Spring Tech Day, Norton Colorado

April 16 was Norton Colorado's annual spring tech day. It was held at Gary Bolduc's house in Thornton. About 20 Norton Colorado members showed up, maybe more. Some rode Nortons, some rode Triumphs, and some rode BMWs. I don't think I saw anything else. Gary has a collection of bikes, including several Nortons in various stages of repair/running, a Trump, and a Harley. One of Gary's bikes is a Norton Commando chopper. His chopper is much more basic than mine and is not currently street legal. He's got a very long and kicked-out girder front end, no font brake, straight pipes, and sheet metal seat. Like mine, it's a work in progress. We hope to go riding some time soon. I did get lots of complements on my bike. People thought I did a pretty good job. Gary also has a mechanically very well equipped garage. Plenty of Norton parts, seats, gas tanks, pipes. You name it, it seemed like Gary had it. Doesn't look like this garage sees much storage of cars.

It looked like there were four or five different projects being worked on by various members, including one bike that had been caught in a fire and completely destroyed. Looked like the owner was going to try and rebuild. If so, he's got a long row to hoe. Gary helped me finally figure out what was wrong with my clutch. I had figured out my problems stemmed from the fact that I was trying to mate an Atlas tranny to a Commando primary. However, I had not taken into account that an Atlas clutch rod may be a different length than an Atlas one. Turns out that was what I was missing. The Atlas rod I had was a quarter inch too short. Happily, Gary had a spare that I could use. Given that and some kibbitzing from other members, we got the thing working just fine. I would'a tried starting the puppy up, but my gas line leaked -- wrong size in-line filter (or wrong size line). So I still have that little fix.

Gary has a dedicated keg fridge in his garage with O'Dell's 90 Shillings on tap and chilled glasses in the freezer. A nice treat. Gary's wife served a great lunch of barbacued pork sandwichs with all the fixins, and there was a club meeting after lunch. People talked about a club project bike to a raffled off as well as the next meeting, a club ride on May 7th starting from Lafayette. All in all, a very enjoyable, communitarian, and profitable (for me at least) way to spend Easter morning.