‘He’d spent a grand on parts ut that went wrong ’
There’s no such thing as a ‘free’ bike
A seized free bike is still a free bike, at least that’s how the owner of this seized 1999 Tiger looked at it.
After being given the machine by his brother, he set about trying to get it sorted and took it to Triumph specialist Clive Wood. Clive said: “He’d probably spent a grand on parts to rebuild the first engine himself, but that went wrong, so he bought another engine from a scrappy and sent it to me to have a look.” Clive carried out a static engine check for compression, correct valve clearances and gearbox operation, but this engine was behaving in a weird way. There was a tight spot, even with the plugs out, so he thought it must be in the transmission and took the sump off to look for broken gears. A broken gearbox circlip needed replacing, but that was another red herring as the engine was still tight when the cases were back together. All that was left was a cylinder head strip and when the head came off there was a load of rust that had been scraped off the bore and was sitting on the middle piston. Clive added: “There are always open valves in one or more cylinders when an engine is left standing. Moisture will sneak in over time, even with paper stuffed into the inlets. This engine had been stored for over a year and so much rust built up that it ‘filled’ the 0.5-1mm squish band around top dead centre. It turned over easily with the cases split because that allowed the crankshaft to lift fractionally at that point.” It took Clive a couple of hours labour (£90) and new gaskets and seals (another £300), to get it all up and running again.