New Norvil Commandos?

Charles

It's interesting that nobody has responded. I do wonder where all the Norvil's go. The opinion that they are bought and not used has been expressed before and one recently sold on eBay, I think at 6 years old with only 400 miles on it. I bought one second hand and have owned it for 3 years and have never seen another one. I bought it at 8 years old with <4000 miles on it. I have never been able to share the experiences of owning a Norvil with other owners!

I think they are very well built machines and therefore as reliable as the technology allows. They also benefit from the accumulated knowledge of improvements and fixes to known issues. Mine now has 9,000 miles on the clock and is very slowly becoming higher maintenance e.g. head gasket leak and worn carbs. In other words the kind of issues that owners ofproperly restoredoriginal Commandos have to contend with.

For me, the downside of buying new would be the rudeness and arrogance of Norvil themselves and that has been expressed by many people before me!

If you want to ride the bike and can find a used Norvil or a well restored original bike then I suspect you would get much better value for money than buying a new one.

If you are buying it to show and to invest then I can't really see how you could ever get a return on your money by buying a new one.

David

It sold for £10,101.

David,

I am a new joiner to the NOC and casually looking through the forums this afternoon came across this thread and read itwith some amusement. The Norvil on Ebay you refer to was purchased by me although the deal eventually struck was eventually lower than the auction price quoted on Ebay. I had won the auction and took a trailer down from Whitley Bay in the North East to the Mechanics Show at Stafford with the intention of picking up the bike near Doncaster on the way home. It had an oil weep around the exhaust port and concerned this might be a porous head or some such I agreed with the owner to walk away. However, my friend persuaded me that it looked such a good buy considering Norvil's prices that I did some haggling and picked it up a few days later for £9,500!

Work and childrencommitments over the last few years had prevented me from using it but I am pleased to say that after some nightmares 'un gumming' the carb pilot systems it is now running nicely and I have run it in over the course of the last month. I am hoping to do a short European tour in a few months and hope it will be reliable for that.

I had hankered after a Commando since 1977 when as a young lad the £50 difference in HPbetween a newHonda 400F and an as new Commando was unassailable. I had finally got my wish. Through a combination of classic magazine articles and local biking folklore without doing a great deal of research I'd always thought that Norvil's were the pinnacle so was a little concerned when, after I had bought it,I saw all the bad press about Norvil on the Club's forums, thinking perhaps I should have bought an original and restored it instead!

Needless to say I am pleased that it appears to be very good quality, well put together and a dream to ride. I also think that it was built up by an engineer there 'JB' who gets good press in Club forums but who I think Norvil now try to disassociate with, for some reason.

I hope other 'proper' Commando owners won't look down on me when I hit the streets in anger this year and hopefully I'll be able to report on how the 'newun'is running in the future.

Cheers Simon