2026-05-01 - Yellow Norton - Test Ride OK

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:01]Uh, good morning. It's uh, Friday, May the 1st.

[00:00:04]And uh, Kevin is getting ready to do the first test ride on the yellow bike.

[00:00:10]And uh, he's going to give it a couple of strokes. It's been sitting, so let's see how it goes.

[00:00:16]And get gas on both sides?

[00:00:18]>> on and Richner's on, keys on.

[00:00:23]Let's see how it goes.

[00:00:44]I'm going to Okay, hang on.

[00:00:46]I'll I'll help you get off of that.

[00:00:48]Okay. I'm going to I'll be back in a couple minutes.

[00:00:53]Ready? Yeah, and go.

[00:01:41]All right, here he comes. I can't really see too much inside the uh, the the screen on the back because of the bright sunlight.

[00:01:50]But here he comes.

[00:01:51]Two people have turned uh, pulled out right in front of him.

[00:01:57]The uh, people in the neighborhood consider these stop signs to be loose suggestions.

[00:02:24]All right, uh, okay, we got it strapped down.

[00:02:26]What we're going to do now that we've ridden it, we're going to dump the sump.

[00:02:30]And uh, take a look inside the sump and see if there's any particulate. Still a little worried about the condition of the uh, the cam, but see what we got. Let's find out if there's anything in the in the sump after having been ridden. Uh, and I don't understand why this thing won't do zoom in or out on my There it goes, out.

[00:02:48]All right.

[00:02:49]Okay, K, what do you think? Oh, she's great. Um, accelerates well, brakes well. Um, you know, the the shifting, it's interesting. Uh, this is one of those where you've almost got to be at a dead stop before it'll shift comfortably into first.

[00:03:06]And Oh, okay. Yeah, you know, some of them will slide in a little bit earlier.

[00:03:09]This is almost almost down to idle speed before it'll just slip in. So That's interesting.

[00:03:14]>> Yeah, yeah, but but it's fine. Shifts fine, up and down, good compression when you're downshifting.

[00:03:20]Uh, I kept hearing a clang and I finally figured out what it was. You hit a bump and this buckle Aha. That's what was hitting. Okay. Um, I'd like to tighten this up a little bit. There's a lot of free play there.

[00:03:33]Too much travel? Yeah, yeah. But that's that's I yeah.

[00:03:37]>> Yeah, and so it takes Yeah, that's >> See, we can we can make shorten it up just a little bit right there. That's no big In fact, it it's fine as is, except for me personally, I'd like a little less free play there. Okay. No, she she runs fine.

[00:03:52]Like I said, shifts fine, accelerates.

[00:03:55]And again, it's just remembering that A, it's a Norton, which way to go, and B, you need to always reset your foot. Um, shift it into gear, get your foot out of the way so that lever can snap back, yeah. shift into place. Now, as far as I'm concerned, she's ready to go. Okay.

[00:04:10]>> Yeah, not good bike. Very good.

[00:04:14]Well, as of yesterday, I had this bike off the lift and I had the former limey bike back up on the lift and then I ran out of time. And this morning I said to myself, I said, "Sir, uh, Kevin's coming down here to ride the yellow bike.

[00:04:32]Why don't we dump the sump after the test ride and see how much oil is in the sump of an 850 Norton after a test ride?"

[00:04:41]So I'm getting ready to do that. I've loosened the sump nut. I'm going to dump it. The reason I'm doing that is the fellow who owns the black bike, formerly known as limey, asked me that after I put the forks in, fork seals in, if we do a test ride, to run it up to speed, bring it back, and dump the sump and see how much oil's in it because he's curious as what what what the normal amount of oil should be in a 750 a '72 750 uh, sump. So in order to get a baseline on this bike, I'm going to dump the sump and measure it.

[00:05:19]And then I'm going to when we when I finish doing the forks on this guy, uh, we'll do a test ride and I'll dump that sump and I'll do a comparison and it'll tell us something interesting, but I don't know what. So in the meantime, I'm going to take the sump up. Oh, another reason I want to dump this sump is uh, I want to look for metal flakes or anything that might indicate that the camshaft is deteriorating. So let's see if we have any um, anything in the oil that will that will that will worry us.

[00:08:08]There's not much oil coming out of there.

[00:08:11]Huh.

[00:08:12]That's yes, not more than a a few ounces.

[00:08:17]Huh, interesting.

[00:08:20]Uh, but the amounts of oil coming out of these sumps are all over the place >> [snorts] >> and I'm really having a difficult time coming up with a normal amount. In the meantime, I've got the filter over here, the sump filter, and I'm going to take it apart and take a look inside of it.

[00:08:45]Let's try to find a level spot on the floor and take it apart.

[00:08:52]>> [snorts] >> I see nothing in there to worry about.

[00:09:49]>> [snorts] >> Nothing down here.

[00:10:13]One little piece of black something.

[00:10:18]Not metal.

[00:11:13]All right, I see no reason not to put this back together.

[00:11:21]And then we'll measure the oil.

[00:13:31]>> [sighs] [sighs and gasps] >> That's only about 3 oz of oil, which is half what I expected.

[00:14:56]So, now we have a 850 normally normal excuse me, an 850 running normally and the sump contains 3 oz of oil.

[00:15:06]And um I'm just going to write it down and keep the record cuz I um don't know what you can do about it.