Yes, finally, my holidays have started! 3 weeks ahead but well, it looks like summer ended already before it even started; we had some nice days end of june and start of july, but since then… Weather su*ks. Even today, while leaving with grey skies, it started to rain again. So I’ve used my time to look some things over. Since a couple of weeks, the Norton’s taillight doesn’t come on when braking. It works for the rear brake, but not for the front brake. Which is kind of stupid, as I more often use the front brake while just barely, or not even, touching the rear brake.

Following the electrical wires

I’ve followed the wires, from what I can see it is the brown wire, taken together with the red indicator light for the alternator in the headlight shell, followed it under the fueltank but.. Nothing. I didn’t find it (yet). Unless the switch itself on the handlebar is defective, I already changed the switch on the rear brakepedal once, but the front brake is quite well protected. Oh well, I still have 3 weeks left, I’ll find it 😉

While I had the fueltank removed, I did see something else “wrong”, something I already noticed before; when opening the throttle, the left carburator is opened before the right one. This was a perfect ocassion to see it; when opening/closing the throttle, the slack on the cable going to the right carburator was well visible.

Slack in the gas cable for the right amal carburator

The slack, compared to the left, was about 5 mm. By adjusting the cable on the right Amal, both react at the same time. Meanwhile it stopped raining, so I put everything back together again, the fueltank, the buddyseat, the headlight and changed the spark plugs; last time I put in brandnew Champion spark plugs. Maybe coïncidence, maybe not, but the Norton was more difficult to start. When I removed them and put back the NGK Iridium sparkplugs that I cleaned, the Norton started on the third kick. The modification by removing the slack on the gas cable could be noticed; when opening the throttle for acceleration, there is no longer the moment of “hesitation” and the Norton runs a bit better too at low engine speeds (2.000 – 2.500 rpm), less “jerky” while riding at a constant speed.