Horace Jowsey developed his lifelong love of motorcycles from the sidecar of his father’s Norton. His Dad, William Jowsey, ran the outfit in the town of Thorpe in Yorkshire, not far from Leeds. Horace and his five siblings were a regular sight in it, often with their grandmother aboard as well.
Horace had been born on April the 21st, 1941, right into the early days of World War II – the Blitz was near its peak, the Nazis had just invaded Yugoslavia and Greece earlier that same month, and both the Soviet Union and America were yet to join the conflict. The Brits, Australians, New Zealanders, and Canadians were doing their best, but the war was yet to turn in their favor.
Here we see a young Horace Jowsey on his Dad’s Norton’s fuel tank, with his Mother on the back.
Fortunately, the dark early days of the war did take a turn for the better, the conflict ended by the time Horace was four, and by the time he was in his teens he was working as a motorcycle mechanic in Yorkshire.
Horace Buys Himself A Norton
It was the late 1950s, Horace was a young man with a pay packet burning a hole in his pocket, and, as is often the case much to the worry of countless mothers, he decided to spend it on a motorcycle.
He bought himself a secondhand, silver 1957 Norton Dominator 88. It was one of the most desirable motorcycles in the world at the time, a superbike by the standards of the era, and Norton was still a force to be reckoned with at legendary races like the Isle of Man TT where it would take on all-comers and usually beat them handily. Norton’s record of 19 Isle of Man Senior TT wins wasn’t matched by Honda until 2017.
The Dominator 88 was the 500 in Norton’s range of legendary Featherbed-framed twins. It had a 500cc (actually 497cc) parallel twin, with a Lucas magneto for ignition, and a Lucas dynamo for charging. It was fitted with a fairing to hold off the English weather and the registration plate KCH 738 – amazingly its tax discs for 1960, 1961, 1962, and 1963 survive.
Horace was a good rider, it was in his blood, and he rode it hard – when the engine was disassembled and the crank was inspected years later, the telltale signs of wear on it had clearly come from riding, not from age or storage.
In 1972 Horace emigrated to Australia as a “Ten Pound Pom.” For the uninitiated, “Pom” is a colloquial term for a Brit in Australia. The Ten Pound Pom program was officially called the “Assisted Passage Migration Scheme,” but no one called it that back then either.
It was put in place by the government as part of the “Populate or Perish” policy designed to increase the Australian population, they offered tickets to travel to Australia to British citizens for just £10 a head, and children traveled free. The program ran between 1945 and the early 1980s, over a million Brits arrived in Australia this way (including my own father, uncle, and grandparents).
When Horace got his £10 ticket and boarded the ship for Australia the Norton didn’t come with him. It packed it into boxes and left it in his uncle Bert’s basement in Yorkshire, with plans to bring it to Australia in the future.
When Horace got his £10 ticket and boarded the ship for Australia the Norton didn’t come with him. He packed it into boxes and left it in his uncle Bert’s basement in Yorkshire, with plans to bring it to Australia in the future.
He didn’t know it at the time, but life would get in the way, as it often does, and the Norton would stay in the Yorkshire basement for the best part of 40 years, in conditions the family summed up as dark, cold, and wet.
The Rebuild Begins
Almost 40 years later, in 2010, the boxes containing the Norton finally followed him to Australia, and Horace started the rebuild himself using those mechanic skills he’d earned a living with over 60 years earlier in Yorkshire.
Then life intervened, his wife fell ill, he was diagnosed with dementia, and in 2018 he moved into a care home with the Norton still in pieces. His sons Chris, Andrew, Edward, and Gordon decided to finish the bike for him – Horace had always insisted he would do the job himself, so they got on with it in secret, without fanfare.
Four Sons – Two Workshops – One Norton
The first stage began in 2022 at Classic Motorcycle Restoration in Gateshead, New South Wales. The frame was repaired and painted, along with the fenders, engine brackets and other hardware. The wheels were rebuilt with new rims and spokes, and the triple clamps and swing arm were refinished.
The Norton would stay in a Yorkshire basement for the best part of 40 years, in conditions the family summed up as dark, cold, and wet.
Some parts were vapor blasted, and machining on the engine and gearbox got underway. Many parts had been refinished but nothing was assembled. In 2024 the owner retired, the shop closed, and the project stopped dead in its tracks.
That year the whole lot, finished and unfinished parts alike, was boxed went to Sabotage Motorcycles in Marrickville, Sydney. Andy Door and the Sabotage team scoped it as a one year job, it took two, but it would have been worth it even if it had taken 10.
They built the bike into a roller first, simply to find out what was there and what wasn’t. The answer was a long list of curveballs:
- The paint job had been left incomplete, and the painted parts didn’t match.
- The crank was worn.
- The tinware was badly pitted, and the oil tank had holes in it like a sieve.
- There were three different versions of the fork among the parts.
- The gearbox kicker gear had been assembled the wrong way round.
- The boxes also held a scattering of Kawasaki parts, courtesy of two nephews in England.
- None of the Kawasaki parts were used.
- The oil tank was restored rather than replaced.
So much of the engine had been left half-finished that Sabotage rebuilt it again from the crank up. The crankshaft was reground and the rods resized with new bolts, the valves were re-cut and re-seated, and the bottom end was repaired with the correct bearings. New oversize pistons were sourced and fitted.
Documentation on the finer details of Norton’s machines from this period is patchy at best. The team worked from a single exploded parts diagram, a color-coded parts manual they built to track every part, and the advice of veteran Norton owners online who were all keen to offer what help they could on the time-sensitive project.
Specialist suppliers Classic Bike Spares and BHM Trading tracked down parts that were no longer available – the aim was a period-correct motorcycle. Roughly 90% to 95% of the fasteners were replaced with the correct Whitworth, CEI, and other imperial hardware, nothing metric went on. Where the right fastener couldn’t be bought, Sabotage made it in-house and finished it to look original.
The finished Norton starts on one kick. There’s no modern electronic ignition, just the refurbished points. The speedometer works again and still shows the bike’s original miles, the chrome tank panels and a lion badge in the headlamp were restored and refitted.
The finished Norton starts on one kick. There’s no modern electronic ignition, just the refurbished points. The speedometer works again and still shows the bike’s original miles, the chrome tank panels and a lion badge in the headlamp were restored and refitted. The fairing stayed off to ensure the bike would have looked just as it did when it rolled off the Norton production line all those years ago.
The Reveal – Horace Sees His Norton Again
The bike was finished in April of 2026 and revealed to Horace at the Sabotage workshop on his 85th birthday. The family filmed it not knowing whether he would recognize the motorcycle at all. The moment they feared came first. “This is not my bike,” he said.
Seconds later it turned around: “That’s beautiful. That’s awesome,” Horace said. “I remember it. I remember it.” Then, without prompting, he said: “I was the owner of a Norton 500cc – a silver one.”
He sat on it and heard it run for the first time in more than 50 years. Then he was handed the one job still left to do. The horn was the only part Sabotage hadn’t installed, it had been left off deliberately as the last piece, so that Horace could put it on and be the one to officially finish the restoration.
After Horace saw his bike complete and running for the first time in well over 50 years he remembered it, in spite of his dementia diagnosis, and the plan is now to install some rear footpegs and take him for a ride.
Norton has now carried the family’s motorcycling legacy through three generations – William’s sidecar outfit, Horace’s Dominator, and the four sons who put it back together. They plan to keep filming Horace with the bike on future visits, recording what he remembers and what the Norton brings back. Rear footpegs are going to be installed and once they’re on, Horace will take his first ride on the back of his own motorcycle.
You can visit Sabotage Motorcycles here if you’d like to see some of the other projects they’re working on, or follow them here on Facebook – Instagram – YouTube.
Images provided by Sabotage Motorcycles + The Jowsey Family
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
