Lot details Registration No: DK 2485 Frame No: 10707 Engine No: 3829 cc: 633 MOT Expiry Date: Exempt
James Landowne Norton founded the Norton Manufacturing Company during 1898 in his home city of Birmingham supplying components to the established cycle industry and also to the newly emerging motorcycle industry. By 1902 he had produced his first motorcycle employing a French clip on engine and over the next five years developed both the frame, lowering and elongating the basic cycle structure in order to mount the engine (and later the gearbox) within the frame structure and his own engine design which was introduced during 1907. When machines became available to the public in 1908 the prototypes displacement of 660cc had been reduced to 633cc. Equipped with aluminium crankcases and an iron head and barrel the new engine established a pattern that would run until 1954 and introduced a name to the motorcycling vocabulary that is as well regarded today as it was in the Edwardian period - the Big 4. 1909 saw the introduction of a smaller 475cc engine which, although not particularly successful in its own right formed the basis for a revised model introduced in 1911, with engine dimensions of 79 x100 mm and a swept volume of 490cc. Typed the no.2 under the system introduced to identify models during 1915, when the no. 2 was equipped with a chain final drive from the three speed gearbox instead of a belt it became the no.16. For 1921 a revised version of the 16 was introduced using the "low" or home market frame instead of the colonial frame that it had previously employed and shared with the Big 4, Norton added an H to the model number and the 16H came into being. The sporting 16H is as desirable today as it was when new, displaying as it does the best attributes of vintage motorcycle design. The model's specification placed it at a considerable advantage to many of its rivals, an advantage that was enhanced further by the reliability and build quality of the machine.
The 16H offered dates from the end of 1923 having left the factory on the 12th December 1923 and is thus a 1924 season machine. It has been on display in a museum for a number of years. It is currently fitted with a contemporary Big 4 engine, although the original 16H engine is supplied with the machine. Offered in unrestored condition it is fitted with an unusual oil tank and a peculiar petrol tank with a double curve at the front, a feature that marque specialist Dr George Cohen has never seen, even in contemporary photographs.
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