Norton 961 Engine

NEW NORTON 961 MOTOR.

I found this in America. It's a brand-new 961 Norton engine, complete with injectors and other components.

Made in late 2010 in the UK, this was part of a batch of five motors that never made it to the factory. The reason for this, I do not know. All I know is that it surfaced when a well-known British dealer in the Midwest USA closed its doors and sold off all their stock. A friend of mine over there bought all five, and of course, I had to have one! (I believe another two from this batch have now ended up back with the bloke in the States who started all this, so expect a couple of Norton specials appearing from them soon.)

Now that I have it sitting at home, I realize I'm not likely to do much with it. Currently, it's sitting on my coffee table—an excellent ornament and talking point—but I feel it really needs to go into a bike of some sort.

Do you have a Featherbed or an old Commando chassis lying around? Or perhaps a Ducati bevel chassis? (The original chassis for these was based on that—not the current one being built in the UK, but the original design from overseas.) Maybe it could even serve as a static exhibit for your shop or business?

You may have noticed I'm babbling on a bit and telling you little about the engine. Well, I don't know much about it. It's clearly shiny and (was) new. I do not have the ignition box/ECU, but a rather clever boffin who works in the motor racing industry looked at it and reeled off some specs: “Oh yeah, very orthodox. Standard stuff. You need a blah blah box from MDM, and you can program an ignition curve on your laptop in an hour.” (That was a summary of his spiel—I'll give you his contact details if you buy it.)

OK, so here it is. I'm happy for serious buyers to come and have a look, but I stress serious—it's in my house, which is not a museum, so I'm not looking for busloads of tourists!

It's pretty heavy, so collection only, please.