I took the award winning Norton ES2 for a spirited ride this afternoon! It was a bit overcast, but warm and comfortable, so I took her out just to keep the fuel fresh and the oil circulated. She fired up on the first kick and ran flawlessly along several miles of Mechanicsville’s back-roads. Beauty in motion on a lovely Autumn afternoon.
1953 Norton ES2
Takes me to my happy place…
I recall mechanics referring to floats as “heavy” from way back in the day, but it wasn’t until I started tinkering with vintage bikes that I discovered they actually meant the floats were no longer air tight, but had begun to leak, usually along the seam, slowly filling up with fuel, hence, heavy… And since they were taking on bilge, they no longer stopped the flow of gasoline when the carberator’s float bowl was at capacity. This old Suzuki has a “heavy float” Can you see the fine, minute crack in the tank of the float? Yeah, me either, until it began spewing excess fuel from the overflow tube and I dis-assembled it to locate and repair the fault…
See that shiny little horizontal line on the right hand tank?
Give it the old rumba shake and listen for the swishy swirl of fluid where there shouldn’t be any.