a few upgrades. As the bike had never been standard from day one of ownership it was never going to be an original concourse build, but one that suited the life and style of its past life and an eye to modern technology. I had added an 850 disk front end in about ‘74 which it still has but now with a more modern disk and calliper in place of the standard Norton parts, an Alton electric start has been fitted, electronic ignition and replica Smiths digital tachometer and speedo, custom wiring job to suit the new electrical components and old switches (although I still have to turn lights on with the headlight switch located in the headlight shell) along with 18” rear rim for better tyre choices. If you know where to look there are still signs of its racing days, drain plugs with lock wire holes in them certain parts which have been ground down from hard cornering etc. While the rebuild was underway I decided to try to fill in the gaps around what I had been told about the bike being raced as an 18 year old. It wasn’t until I tracked down the first registered owner Alan Bland (via the NZ Norton Owners Club) that the history came together. Along with Coleman’s purchasing it he was also able to tell me the rider of the bike had been Ken Fletcher who won a Castrol One Hour race on it at Pukekohe. Ken later went on to become one of Barry Sheene’s mechanics when he won his 500 world titles for Suzuki. Ken passed away some years back but I have found an old thread on the web which spoke of him riding a Commando to a 1 hour win and the Barry Sheene connection. Alan also retold the same story about the cam follower fail and the quick weld job to the cases. Dan and I did as much as we could in the rebuild, from hand-sanding the frame, re-lacing the rims and hubs with stainless spokes, and assembling engine/gearbox with new bits after they had been quality checked by an expert engineer in Barry Lynch located here in Christchurch. Still having all the special tools manuals and notes from my racing days sure helped in the rebuild, and I even found a hand written price list for Norton race parts sent to me by Mick Hemmings back in the late ‘70s. At the time I had a sister in England who would go see Mick, sort out what parts I wanted and send them to me. Since the Fastback has been back on the road, both Dan and I are enjoying the pleasure of riding her, sorting out the bugs as things settle in, me re living the past and now my son enjoying a near 50-year-old marvel of its time.
The bike did well to survive in one piece, still matching numbers, fiberglass tank and tail piece still in one piece and original colour red, although the pin striping and logos have been changed/ upgraded over the years, as has the oil tank and side cover. As a side note my long suffering wife Barbara threw a leg over the pillion seat of the Norton for the first time in 34 years since the blow up in ‘84 for an afternoon ride, smiles all round for both of us! Although I think she may be just happy to get half the Norton out of the bedroom after all these years!