ES2 head oiling

It's fed from the return supply to the oil tank. Some of that oil is diverted to the cylinder head. You should have a pipe coming off the scavenge pipe where it enters the oil tank that goes up to the rocker box.

Ian

If it's not broke, don't fix it!

The later Norton Twins have positive feed to the rockers from the pressure side of the pump rather than the lower pressure return side. But even changing an earlier twin to pressure top feed is fraught with issues. Look up Phil Hannan's essay on the topic on this site.

Have a word with Mike Pemberton, he's the man for tuning the ES2, I think side valve cams, high comp piston and inlet work are easy enough to do, for £3,000 ish Mike will short stroke it with a goldstar piston and engines those fly apparently! As far as I know the oil feed to the head is fine, in many cases it's too good and that causes problems of its own!

...and then find you can't get insurance "have you modified it, sir?".

How do people manage that one? I thought I read last year that insurers don't actually mind modifications as long as you tell them - but they didn'tsound very friendly on the phone when I foolishlyadmitted to considering buying a modified machine.

It's pretty daft of them to ask the question. Surely the default condition of a 50++ year old bike is that it must have been modified in lots of ways?

Bike sure insured my modified ES2 (trials) so it is possible, there must be a bigger market now with the popularity of cafe racers and scramblers

dan

There's lots you can do to make an ES2 go well. I wouldn't worry about oiling the the head though. The pre-48 engines relied on mist up past the puchrods. My 51 ES2 suffered with over oiling and I had to restrict the flow a bit. Several thousand miles later and it's all still working fine.

Have a look at the pushrod performance website for ideas on tuning an ES2. The cams he sell are a good modification but I am having trouble with a flat spot around 50-55mph and generally poor acceleration through the mid range. It pulls like a train low down and once it starts picking up after the flat spot it flies! I haven't spoken to anyone else yet that's had the same problem with them though so I'm leaning more towards the head work that was done. I have got another head to fit over the winter and try, I think the first one was just opened up to much.

Try phoning him, although someone did say he hasn't been well?

dan

Remove the first zero and replace it with 0044, that should work.

Making it

011441257 471014 from the States I think

I'm sure he won't answer if he's unwell and doesn't want to talk! It's a business number after all?

Dan

I think you will find Mike is on holiday in Ireland.

Ok that's good news it means he's hopefully not unwell!