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Fork Spring Identification

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In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of springs. OK, it's not spring yet and I'm not such a young man any more, but here's a question:

What does a yellow paint marking signify on a short roadholder spring.

A search of the interwebs gives red for Commando/Dominator and green for lightweights but nothing definitive for yellow.

They are a bit shorter than red ones at about 18 1/8 inches and would have come out of either a Dominator or Commando, but got mixed up with a pair of red ones in my parts midden.

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     just a thought, if anyone out there knows what th sidecar spring rate is? or they may be a racing option. (Girling rear dampers also had 3 coloured parralell vertical paint stripes ,diferentiating s-rates on black springs)...

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"Norton Twins" has the info on spring colours as I recall, but my copy is not immediately to hand. 

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I don't know if this adds anything to the discussion, but it is all I have on fork springs.

Roadholder Fork Springs

 

Long Roadholder                    11.78”

Sidecar Long Roadholder       11.00”
Manx                                         9.25”
Short Roadholder                    18.68”
Sidecar Short Roadholder       18.15”
Commando                             18.68”

Navigator / Electra                 18.18”

Two points worth noting here.  First how easy it is to fit the wrong springs because they fall into groups with only slight differences in lengthSecondly, The Commando and Short Roadholder springs are identical but most of the other internals are not.  The Commando stanchions and damper tubes are longer. The damper rods are the same length but have different end threads.

 

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Yellow denotes sidecar springs.Length 18.5 inches

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Thanks for your input everyone. The yellow ones are wound from a heavier gauge wire, so sidecar use seems logical. I shall use my red pair for the rebuild of my Dommie forks.

It seems more likely that the yellow ones came from my Dommie as it is a bit of a mongrel, whereas my Commando was bought new by the previous owner, used for three years then left in a shed for nearly two decades. I don't remember the fork action on the Dommie being overly stiff, but it was a long time ago that it was last ridden.

 



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