TIGER TIPS

Thanks for December’s RealClassic. Just the thing to read during this stormy weather. I did notice a few things of concern.

Firstly, the lady riding the very old BSA risked getting the tails of her vast coat caught up in the chain and rear sprocket, which could have thrown her off the machine. Hardly a risk worth taking just to get a photo, surely?

Secondly, I have a Triumph T100R, a ’71, having obtained it in a trade with a ’69 TR6. I entirely agree that it – the T100R – feels as if it needs higher gearing, and like Frank feel reluctant to use much more than 4000rpm. The T100R was obviously designed to be revved. Without doing so, overtaking from, say, 50mph has to be planned, whereas with the TR6 you opened it up and it flew.

I did notice a few errors in your piece. The front brake is 8” not 7” – the same as the larger twins and triples until the conical hub type was produced, a brake which the T100R fortunately never received. The twin leading shoe early type in 7” was fitted to the BSA 441 Shooting Star and the B25 between 196970, a fine brake for much lighter machines and the T100s with the exception of T100T and T100R.

The exhaust camshaft of the T100R is part number E9984 whereas the T100C is E9983, the T100R tappets are E4040 ‘racing type’ – Triumph’s words not mine – and the T100C’s are E3753.

Lastly the gearbox sprocket has 19 teeth on the T100R as opposed to 18 teeth on the T100C and the wide ratio (intermediate) gear ratios were introduced on T100Cs delivered to the East Coast of the USA, the West Coast deliveries receiving standard ratio gearing. Possibly the gearbox casings were stamped accordingly as the old pre-unit boxes were.

I’ve always liked the look of the exhausts on the T100C from when one was roadtested by Motor Cycle in 1967. But having seen them in the flesh since, I think that the silencers stick out too far to be attractive, even though the front and side views are great. For me a motorcycle needs to be a work of art and styling has always influenced my purchases as much as anything else. A thing of beauty, be it a T100R, a DBD34, A65 Spitfire or a Triumph Hurricane, is a joy forever.

It’s curious how different research resources provide different facts. I did the research on the Daytona and the two sources I used both give the final drive sprockets on both T100C and T100R as 46T; the TR5T is quoted as 53T, which explains a lot. Gearbox sprockets on all three are quoted by both sources as 26T. I didn’t actually look up part numbers, I’m afraid, but again my sources quote the internal ratios on T100C and T100R as being the same: the TR5T ratios are again different. And my own T100C certainly has a 7” front brake, I didn’t measure that on the T100R, instead relying on the usual sources. They do look the same, however… Frank W