You will probably be looking for the pre-war BSA controls. These are getting extremely hard to find now......and expensive.
Even Cornucopia is down to the last few parts.
Stuart Bray has a set, so not 'hard to find'....But yes, the expensive aspect certainly applies. The alternative is visiting every jumble, watching eBay like a hawk and years of searching for individual components. Nobody will be giving this sort of stuff away anymore.
John O Brien has some I believe, and I saw a half complete set at the last Kempton jumble, but that was 200 pounds I think, so not too difficult, just pricey! Now if someone had the 1939 Norton combined 1" levers, that is really rare! only saw 2 pieces the last 10 years, so will have to have them cast.
Any chance of some details on the Norton 1" combined levers - I have a pair of combined 1" levers on my SWD Big 4 - unplated brass possibly Doherty. Thanks.
These Keith. I've never known why Norton used a shorter lever on the clutch side? But I found out last week from Lex that the screw on dip-switch in the already drilled and tapped handlebar was only fitted with the combination levers. Ron
Keith, interesting! could you please send me some pictures? I have some too, if what I have, just got the early Big 4 handlebars for my first SWD Big 4, and will fit them, if I can have the lever pivots cast, am planning to make them from a more sturdy material as bronze.
Cheers, Lex
Ps, substitute the last 2 emoticons for "ke" in the email address.
As Lex says, the 1" Norton Doherty combined levers are the rarest of the rare. Civilian Nortons changed to 7/8" bars for 1937 so pre-war civvy is pretty much a dead end. I have a WD16H Spare Parts list for contract C3635 which is annotated in tiny fountain pen to the effect that separate levers were fitted from frame number 105761 so combination levers are effectively restricted to pre-war WD16H and Big 4 - No "S" or "W" prefix machines.
Based on how the unchanged valve lifter was fabricated, it seems likely that the cast brass bases for the combination levers were identical for 7/8" and 1" and they were therefore thin-walled and fragile in the extreme...Unless we find a BEF survivor (and there is an SWD Big 4 at a farm near Arras, just waiting for me to knock on the door :grinning: )then we are unlikely to find originals.
Early Norton levers were invariably dull-chromed...unfinished brass is more likely to be Matchless Bowden.
I'm not 100% sure, in the case of 16H at least that the dip switches were not screwed to the bars on early 1940 bikes with separate levers (the holes are differently located from SWD Big 4 anyway). This photo from C5109 doesn't show a switch back-clamp but the wiring is visible...
The long brake lever on Nortons was something of a marketing gimmick. The Inters had a long lever that could almost take two hands...with a racing machine such as Nortons produced, stopping was more of a problem than accelerating or changing gear...