Advice Norton Commando Interstate 1972

[bikerbob]

Norton Commando Interstate 1972
Could someone advise please, I am considering buying the above bike that needs total restoration. The bike is all there but it has a twin leading shoe front brake, all bikes that I have seen of that era have got a disc brake on the front. Did they produce any with drum front brakes. Thankyou.

[Blue]

Commandos were produced with a twin-leading-shoe drum brake between 1968-1973ish.  I'm not sure off the top of my head when they started producing them with a disc on the front, but generally speaking the drum brakes are more desirable from a collectors point of view.  And to be perfectly honest I always thought the Norton TLS was a better brake than the disc anyway, but that's only my experience.

Also, it's not too hard to retro-fit earlier commandos with disc front-ends, but you need to track down all the correct fork parts and brakes which, whilst not uncommon, can be expensive to source.

Good luck with the project

[bikerbob]

Thanks for the speedy reply.

[L.A.B.]

The factory first started using the Norton-Lockheed disc front brakes on the highly tuned Combat models from early 1972, and the standard tuned models would still have had the drum front brake, although either brake could have been fitted as a customer option at that time, I believe.
When the factory stopped making the tuned Combat models (because of the high number of warranty claims) the factory continued fitting the disc front brake and the front drum brake was eventually phased out during 1973. All 850 models had front disc brakes, and the 1975-on 850 MkIII Commando also had a rear disc brake.