Classic Bike Guide - Real rides, real riders

Norton – 1951 McCandless prototype 500cc Twin

A few enthusiasts – older, or more steeped in Bracebridge Street lore – might also remember the first Dominators, where the newly-developed twin engine was fitted into either the old ‘garden gate’ frame or its direct descendant with swinging arm rear suspension. Unless they’ve been down to Sammy Miller’s Museum in Hampshire, though, few people will even know of the existence of this particular variation on the Norton twin roadster theme.
 
It was the brainchild of Ulstermen Rex and Cromie McCandless, without whom the Norton story would have been very different.

Keenly interested in racing, the brothers complemented each other perfectly with Rex – who ran a motorcycle shop in Woodstock Road, Belfast, along with racing legend Artie Bell – being mostly interested in development, while Cromie was a very successful rider whose career peaked with victory in the 1951 Ultra-Lightweight TT on a Mondial. Cromie also rode Manx Nortons – the most successful and prolific production racer of the era – and on them he achieved a remarkable record of top 10 finishes in both the Junior and Senior TTs for three successive years, starting in 1950.

Naturally his Nortons featured the famous McCandless Featherbed frame, whose design had been adopted for the 1950 Norton race team, headed by Geoff Duke. So successful was the frame that it enabled the ageing ohc Manx motor to compete with more sophisticated rivals, and to continue winning international events for another decade-and-a-half.

There was initially no intention of equipping Norton’s roadsters with the Featherbed frame, because – apart from anything else – the factory had no in-house capability to shape its long side members and bronze weld them together.

Production was therefore always contracted out to frame and tubing specialist Reynolds, which helped prestige but severely limited profits and production numbers. Public demand was so great, however, that the Featherbed frame was subsequently fitted to the last of the road going ohc Internationals and to the ohv twins, which it served with distinction until the end of the 1960s.

In the early days the McCandless brothers could not have anticipated all this success and they continued working on the frame design even after it had been adopted by Norton. Its duplex tubes around the engine and gearbox provided unrivalled rigidity between the steering head and the swinging arm pivot, and they evidently saw no way of improving on that part, because they reportedly disapproved of Norton’s eventual decision to squeeze the top tubes slightly closer together to suit short-legged riders. Perhaps they were less happy with the rear suspension mounts, which seemed something of an afterthought on the early models, being literally just bolted onto the main frame.

In 1955 the factory addressed this apparent weakness by welding the rear tubes permanently in place, but four years earlier the brothers had proposed an alternative solution with the unique prototype now residing in Sammy Miller’s museum. Its main frame loop and petrol tank are similar to that on other Featherbed models, but the rear section is a pressed steel monocoque box offering extreme rigidity. Not only that, but the structure serves the secondary purpose of acting as a rear mudguard and had it been adopted, it would have provided ‘bathtub’ styling several years before it was popularised by Triumph. In order to preserve the clean lines of the mudguard, the McCandless brothers built the rear light and number plate into the back of the dual seat, which was itself a quite modernistic feature for the period. The neatness of the design was further enhanced by a rounded oil tank that was accessed by raising the seat on side hinges, the tool compartment was reached in the same way.

The front end was no less stylised, with the number plate incorporated into a fully cowled headlight (in this case following the lead of Edward Turner’s Triumph nacelle). The deeply valanced front mudguard was mounted at the top of the forks to minimise unsprung weight. Unsurprisingly – overwhelmed by unfilled demand for less radically styled machines – Norton chose not to adopt the McCandless design in its entirety, but the factory did briefly fit production Dominators with a fork-mounted mudguard of this type, before reverting to a conventional unsprung item.

Sammy Miller remembers the time this machine was assembled and the even more enterprising prototype – powered by a prewar, four-cylinder Fiat car engine – the McCandless brothers made with similar cycle parts. As a schoolboy in Belfast, motorcycle-mad Sammy would visit the McCandless/Bell garage to gaze at these extraordinary motorcycles and sometimes sneak a brief sit on them, so he understandably feels that having one in his museum is a fitting way of completing the full circle.

The Sammy Miller Museum

The Sammy Miller Museum is open every day, apart from during December, January and February– in those months it’s open only at weekends. Admission is £5.90 adults and £3 for children.

It’s full of interesting machines, racers, roadsters, amazing one-offs and rarities. Machines include the 1951 all-alloy Earles BSA, 1912 750cc Verdel Radial Five, the 1967 500cc Greeves based Spondon Phantom twin, 1960 350cc Lowboy Norton, 1955 350cc Model F Norton and so many more.

The Sammy Miller Motorcycle Museum can be found at Bashley Cross Roads, New Milton, Hants BH25 5SZ. Tel: 01425 620777 or 01425 616644. Email museum@sammymiller.co.uk  www.sammymiller.co.uk

Author - Roy Poynting

Author of this piece Roy Poynting is a regular contributor to The Classic MotorCycle and can often be found across machines from the Miller museum. A couple of years ago he compiled a couple of excellent softback books detailing many of the machines in the museum. One lists the roadsters and the other features the racing and sports machines. They’re published by Redline Books – www.redlinebooks.co.uk – and are available from the museum at £14.95 plus £4 postage (for up to three books). Regular retail price is £19.95.

Words and photograph by Roy Poynting