ON THE TUBE
Ever done something so often you become blasé… then it goes wrong.
There comes a point in any project, as with this Triumph, when all the easy or big bits are done and the remaining fine detail takes time. This is when the progress starts slowing up. Luckily for me there’s no real need to adhere to a catalogue spec as the bike is just a collection of parts I’ve had lying around for years and the idea was to see if I could create something which looked reasonably like a mid-1960s ISDT style Triumph.
It is these models, used to good effect by riders such as John Giles and Roy Peplow and the one-season-only TR5A/C which made me think maybe I could do something with the bits. There are some things which have to be correct of course – things such as the insides of the engine – as while some parts are inter-changeable other bits just aren’t.
The initial engine arrived in my workshop in rural Aberdeenshire at the back end of the Nineties and had been left in boxes on the shelf or wherever else I could store them in the intervening period. It’s a distributor engine and from 1961, so things such as the gear-change quadrant are the early type and this is what is needed to go in.
There is one already with the engine but the splines are worn, the rest of the quadrant is fine so the gear lever has either been loose, or it was worn or someone has clamped it up until the slot closes – not realising all they’ve done is tighten the bolt until the slot closes and the shaft is still slack…
I did a repair on my BSA gear shaft with a part from Burton Bike Bits, but it seems a similar idea isn’t available for the Triumph one. All attempts to locate a replacement which didn’t require me to remortgage the house failed until I started to write this piece and two popped up on the internet… one has arrived and will be fitted asap.
Something else which arrived recently is the front wheel spindle which needed
a left-hand cycle thread cutting on it. This is beyond my ability with a screw cutting lathe at the moment, but to an engineering friend it was no trouble at all – thanks Ossy.
With this spindle in place, the front mudguard can be fitted, or at least laid in place properly and measured up so the new mudguard stays can be made. Once upon a time it would be a simple job to wander around an autojumble asking for mudguard stays for a BSA or Triumph, to be directed to a bundle of the things. These days it’s not quite so easy as the piles of old parts are diminishing.
Still, I’ve made mudguard stays in the past as it’s not difficult and I tend to use 10mm diameter steel tube with a 1mm wall thickness and I have an 8mm bending spring. It’s not a massive job to make some plywood formers and
bend the tube around them. Ever heard the phrase ‘more haste, less speed’? I shouldn’t rush these things, but I did, and all was well until at the last minute I decided to bend the end of the tube a slightly different way and as I was doing it I thought ‘I should heat this a little… nah! It will be okay…’
The tube broke, trapping the bending spring and ending my attempts to make a neat stay. Luckily, cutting the end of the tube off still left enough to revise its position in relation to the forks, so something can be salvaged.
Something else which proved elusive but has turned up is a shop-soiled alloy rear mudguard. I didn’t want anything too fancy in place as the whole bike isn’t a glitzy exhibition machine. All attempts to source a second-hand guard failed and I’d settled on using the steel rear
one originally on my 650 Triumph and which has been on the shelf for the last few years. This would be a stop gap and went on and looked okay, then a chance remark to Royal Enfield specialist Allan Hitchcock brought the response: “I’m sure there’s a damaged one kicking about here… it’ll likely be drilled for a Royal Enfield though…”
Not a problem says I, and what turned up was an undrilled rear guard, unpolished and ideal for such a bike as this. Also in the box was an alloy clutch lever and bracket, a dog-leg type which will also look right on this project. All I need to do now is source a similar front one as the pairing were for a disc-braked bike. I know an option is to turn a clutch one upside down but that tends to look odd, though I suppose a cover over the pivot would work… I have some of them… hmmm.