Kenny Cummings’ Norton Obsession

[Admin]

“I love the ride, I love the race, but I also love the production side of things. There’s very much these fundamentals about it.” (Peter Domorak/)

“Vintage motorcycle racing has taught me that you can’t always have absolutes in things,” Kenny Cummings says as he regards the 1936 Norton International sitting on a lift at his third-floor workshop in a massive old industrial building in Jersey City.

Cummings is a racer, a ­musician, and the gregarious owner of NYC Norton, a two-man enterprise that specializes in high-end Norton ­restorations and vintage racing.

“I love the ride, I love the race, but I also love the production side of things. There’s very much these fundamentals about it. It’s been a push-pull thing, growing up as an artistic kid,” Cummings says by way of explaining his affinity for both the ordered, objective world of the workbench and the unpredictable world of vintage racing. “Art is all about not-absolutes.”

NYC Norton is housed in a 4,200-square-foot loft in Jersey City. Cummings’ shop was originally part of Spannerland, a cooperative he and several moto nuts set up 14 years ago. Next door, Cosentino Engineering builds several components for Cummings, including a Showa cartridge upgrade kit for Roadholder forks. (Peter Domorak/)

It’s no wonder Cummings seems most at home on the racing line. It traces the margin between the predictable and the unknowable. ­Clinging to it is at once a dogged pursuit and an acceptance of ­outcomes beyond control.

Cummings moved to New York in 1986 to make it in the music business, emboldened by a faith in the vastness of possibility and driven by the thrill of the pursuit. He wound up touring and programming synthesizers for the likes of Elvis Costello and Aretha Franklin, as well as landing a lucrative job in the art world. But all the while, there was a focus-narrowing intruder in the background: the Norton motorcycle.

In 1995, with the childhood memory of burning his leg on his dad’s Commando seared into his consciousness, Cummings bought his first Norton—and pretty quickly wrapped it around a tree.

Detail of the NYC Norton Trackmaster Commando. (Peter Domorak/)

“If you’ve ever crashed a motorcycle,” he says, “the first reaction you have after you get up and brush yourself off is, ‘I gotta get back to two seconds before this happened.’ I focused on getting my bike back to where it was—and then making it better.”

So, he started a blog to ­document the process, calling it “NYC Norton.”

A toolbox lid pasted with family photos, an “I’m supporting the Manx GP” sticker, and one of the band Blonde Redhead. ( Peter Domorak/)

“The motorcycle thing was a hobby, but I realized I had a knack for it. When I bought my Com­mando, I didn’t own a wrench. I said, ‘OK, I’ve got to fix this.’ It was less about testosterone and motorcycles and the culture that came with that, and more about the mechanics and the beauty of it.”

Today, restoring Commandos is NYC Norton’s bread and butter, but Cummings emphasizes the importance of racing: “I really try to apply the racing [principles]—only in the reliability sense—to the builds. A streetbike has to be able to endure like a racebike.”

Matchless G50s and a Commando engine on the bench. (Peter Domorak/)

And Cummings knows a thing or two about making vintage racebikes go the distance. Last year, racer Tim Joyce won the AHRMA Formula 750 Championship aboard an NYC Norton Seeley twin. The team also races single-cylinder AJS 7Rs and Matchless G50s, assembling its engines using parts sourced from its UK-based partner, ­ Minnovation Racing.

Cummings is himself an ­accom­plished racer, having won four consecutive BEARS (British Euro­pean American Racing Series) championships from 2007-2010 aboard a Seeley Commando. Not bad for a self-described New York art kid who didn’t start racing until he was 40.

Cummings says of NYC Norton’s Seeley Commando racers: “When you’re on the gas, these bikes are incredible; when you’re not riding them hard, they just fight you all the way. Featherbeds are a little easier, a little more forgiving.” (Peter Domorak/)

When the economy tanked in 2008, Cummings lost his day job. His motorcycles had by then earned a reputation at racetracks across the country. People wanted NYC Nortons. The transition from “earn a salary to go racing” to “build bikes to go racing” dictated his new trajectory, further stimulating his relentless spirit of pursuit. Not that there haven’t been setbacks.

“My entire existence, particularly in racing, has been waiting for that day to buy a Manx, and instead I’ve bought it 50 times over with ­Commandos and G50s and ­everything else.”

NYC Norton’s motto is “You can’t fake a fast lap.” That pretty much sums it up. (Peter Domorak/)

Cummings recalls the first time he rode a Minnovation G50 at ­Cadwell Park, Lincolnshire, England. Imitating owner Martin Page’s northern British accent, Cummings says, “‘Get yourself a G50, Kenny. It’s meant to be taken apart on dirty continental circus floors.’ And he’s right. There’s nothing to them. They’re just a crankshaft, a chain, a camshaft up top, and a piston that goes up and down. It couldn’t be simpler. You can have the motor out in 20 minutes, fix it, and have it back together in an hour.”

And this is his world: fast laps and parts spread over a concrete paddock floor, the absolutes of a crew chief’s stopwatch, the gears and valves and pistons that move a body through space.

But in the world of vintage motorcycle racing, where modern engineering processes are applied to vintage architecture, performance itself is never absolute. The pursuit of it has taken Cummings down a warren with no clear way out.

“I have the best job in the world,” Cummings says. “I have wonderful customers who pay me to make the most beautiful thing in the world. I’m building the bikes knowing my customer and what they want to get out of them.” (Peter Domorak/)

“If someone could have told me that day I drove to West Virginia and picked up my first Commando how much my life was going to change, I don’t know if I would have done it,” Cummings reflects. “It’s scary to think about what I was before and after that Commando. It’s consumed me. I believe everyone has some things inside of them they have no idea about, and motorcycling has forced this to come out of me.

“I’m probably going to do it until I die,” Cummings says. “Or I’m going to stop very abruptly and do something completely different.”

View the full article

[paulc]

Fascinating stuff