Norton Bultaco Firewater

Steve RedMax built 'The Reverend' for short track racing in the UK. There are are far easier ways to go about preparing a vehicle for such a task, but Steve would never walk that line. He likes his firewater.

"I’d bought a Knight Bultaco [to sell on] that someone had bought in the States to race grasstrack in the UK. It was a lovely bit of kit, but no one was interested in buying it. That’s when the tape measure came out. I worked out I could get the Commando engine out of my café racer into it with half an inch to spare.’

Oh yeah, the engine would fit in, but the gearbox wouldn’t. That didn’t stop Steve though. ‘I thought I could use a speedway bike’s cross-shaft,’ he explains. Speedway bikes have one gear, permanently engaged. Steve ended up linking the NEB cross-shaft to the output sprocket with a super-short primary chain. ‘The clutch is old-fashioned with new tech. It has five or six weird looking 3mm thick clutch plates in an alloy clutch basket.’ Next, he rebuilt and tuned the parallel twin. ‘I changed the bearings; bored it out to 920cc; fitted a 4S cam, the genuine Norton Norvil racing cam; new valves and springs… It revved like a two-stroke even when it had the standard cam. I also fitted a Norvil two-into-one intake manifold because two carbs wouldn’t fit. A Mikuni flatslide is mounted on it."

Read the full story, in Sideburn #8