This was my second Atlas, not what's known as learning from experience. The first I'd owned in the late sixties. Kept the bike for about nine months until I finally tired of the exploding engine. Build quality was minimal. In its favour there was an excess of power and torque, plus the fine handling Featherbed frame. Not enough to compensate for an engine that had its roots firmly in a mild 500 twin. The Commando replacement held even less appeal.
So zoom forward nearly thirty years to a sunny July day. And what should I spy in downtown Leeds but an immaculate Norton Atlas. As it happened, the biking bug was calling me back to the clan after a five year absence. I had in mind a used Honda CBR600 or some other fine bit of Jap technology - you know the sort of thing - smooth, reliable, sophisticated, masses of power... so why the hell did I feel such pangs for the venerable Norton?
Unfortunately, the owner turned up before I could leave the area and dismiss such thoughts from my mind. When I revealed that I’d owned one in the sixties he was all over me like a rash. Did I want ago? How can you turn down an offer like that? Expecting the worst, I was surprised at the ease with which the bike kicked into life, its smoothness and the kick the mighty 750cc mill gave.
The owner explained that it was running later Superblend bearings, electronic ignition, belt primary drive... an almost endless list of minor and major modifications to take the bike about as far away from stock as you could get and still call it an Atlas. Needless to say, I fell for the bike and, as luck would have it, he was willing to take five grand for it, knowing that I would look after the machine like it deserved.
When we turned up at my house the wife hit the roof, not seeing the funny side of spending all our spare cash on an old British motorcycle. What about our holiday, she screamed. We can go touring on the bike, I offered. Something about dead bodies was then mentioned. The owner, a life long bachelor, looked on amused at these goings on, offered to pull out of the deal if I wanted. Fear tugged at the pit of my stomach at the very thought.
Domestic harmony was further threatened when I revealed that the machine would have to be parked in the hallway. The Atlas wasn't the oil gusher of old but it did leave a few drops of lubricant on the Axminster after a hard run - and it would burn quite a lot of oil off, so a wary eye had to be kept on its level.
Part of the engine mods was a milder state of tune, basically all the blood and guts concentrated in the first 5000 revs. Even with all the engine mods, high revs still meant plenty of vibration, so it made perfect sense to have all the power and torque below five grand. The way the bike was set up it didn’t really need a gearbox - it'd lunge forwards whether in fourth or first. Nevertheless, the gearbox was typically Norton slick, although the clutch lever was very heavy, likely to annoy effete Jap riders.
All this power was contained by the Featherbed chassis. The suspension was a little primitive, relying on taut springing rather than excessive travel to keep the bike under control. Masses of feedback from the tarmac made the bike very safe in the wet, even though that gorgeous torque could scrabble the back wheel.
Steering was out of this world. The trick with the Norton’s geometry was to combine light, almost delicate steering, with a feeling that the machine was running on rails. This on old, large and thin tyres that if fitted to a modern Jap bike would doubtless have it all wired up, becoming a high speed accident looking for somewhere to happen.
The Norton’s duplex loop of high tensile steel tubing was surpassed by more modern designs with less curves and a more direct connection between steering head and swinging arm mount, but Norton made the best of the available technology and fine tuned the chassis with regards to weight distribution, geometry and suspension compliance: The Slimline Featherbed frame was way ahead of the game in the sixties and still easily up to modern roads, surpassing in general ability any number of middleweight Jap’s. Obviously, the Atlas lacks the power to make it as a contender in races with the 600’s but I surprised quite a few Jap riders on things like GS500s, GPz500s and GS550s.
The Atlas weighs in at about 400lbs, a lot of that weight concentrated in the twin cylinder mill, which is at once relatively narrow and mounted low. Modern Jap fours, being both wide and burdened with long travel suspension, can’t hope to come close to the Atlas’s low centre of gravity. As anyone who has studied bikes knows, a low centre of gravity makes sorting out the handling that much easier. Hence the bike’s combination of easy handling and rock-like stability, despite the limitation of decidedly old-fashioned components.
The flow of torque, the ease of handling and the sheer togetherness of this particular example (which is surely better than anything the Norton factory ever managed) allowed the bike to career, caper, across the landscape at surprisingly high velocities - an average of 90mph over a favourite stretch of fast A-roads surely says it all!
An indicated top speed of 120mph could only be lightly touched upon because of the aforementioned vibration, and had I spent my working life dealing with pile-drivers, I might even have been able to push the bike to as much as a 130mph. But I hadn't and I didn't really want to end up with the con-rods poking out of the crankcases (just one of the venerable twin’s weak spots when thrashed).
Town work was less exuberant, the bike feeling a bit unsettled at low speeds, bits of chassis wavering fiercely due to some resonance at low revs. It just didn’t feel right to thrash the engine hard in first or second, although when the need arose that marvellous torque allowed drag starts that had both cagers and hot-shot replica riders wondering what the hell had just gone down. The blessed roar of stainless steel reverse cone mega’'s popped their eardrums right out of their heads! Marvellously evocative, although no doubt some would think it an arrestable offence (not least she who must be obeyed).
What of maintenance and the fabled bits falling off? 500 mile sessions are obligatory but by no means time consuming or difficult. And, yes, after a hard ride I have to go over the bolts, but it’s not a problem because I also like to polish her up to a mirror shine - it just seems like the decent thing to do. I don't ride the bike in winter, though, not because it couldn't cope - these bikes were made in England for all this country could throw at them, after all - but because it makes more sense to use the CG125 I’ve recently acquired.
Actually, things are getting a little out of control. I've also bought a 650SS Dominator in a couple of boxes and a dirt cheap 850 Commando. I told the wife that the front room’s conversion to a workshop was only a temporary aberration. Yeah, sure!
Dean Richards