Coming Together

I've got the front end pretty well done with the exception of the instruments.  It took new fork tubes, fork seals, fork oil, fork caps, and new front brake cable, plus new handlebars and grips.  The headlight was reinstalled with all the wiring hooked up.  Testing revealed the headlight worked, but the horn didn't: I'll work on that later.

I think this was the first year of this type of front brake.  It is a "double leading shoe" drum brake that was about as advanced as a drum brake could be.  Still not near as good as a disk brake.

My new handlebars are narrower than the originals to make the bike feel more modern.  The grips are also more current and comfortable than the barrel grips that were stock.  I'm keeping all the old stock parts so that when I sell the bike the new owner can restore it to showroom stock if he wants:

Orv gave me his old bead blasting cabinet and I have been using it to clean up nuts and bolts.  Here is an example of what they look like before the blast treatment:

And after:

Now I can move on to the middle of the bike.  I wanted to get the front done so I can roll the bike off my workstand if I need to do any maintenance on my Honda CBR.  I installed the battery tray and the breather tube that runs along side the rear fender and out the back of the bike.  Then the left side exhaust and passenger and rider footpegs:

Not everything goes smoothly.  Remember that oil tank paint job that I bragged about in the previous post?
Just before I started to re-install it on the bike I decided to take a look inside it.  Shining a flashlight down into it and taking a peek revealed it was all gunked up with old oil grundge.  I couldn't risk that clogging up oil screens or getting into engine parts, so I tried dissolving it with paint thinner and sloshing it around.  That was going pretty slow, so I tried gasoline.  That cleaned out the oil tank, but ruined my new paint job.  I decided to do the job right and get the tank powder coated, so it is out to the powder coating shop, which conveniently belongs to my fellow riding buddy Ross' son Chris.

Slow Progress

Progress on the Triumph has been pretty slow, but that's OK.  I have plenty of time before warm, dry riding weather and I'm trying to stay under $200 per month for parts.

The most expensive parts so far have been the spokes and tires, but I also decided to get new fork tubes when I found out they were not too expensive and my old ones were not in the best of shape.  These new fork tubes turned out to be a problem, though, which is going to add more expense.  I have been noticing all along in this restoration that my bike had some differences from Orv's 68 Bonneville.  The impact of these differences finally became an issue when I attempted to put my old fork caps and bottom bolts into the new fork tubes.  They didn't go.  Thanks to some research by the parts person, Cassie, at the Portland store where I ordered the fork tubes, we discovered that my bike is an early 68 production model that apparently had some carryover 67 parts on it, and the fork tubes were one of these parts.  The thread type for the fork caps and bottom bolt were different than the fork tubes.  I have read that Triumph would make changes like that in the middle of a production run.........part of their poor quality control reputation.  Anyway, it meant either sending the fork tubes back, or getting new fork caps and bottom bolts that matched the new forks.  Since the fork caps were a little dinged up anyway, I decided to bite the bullet and for another $50 or so, get new fork caps.  Here is a pic of the bike with the new forks, fork seals, and fork gaiters installed and waiting for the fork caps to arrive:

The gas tank was removed and polished up.  Lucky for me the paint was still in good condition from the paint job I applied 20 years ago:

I removed the oil tank because I decided to repaint it.......it just wasn't quite as good as it should be.  Here it is curing inside the house where it is nice and warm:

Even while I'm waiting for parts, or money to buy parts, there are always small jobs to do to keep me busy.  One of these was to polish the cases on the right side:

I also bought some new oil hoses and fuel line and fuel filters.  The old stuff was either rotting (oil hoses), or so hard from old age they would have cracked from the vibration of the running engine (fuel lines).

Still lots of parts to find their way back onto the bike.  I am beginning the re-assembly mode.