Marmalade Norton
by Jim Hunter
by Jim Hunter
| Ottawa Section CVMG |
The Marmalade Norton Jim Hunter
In the spring of 1976, I had an interesting phone call from my sister’s next door neighbour in Oshawa. I had
previously met Bill and his wife at different functions that my sister had hosted over the years, and I came to know
and like him. He had told me about the Norton he had in his garage. It was a ’73 Commando 850 that his son
had bought new, taken on a trip to the maritimes, and later, parked it in his Dad’s garage, joined a commune, and
left his Dad to pay for it as he had cosigned for him.
In the telephone conversation, his Dad, a WW II Canadian Army dispatch rider, Bill asked me to take the bike
home to my shop in Trenton and get it running, as he felt that if he had to pay for it, he was going to get some
use out of it. I was happy to oblige, and the Norton spent the next few weeks with me. There wasn’t much the
matter with it, and it had around 3000 miles on it if my memory serves me. The colour, I noticed, was sort of a
marmalade orange; which I now know to be “Fireflake Bronze”. “Rather garish”, I thought, but since wasn’t my
machine, I didn’t give it further thought. The main faults I found were that the front brake hydraulic reservoir was
empty, and someone had been playing with the wiring under the gas tank. I soon had both problems sorted
out.
I never had a lot of use for the Commando, and thought that Norton should have been horsewhipped for
foisting this low quality excuse for a motorcycle upon the shoulders of unsuspecting Canadian motorcyclists. I
was a long time BMW rider, and the last British bike I had owned was a new ’61 BSA Golden Flash that I sold in
1964 when I went to Germany with the RCAF. At the time of my encounter with the Norton, I had a new black
BMW R90/6 and was delighted with its performance and styling, and reliability. My attitude to the Norton was one
of condescension. Until I rode it.
The test ride turned out well, and the bike ran like a top! I was amazed at the performance of the Norton. It
would have blown the doors off the BMW if it had any. The cast iron brake disk, although it looked like hell,
stopped the Norton better than the shiny stainless steel disc brake of the BMW. I returned the Norton to its
owner the following weekend, and scoffed a barbeque from my sister at the same time. The thought of Bill
roaring around the countryside on the Norton and enjoying himself without having someone shooting at him
gladdened my heart!
A year passed, and then I received another call from Bill. Did I want to buy the Norton? The price was very
reasonable, but I did not buy it as I had other financial obligations having, just bought a new house here in
Osgoode, just south of Ottawa. He rode it for another year and I didn’t hear much about it. Finally, in the spring
of 1979, he called again. He had tried to start the Norton for a ride on a cool day in October, and flooded it, due
to a low battery. Disgusted with it, he walked away from it for the winter. In the spring, when he tried to start it,
the engine was seized. His asking price was more than reasonable. This time I bought it. I thought that I would
get it going and sell it on, if nothing else.
My son Doug was 15 years old and had been riding off road since he was 7. It was only natural that next year
he would want to ride on the road, going the many places that young men go when they have obtained the
freedom of the road. That was me, once; a long time ago. We had looked for assorted Japanese bikes for him
unsuccessfully until one day, while we were working on the Norton, he asked if he could have it instead of a Jap
machine. I thought for a minute and answered “yes”.
The repairs on the Norton were quite straightforward. We tapped the pistons out the bottom of the cylinder
with a hammer handle, with Doug doing the tapping and me holding the cylinder barrel. They came out fairly
hard, but it was not hard to see why. The rings were seized solid with a white cement - like powder, surely the
residue of the fuel that was left in the cylinders when Bill couldn’t get it started. There was one broken piston
ring. We removed the pistons and cleaned them up, gave the hone a pass down the cylinders and installed new
standard bore Wellworthy rings from Nicholson Bros. In Saskatoon, who were still in business at the time. The
test ride was a happy moment for both of us as we went around the “test track”, a triangular selection of roads
just north of Osgoode. Both of had one eye over our shoulders, as we had the BMW licence plate on it. With
the light traffic and the open countryside, there was little risk of running into “the man”. In March of 1980, Doug
turned 16 and was able to get his driver’s licence. He finally got the Norton on the road legally, riding it to school
and to his various places of work at nights and on weekends. As parents, his mother and I naturally worried
about him on the roads with the great unwashed. I remember one evening we were sitting on the deck and heard
the sound of motorcycles in the village. We heard the yowl of Japanese multis, and finally the satisfying baritone
growl of the Norton as he and his pals accelerated out of the village into the open countryside. All was right with
the world……..until:
One night I had just gone to bed. Doug was working evenings for UPS and was not home yet, which caused
his mother to fret and naturally she passed her feelings on to me. Sleep was elusive. Soon, we heard the front
door open, footsteps up the hall, and then the top light in the bedroom was switched on. If I was half asleep, I
was wide awake now! A scratched, bloodied and torn Doug was standing there, and told me that he had put the
Norton into the ditch on the big curve just east of Osgoode, and would I put the trailer on the car and help him
bring it home. I don’t remember his mother’s exact reaction, but I thought it would be a good idea to get out of
the house before I was “duly counseled”. We loaded the disheveled Norton on to the trailer and brought it home
to the shop. It had suffered damage, bent front fender, handlebars and a big ding in that lovely marmalade tank.
We got Doug cleaned up an inspected as well. His leather jacket took a bit of a beating, but he was OK except
for a few scratches.
It took us a month or so to repair the Norton. Norton parts were still readily available locally in Ottawa, at Harry’s
Cycle and Cycle Salvage, so there wasn’t much of a problem there, with the exception of the marmalade tank.
Luckily, a friend of mine in British Columbia had one and sent it down. The fork tubes got a little scarred when
they went through the barbed wire fence, but we blended the scratches and patched the remaining pockmarks
with epoxy. This repair is still in place 23 years later.
The bike was returned to service successfully, and was generally quite reliable, with Doug using it for both
transportation and sport. One day, he came in from school, “Dad, I’ve got an oil leak on the Norton”. “It’s
British”, I said, as only a BMW owner could,.“expect it”. Finally my curiosity got the better of me and we went out
to the shop to have a look. Sure enough, the sides of the engine were covered with oil, as were his jeans from
the knees down. This was the start of my most Norton hating period. I first suspected a head gasket leak, and
we pulled the head, lapped it, and put in a new head gasket. We repeated this exercise five more times over the
summer, trying all the “hot setup” gaskets recommended by more knowledgeable Norton owners, to no avail.
The leak persisted. I thought – “this is pretty sad. 25 years of wrenching motorcycles and I can’t even cure a
cylinder head gasket oil leak.”
I think I was muttering under my breath at work next day. I was an Air Force Master Warrant Officer working in
the Directorate of Aircraft Engineering and Maintenance at Rockcliffe. My partner, Bill, a Newfoundlander, said to
me “Jim, b’y, something troubling you”? I told him the tale of woe with the Norton. “Tell you what”, he said. “I’ll
take the head down to Trenton next week when I go, and let the NDT (No Destructive Testing) guys have a go at
‘er”. I pictured lots of high tech NDT wizardry, since Trenton was at that time ultrasonically inspecting cylinders
from the Wright R1820 9 cylinder piston engine in the Grumman Tracker, and had all kinds of neat probes made
up to check for cracks down between the cylinder fins. I was kind of surprised when they found the problem with
the rather old tech LPI. (Liquid Penetrant Inspection) He was away most of the week, and came back with a big
smile on his face. Taking a drag on his cigar (you could still smoke at NDHQ in those days) he said “no wonder
ya got a problem b’y, the whole pushrod tunnel is honeycombed with cracks. Looking down the tunnel, we could
see the extent of the cracking from the fluorescent remains of the LPI) developer. The way we figured it out, is
every time Doug “came onto er” as Bill so quaintly put it, the cracks would open up enough to let the oil out.
Finding a good used cylinder head was not a problem. Cycle Salvage in Ottawa had one for $50.00, and I
bought it, conditional on an LPI crack test. “Once bitten, twice shy”, I thought to myself. The NDT section out at
CFB Uplands did the LPI inspection for me, and found only one small porosity in the RH exhaust rocker box. We
cleaned up the defect, and then reached in with a drop of epoxy on the end of a finger and worked it into the
indication as best we
could. I guess it must have worked, as there was no oil leakage. I haven’t looked in there for 20 years, so
assume it is still working, as no oil comes out.
However, it did in other places, especially when that cheap plastic rocker oil feed line broke off and filled Doug’
s right shoe up with oil. It also left a trail of oil down to the corner which took all summer to dissipate. Sort of a
Norton signature on our street, you might say. Oil leaks didn’t seem to be a problem after that, “touch wood”;
and while there was a bit of seepage from the tach cable drive, it wasn’t worth worrying about, and we cured later
by changing the seal.
Another time, Doug was going to school, when the normally robust sounding twin went down to a single. I had
taught Doug to “check the simplest things first”, so he pulled the LH spark plug and found the gap pushed
together. As time was an issue, he opened the gap and continued on his way on two cylinders again. A month
later the same thing happened again, one the same cylinder. Neither of us could figure the cause of the
malfunction. This time though, while the bike still idled OK, it was not the solid steady idle we used to have. At a
rally in the Golden Lake area a couple of weeks later, I met a long time Norton rider and was telling him of this
strange occurrence. He told me it had happened to him in the same manner when a chunk broke out of the carb
slide and went through the engine. When I got home, we pulled the slide, and sure enough, there were TWO
chunks broken out. You could tell by the dull crack line of the first breakout and the relatively shiny crack line of
the newer one that the breakouts had happened on two occasions that were a short time apart. I read
somewhere recently that Norton would pay Amal only ₤1.00 for a Concentric carburetor. Somehow, I believe they
got only what they paid for.
Doug continued using the Norton for the next year or so. Finally, one day he came home with a new ’83
CB1100F Honda, which sidelined the Norton, but he didn’t want to sell it. He used it occasionally, keeping it
washed and polished until it was finally relegated to storage in the shed. It was used a little bit, kept clean, the
cylinders inhibited, and the alloy cases sprayed down with WD40. It stayed there for ten years. In the meantime,
I had taken my retirement. Doug asked me if I would get the Norton on the road again for him. We did a full
service on it, replaced the primary chain, speedometer cable and put a seal kit in the front brake master
cylinder. With new oil, fresh gas and a battery charge, the baritone growl of the Commando resounded once
again through the streets of Osgoode. It has been in occasional use since the resurrection, on CVMG and
Norton Club of Ottawa events. But he’s a busy guy in his career and an active dirt rider with the Bytown
Motorcycle Association, so the time for the Norton is not readily available. There are a couple of small things we
have to do to it this spring, like a set of viton tipped float needles this spring, and a speedometer repair. I guess
between the two of us, we will be using it not as a daily rider as he
did 20 years ago, but like the lovely old classic motorcycle it has become with the passing of time. He still doesn’t
want to sell it, so I think there is a bit of a
heartstrings factor there. Strangely enough, after all the nasty things I’ve said thought and muttered about under
my breath about the Norton, it’s the same for me. And I’m so glad that we didn’t change the colour. Twenty
years later, instead of it looking garish to me, it looks quite different from most other Commandos in its original
“Fireflake Bronze” paint scheme. “Marmalade”, if you will, Stanley.
As a footnote to the above, that bike of Doug's drove me nuts, and I began to hate the sight of it, with just one
problem after another. I think that sense of frustration that Doug and I experienced with this machine is what
initially jaded my views of them. However, once we got it sorted out, it is no less reliable than any other English
bike, but 30 years ago it was an entirely different picture when Norton owners were trying to run relatively new
machines. Guys who run Nortons today have had the experience of almost 30 years of development and
"product improvement", not by the factory, but by the owners themselves, and it speaks very well for them.
As far as I can see, the last of the Commandos weren't much better than the first ones when they came off the
line, but it was the owners, encouraged by worldwide Norton Owners Clubs that finally made the "silk purse out of
the sow's ear". They have made Commandos today a valuable, well sorted classic motorcycle that is a worthy
addition to any collection. There are some really well done Nortons out there now, and it is a pleasure to see and
hear them. The classic motorcycle scene worldwide would not be nearly as interesting without the Commando.
The 70s were a tough time for British industry. Britain was almost bankrupt, run into the ground by the unions.
With BSA, Triumph and Norton, it was the same story. The only thing that saved the country was when Margaret
Thatcher came into power and sorted it out. The Commando was a sign of those times. It is to the individual
Norton owners credit, backed by the initiatives of the British classic motorcycle cottage industries that the
Commando is the success as a classic motorcycle that it is today. I look forward to seeing and occasionally using
"The Marmalade Norton"and hearing it's baritone growl resonate down the streets of Osgoode this coming year,
but first, "there are a couple of things we have to do to it".
CVMG Ottawa “Dominion Day Ride” 01 July 03
Doug on the Norton, Jim on the BMW
Doug age 16 with the Commando, 1980
The Marmalade Norton Jim Hunter
In the spring of 1976, I had an interesting phone call from my sister’s next door neighbour in Oshawa. I had
previously met Bill and his wife at different functions that my sister had hosted over the years, and I came to know
and like him. He had told me about the Norton he had in his garage. It was a ’73 Commando 850 that his son
had bought new, taken on a trip to the maritimes, and later, parked it in his Dad’s garage, joined a commune, and
left his Dad to pay for it as he had cosigned for him.
In the telephone conversation, his Dad, a WW II Canadian Army dispatch rider, Bill asked me to take the bike
home to my shop in Trenton and get it running, as he felt that if he had to pay for it, he was going to get some
use out of it. I was happy to oblige, and the Norton spent the next few weeks with me. There wasn’t much the
matter with it, and it had around 3000 miles on it if my memory serves me. The colour, I noticed, was sort of a
marmalade orange; which I now know to be “Fireflake Bronze”. “Rather garish”, I thought, but since wasn’t my
machine, I didn’t give it further thought. The main faults I found were that the front brake hydraulic reservoir was
empty, and someone had been playing with the wiring under the gas tank. I soon had both problems sorted
out.
I never had a lot of use for the Commando, and thought that Norton should have been horsewhipped for
foisting this low quality excuse for a motorcycle upon the shoulders of unsuspecting Canadian motorcyclists. I
was a long time BMW rider, and the last British bike I had owned was a new ’61 BSA Golden Flash that I sold in
1964 when I went to Germany with the RCAF. At the time of my encounter with the Norton, I had a new black
BMW R90/6 and was delighted with its performance and styling, and reliability. My attitude to the Norton was one
of condescension. Until I rode it.
The test ride turned out well, and the bike ran like a top! I was amazed at the performance of the Norton. It
would have blown the doors off the BMW if it had any. The cast iron brake disk, although it looked like hell,
stopped the Norton better than the shiny stainless steel disc brake of the BMW. I returned the Norton to its
owner the following weekend, and scoffed a barbeque from my sister at the same time. The thought of Bill
roaring around the countryside on the Norton and enjoying himself without having someone shooting at him
gladdened my heart!
A year passed, and then I received another call from Bill. Did I want to buy the Norton? The price was very
reasonable, but I did not buy it as I had other financial obligations having, just bought a new house here in
Osgoode, just south of Ottawa. He rode it for another year and I didn’t hear much about it. Finally, in the spring
of 1979, he called again. He had tried to start the Norton for a ride on a cool day in October, and flooded it, due
to a low battery. Disgusted with it, he walked away from it for the winter. In the spring, when he tried to start it,
the engine was seized. His asking price was more than reasonable. This time I bought it. I thought that I would
get it going and sell it on, if nothing else.
My son Doug was 15 years old and had been riding off road since he was 7. It was only natural that next year
he would want to ride on the road, going the many places that young men go when they have obtained the
freedom of the road. That was me, once; a long time ago. We had looked for assorted Japanese bikes for him
unsuccessfully until one day, while we were working on the Norton, he asked if he could have it instead of a Jap
machine. I thought for a minute and answered “yes”.
The repairs on the Norton were quite straightforward. We tapped the pistons out the bottom of the cylinder
with a hammer handle, with Doug doing the tapping and me holding the cylinder barrel. They came out fairly
hard, but it was not hard to see why. The rings were seized solid with a white cement - like powder, surely the
residue of the fuel that was left in the cylinders when Bill couldn’t get it started. There was one broken piston
ring. We removed the pistons and cleaned them up, gave the hone a pass down the cylinders and installed new
standard bore Wellworthy rings from Nicholson Bros. In Saskatoon, who were still in business at the time. The
test ride was a happy moment for both of us as we went around the “test track”, a triangular selection of roads
just north of Osgoode. Both of had one eye over our shoulders, as we had the BMW licence plate on it. With
the light traffic and the open countryside, there was little risk of running into “the man”. In March of 1980, Doug
turned 16 and was able to get his driver’s licence. He finally got the Norton on the road legally, riding it to school
and to his various places of work at nights and on weekends. As parents, his mother and I naturally worried
about him on the roads with the great unwashed. I remember one evening we were sitting on the deck and heard
the sound of motorcycles in the village. We heard the yowl of Japanese multis, and finally the satisfying baritone
growl of the Norton as he and his pals accelerated out of the village into the open countryside. All was right with
the world……..until:
One night I had just gone to bed. Doug was working evenings for UPS and was not home yet, which caused
his mother to fret and naturally she passed her feelings on to me. Sleep was elusive. Soon, we heard the front
door open, footsteps up the hall, and then the top light in the bedroom was switched on. If I was half asleep, I
was wide awake now! A scratched, bloodied and torn Doug was standing there, and told me that he had put the
Norton into the ditch on the big curve just east of Osgoode, and would I put the trailer on the car and help him
bring it home. I don’t remember his mother’s exact reaction, but I thought it would be a good idea to get out of
the house before I was “duly counseled”. We loaded the disheveled Norton on to the trailer and brought it home
to the shop. It had suffered damage, bent front fender, handlebars and a big ding in that lovely marmalade tank.
We got Doug cleaned up an inspected as well. His leather jacket took a bit of a beating, but he was OK except
for a few scratches.
It took us a month or so to repair the Norton. Norton parts were still readily available locally in Ottawa, at Harry’s
Cycle and Cycle Salvage, so there wasn’t much of a problem there, with the exception of the marmalade tank.
Luckily, a friend of mine in British Columbia had one and sent it down. The fork tubes got a little scarred when
they went through the barbed wire fence, but we blended the scratches and patched the remaining pockmarks
with epoxy. This repair is still in place 23 years later.
The bike was returned to service successfully, and was generally quite reliable, with Doug using it for both
transportation and sport. One day, he came in from school, “Dad, I’ve got an oil leak on the Norton”. “It’s
British”, I said, as only a BMW owner could,.“expect it”. Finally my curiosity got the better of me and we went out
to the shop to have a look. Sure enough, the sides of the engine were covered with oil, as were his jeans from
the knees down. This was the start of my most Norton hating period. I first suspected a head gasket leak, and
we pulled the head, lapped it, and put in a new head gasket. We repeated this exercise five more times over the
summer, trying all the “hot setup” gaskets recommended by more knowledgeable Norton owners, to no avail.
The leak persisted. I thought – “this is pretty sad. 25 years of wrenching motorcycles and I can’t even cure a
cylinder head gasket oil leak.”
I think I was muttering under my breath at work next day. I was an Air Force Master Warrant Officer working in
the Directorate of Aircraft Engineering and Maintenance at Rockcliffe. My partner, Bill, a Newfoundlander, said to
me “Jim, b’y, something troubling you”? I told him the tale of woe with the Norton. “Tell you what”, he said. “I’ll
take the head down to Trenton next week when I go, and let the NDT (No Destructive Testing) guys have a go at
‘er”. I pictured lots of high tech NDT wizardry, since Trenton was at that time ultrasonically inspecting cylinders
from the Wright R1820 9 cylinder piston engine in the Grumman Tracker, and had all kinds of neat probes made
up to check for cracks down between the cylinder fins. I was kind of surprised when they found the problem with
the rather old tech LPI. (Liquid Penetrant Inspection) He was away most of the week, and came back with a big
smile on his face. Taking a drag on his cigar (you could still smoke at NDHQ in those days) he said “no wonder
ya got a problem b’y, the whole pushrod tunnel is honeycombed with cracks. Looking down the tunnel, we could
see the extent of the cracking from the fluorescent remains of the LPI) developer. The way we figured it out, is
every time Doug “came onto er” as Bill so quaintly put it, the cracks would open up enough to let the oil out.
Finding a good used cylinder head was not a problem. Cycle Salvage in Ottawa had one for $50.00, and I
bought it, conditional on an LPI crack test. “Once bitten, twice shy”, I thought to myself. The NDT section out at
CFB Uplands did the LPI inspection for me, and found only one small porosity in the RH exhaust rocker box. We
cleaned up the defect, and then reached in with a drop of epoxy on the end of a finger and worked it into the
indication as best we
could. I guess it must have worked, as there was no oil leakage. I haven’t looked in there for 20 years, so
assume it is still working, as no oil comes out.
However, it did in other places, especially when that cheap plastic rocker oil feed line broke off and filled Doug’
s right shoe up with oil. It also left a trail of oil down to the corner which took all summer to dissipate. Sort of a
Norton signature on our street, you might say. Oil leaks didn’t seem to be a problem after that, “touch wood”;
and while there was a bit of seepage from the tach cable drive, it wasn’t worth worrying about, and we cured later
by changing the seal.
Another time, Doug was going to school, when the normally robust sounding twin went down to a single. I had
taught Doug to “check the simplest things first”, so he pulled the LH spark plug and found the gap pushed
together. As time was an issue, he opened the gap and continued on his way on two cylinders again. A month
later the same thing happened again, one the same cylinder. Neither of us could figure the cause of the
malfunction. This time though, while the bike still idled OK, it was not the solid steady idle we used to have. At a
rally in the Golden Lake area a couple of weeks later, I met a long time Norton rider and was telling him of this
strange occurrence. He told me it had happened to him in the same manner when a chunk broke out of the carb
slide and went through the engine. When I got home, we pulled the slide, and sure enough, there were TWO
chunks broken out. You could tell by the dull crack line of the first breakout and the relatively shiny crack line of
the newer one that the breakouts had happened on two occasions that were a short time apart. I read
somewhere recently that Norton would pay Amal only ₤1.00 for a Concentric carburetor. Somehow, I believe they
got only what they paid for.
Doug continued using the Norton for the next year or so. Finally, one day he came home with a new ’83
CB1100F Honda, which sidelined the Norton, but he didn’t want to sell it. He used it occasionally, keeping it
washed and polished until it was finally relegated to storage in the shed. It was used a little bit, kept clean, the
cylinders inhibited, and the alloy cases sprayed down with WD40. It stayed there for ten years. In the meantime,
I had taken my retirement. Doug asked me if I would get the Norton on the road again for him. We did a full
service on it, replaced the primary chain, speedometer cable and put a seal kit in the front brake master
cylinder. With new oil, fresh gas and a battery charge, the baritone growl of the Commando resounded once
again through the streets of Osgoode. It has been in occasional use since the resurrection, on CVMG and
Norton Club of Ottawa events. But he’s a busy guy in his career and an active dirt rider with the Bytown
Motorcycle Association, so the time for the Norton is not readily available. There are a couple of small things we
have to do to it this spring, like a set of viton tipped float needles this spring, and a speedometer repair. I guess
between the two of us, we will be using it not as a daily rider as he
did 20 years ago, but like the lovely old classic motorcycle it has become with the passing of time. He still doesn’t
want to sell it, so I think there is a bit of a
heartstrings factor there. Strangely enough, after all the nasty things I’ve said thought and muttered about under
my breath about the Norton, it’s the same for me. And I’m so glad that we didn’t change the colour. Twenty
years later, instead of it looking garish to me, it looks quite different from most other Commandos in its original
“Fireflake Bronze” paint scheme. “Marmalade”, if you will, Stanley.
As a footnote to the above, that bike of Doug's drove me nuts, and I began to hate the sight of it, with just one
problem after another. I think that sense of frustration that Doug and I experienced with this machine is what
initially jaded my views of them. However, once we got it sorted out, it is no less reliable than any other English
bike, but 30 years ago it was an entirely different picture when Norton owners were trying to run relatively new
machines. Guys who run Nortons today have had the experience of almost 30 years of development and
"product improvement", not by the factory, but by the owners themselves, and it speaks very well for them.
As far as I can see, the last of the Commandos weren't much better than the first ones when they came off the
line, but it was the owners, encouraged by worldwide Norton Owners Clubs that finally made the "silk purse out of
the sow's ear". They have made Commandos today a valuable, well sorted classic motorcycle that is a worthy
addition to any collection. There are some really well done Nortons out there now, and it is a pleasure to see and
hear them. The classic motorcycle scene worldwide would not be nearly as interesting without the Commando.
The 70s were a tough time for British industry. Britain was almost bankrupt, run into the ground by the unions.
With BSA, Triumph and Norton, it was the same story. The only thing that saved the country was when Margaret
Thatcher came into power and sorted it out. The Commando was a sign of those times. It is to the individual
Norton owners credit, backed by the initiatives of the British classic motorcycle cottage industries that the
Commando is the success as a classic motorcycle that it is today. I look forward to seeing and occasionally using
"The Marmalade Norton"and hearing it's baritone growl resonate down the streets of Osgoode this coming year,
but first, "there are a couple of things we have to do to it".
CVMG Ottawa “Dominion Day Ride” 01 July 03
Doug on the Norton, Jim on the BMW
Doug age 16 with the Commando, 1980
The Marmalade Norton Jim Hunter
