NorLake Special was a six-year labour of love

John Newson of Oxney Motorcycles has sent us these first images of his just-finished NorLake Special.

More than 20 years ago he bought a 1000cc methanol-burning Weslake V-twin engine from Jim Penfold, who’d raced it in sidecar grass track, and with a compression ratio of 14:1, it delivered 117bhp.

With its tall V-twin Weslake engine shoehorned into the Norton wideline frame, the NorLake Special looks a mighty interesting machine.

When John’s old friend Knuckles died on his Ducati, his widow passed on to him a Triton project with a chromed 1959 wideline frame, and in May 2011, in the
‘old school’ workshop, John eventually started work on the mighty NorLake.

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He used as many period parts as possible along with basic hand tools – the 10mm dural alloy engine plates took 27 hours’ labour alone – and six-and-a-half years later, after 570 man hours, the job was done.

Read more in the December issue of OBM – on sale now!


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