G
It is almost a year since I bought this kit from Scale Model Shop so it is time to build it.
It is an old kit, I believe it dates back to the 1970s, but although these old kits do not have the finesse or fit of modern kits, they do depict the real thing quite nicely. This kit also has a few special connections to me. Geoff Duke rode this very bike, well.... the real one, to victory becoming a World Champion for the second time in 1951, the year I was born. As the races were possibly held around June time, it could have happened within days of my birth.
Many years later, my cousin and I were building bikes and we obtained a blown engine road version of this bike with that all important Featherbed frame. We installed a modified Triumph Bonneville engine updated to a 750cc and completed our one and only ‘Triton’. I never rode it as it was sold within hours of firing it up. After that we did a few ‘Tribsa’ using the same modified engine in BSA Golstar frames but I never forgot that old Norton.
Anyway, enough rambling. Here is the box art on the latest reboxing which I believe, in my opinion anyway, is the sexiest bike box art ever. If Carling made kits, this is how the boxes would look......
Not a vast amount of parts and a fair bit of chrome to strip but there will be lots of cleaning up to do and possibly a little heated language at some fit issues:thinking: I have read mixed reviews but I don’t take them seriously. One guy, probably a decent modeller using Tamiya kits, described it as unfit to build and the worst kit he had ever seen. Step aside son and watch it done the old way....:smirk:
View attachment 291249
It is an old kit, I believe it dates back to the 1970s, but although these old kits do not have the finesse or fit of modern kits, they do depict the real thing quite nicely. This kit also has a few special connections to me. Geoff Duke rode this very bike, well.... the real one, to victory becoming a World Champion for the second time in 1951, the year I was born. As the races were possibly held around June time, it could have happened within days of my birth.
Many years later, my cousin and I were building bikes and we obtained a blown engine road version of this bike with that all important Featherbed frame. We installed a modified Triumph Bonneville engine updated to a 750cc and completed our one and only ‘Triton’. I never rode it as it was sold within hours of firing it up. After that we did a few ‘Tribsa’ using the same modified engine in BSA Golstar frames but I never forgot that old Norton.
Anyway, enough rambling. Here is the box art on the latest reboxing which I believe, in my opinion anyway, is the sexiest bike box art ever. If Carling made kits, this is how the boxes would look......
Not a vast amount of parts and a fair bit of chrome to strip but there will be lots of cleaning up to do and possibly a little heated language at some fit issues:thinking: I have read mixed reviews but I don’t take them seriously. One guy, probably a decent modeller using Tamiya kits, described it as unfit to build and the worst kit he had ever seen. Step aside son and watch it done the old way....:smirk:
View attachment 291249
