Featherbed frame

In 1949 brothers Rex and Cromie McCandless offered Norton a new frame to support their successful 500cc race single. Rex McCandless was a self-taught Belfast motorcycle engineer and raced competitively with his brother on a Triumph Tiger 100. He had made several improvements to the Triumph, notably an innovative new frame with a swinging arm fitted with vertical hydraulic shock absorbers from a Citroen car. BSA bought several of his converted motorcycles but Norton saw the real opportunity and contracted him to work exclusively for them from 1949. The Norton Motorcycle Company were concerned at the reliability of their plunger (or "Garden Gate") frame, as several had broken through the stress of racing. Norton engineer Joe Craig solved the problems by making the frames heavier but handling suffered as a consequence.

Norton commissioned the McCandless brothers to design a complete frame, incorporating a swinging arm. McCandless' finished design was expensive, as it required over forty feet of the best Reynolds steel tubing. It was a welded twin loop with a swinging arm fitted with their own design of shock absorbers, with a heavily braced cross-over headstock. In two months a prototype motorcycle with the new frame was on the test track and it was tested on the Isle of Man in the winter of 1949. It performed well and Norton decided that the Norton works team would have motorcycles with the new frames. The Norton works was not well equipped so the sif-bronze welding was undertaken by the McCandless brothers who produced the eight frames for the racing team by hand. Production featherbed frames were made under Ken Sprayson's direction at Reynolds, who became known as 'The Frame man'

The patent

Norton applied for a patent for the design on 13 October 1949 and it was granted as reference 664,667 but the completed specification was not published until 9 January 1952. The Featherbed frame was simply constructed:

This invention relates to a new or improved frame for a motorcycle which comprises two substantially parallel rectangular loops each formed from a single length of tubing, and the ends of the tube forming each loop cross and are welded to each other at the top front corner of the loop, the free ends of the tube which extend beyond the crossing point being welded to the side of an inclined head tube adjacent to the top and bottom thereof. The assembled frame is extremely strong for its weight and designed to provide the maximum resistance to any stresses applied to the frame by road shocks or by the driving torque of the power unit.

The Featherbed name

Harold Daniell was a successful Isle of Man TT racer with three victories and several placings in the Tourist Trophy races and the Manx Grand Prix. After testing the new Norton frame in 1950 he declared that it was like "riding on a featherbed" compared with riding the "garden gate"—and it has been called the featherbed frame ever since.

Racing success

Further testing took place at Montlhery race track with four motorcycles running flat-out for two days. The new frame stood up well to tests and saw its UK launch at Blandford Camp in Dorset in April 1950. Geoff Duke had won the Senior Clubmans TT and the Senior Manx Grand Prix in 1949 on the earlier type Nortons, so was a clear choice for Norton to really put the new Featherbed-framed race bikes to the test. Duke won the race on the new design and several racing successes followed with Norton winning first three places in the 1950 Senior and Junior TT's. In the Friday Senior TT Duke set a new lap record of 93.33 mph and also broke the overall race record, finishing in two hours, 51 minutes and 45 seconds; he had previously finished second to Artie Bell (Norton) in Monday's Junior TT. (Harold Daniell's Norton was third.) When it came to the bends on the twisting Island course the new frame gave the Nortons a distinct advantage.

Featherbed frames were also successfully modified for use in off-road racing or motorcycle scrambling. In the 1950s, Ron Hankin designed a featherbed-inspired Moto Cross frame for Les Archer junior, having curved downtubes to allow for greater front suspension movement without fouling the wheel on the frame, and with heavy bracing around the steering head tube. The frame was used with Manx Norton engines prepared by tuner Ray Petty, and also with a 500 cc Norton Dominator engine.