On The Bench - Norton Dominator Hub

I've been looking for a standard Norton front hub for a little while now. They're easy enough to come by, and generally can be had for very little money. But of course, I had to make things more difficult than that. I wanted one that was vented, and I wanted the vent holes to be of a certain size, as I feel there's a certain proportion that's needed, as well as not wanting to remove too much of the casting and jeopardize it's strength. Of course I could easily have gotten a standard hub and milled it myself to the exact size I wanted. Simple enough task on a mill, but you need an indexing head and a bunch of patience. I have access to both of those things, so that should be the end of the story, right? Well, no, it isn't, because what I wanted was an original hub that was vented back in the day. A hub that some young lad back in the 1960's had done up to customize his featherbed Norton. It was fairly common practice back then for cafe racer guys to do such a modification, and while it probably has very little actual cooling affect, it certainly looks the part. And I've been sitting on this John Tickle brake plate and really wanted to go the distance in mating it to a period correct vented hub.

After and encounter with Ed Zender, owner of Morrie's Place, at the Davenport swap meet, I got to talking to him about what I was looking for. He had a vented hub at the swap meet, but it was set up with a standard Commando twin leading shoe brake plate, and there would have been no need to separate the two. And the vent holes on that hub were smaller than I was looking for. Ed told me had more vented hubs back at the shop, and we made some arrangements for me to head up that way at some point. Fast forward about 2 months, and I finally had enough time on a Saturday to make the trek north. A phone call ahead of time is always in order, and Ed agreed that he'd dig thru his parts and see if he could have something ready for me.

Upon arriving at Morrie's Place, Ed promptly placed a hub on the counter, and it was exactly what I was after. Perfect size vent holes and proportion to the hub. At least in my opinion. A price was agreed upon, and it was all mine.

My apologies for the terrible photo quality. After getting back to the garage, I was anxious to get started, and snapped these quickly.

These hubs are of course cast aluminum, and the castings are a bit rough. Which in a way, is the beauty of the piece. It sort of just is what it is. But with some elbow grease and a lot of patience, they clean up nicely.

This is the point in the post where I again emphasize NOT to bead blast these cast aluminum parts. It simply looks terrible and also opens up the already porous aluminum and makes them prone to getting dirty much quicker. If the aluminum is in way too bad of shape, or if you're the type of person that just doesn't have the time or patience, then at least do yourself a favor and send them out for vapor blasting. There's a number of places you can send these parts to have them vapor blasted for about $35, and it's much better for the part, gets them spotlessly clean and peens the pours closed so they stay nice. But, in all honestly, this is ones of those parts that you can do at home with a soft bristle wire brush.

I'll remove the bearings, clean the entire thing, polish the vented face, lace it to a wheel, skim the drum surface and then it'll be ready for action.

A special thanks to Ed for accommodating what I was looking for. If you're ever in the Northern Illinois area, or anywhere close to it for that matter, do yourself a favor and stop by. In the meantime, click the link below and get information for how to contact them.

Morrie's Place