Triumph Tweaks

I just couldn't stand that skinny back tire.  When I found out I had a slow leak in it, I decided to bite the bullet and get one that would look better.  So I spent another $87 on top of the $105 for the first tire, plus a whole afternoon of work changing it, to end up with this difference:

Old Look

New Look

Worth the money and effort?  I think so, but sometimes I wish I wasn't such  perfectionist.  

I'm also trying to come up with an acceptable mirror arrangement.  I don't like riding without having a good view behind me.  I bought some modern levers that have a threaded hole for a mirror, and I like the way the mirror turned out, but the clutch lever doesn't have the same leverage as the stocker and the clutch pull is stiffer.  I'll have to ride it awhile to see if it is acceptable or not.  

I have a lever for the brake side, but haven't installed it yet.  To make the lever fit the stock cable ends I have to drill out the new levers, which probably makes them non-returnable, so I'm doing one step at a time.

Here are a couple more pics of the bike with the new tire: 

  

Jenny Got Her Bike

Here it is, ready to head for San Francisco.  I've done everything I can to make this bike ready to ride with no need for anything for at least the next 5,000 miles:  

I also did everything I could do to make sure the truck made the trip, including a wheel alignment the day before we left.  But wouldn't you know, on the way home from the wheel alignment the truck missed a couple of times.  Nothing to do for it but to head out as planned.  We were going to take two days to get to SF, and sure enough, periodically the truck had a hesitation from a missfire.  I was worried it would get worse, and toward the end of the day I got an inspiration to put some Seafoam in the gas.  I've never used the stuff before, but I have heard of people who rave about it, so I thought I'd give it a try as the miss did not seem electrical, but maybe fueling related.  So, in Grants Pass I got a tank of gas and put in a can of Seafoam and guess what?.......the truck never missed again for the rest of the trip there and back.  Might make me a believer in snake oil.

Saturday Jenny and I went for a ride......she on the Honda and me on her old Kawasaki 250.

The bike in the background is her neighbor Joe's big BMW.  Her neighbor on the other side also has a bike.
Our destination was Alice's Restaurant, the iconic San Francisco bike hangaout, and a 90 mile round trip ride from Jen's house.  The approach to Alice's is along Skyline drive and it was really wet and cool.  I don't know where all the water come from, but the pavement was soaked.  Jenny was enjoying her new heated grips, and I was missing them.

You can expect to see some exotic bikes at Alice's, and here is one example:

Lots of fine custom metalwork in that bike.

After we got back from Alice's, I cleaned up both bikes and we took pictures of the Ninja for a Craigslist posting:

Sunday was Easter dinner and visiting with Carolyn's other daughter Carol Anne and her frind Chris who flew up from SoCal, Jenny's son Jonas (daughter Adena was in Hawaii with a friend), and Jenny's friend Damion.

Monday we had an 8 am appointment at the local DMV to transfer the title.  We had gone through this process with the Ninja two years ago, but this time it didn't seem to go quite as smoothly.......more like what I expected from a California DMV, actually.

Lots of paperwork:

The place just opened at 8, but already there was a long line of people who did not have appointments:

But the job got done, and then Jenny suited up:

And was off to work on her new bike:

Triumph Test Ride

We had a string of warm, dry days at the end of last week, and the roads got dry enough for me to take the Triumph out without fear of getting it dirty.  Unfortunately, by Friday afternoon when I got time to go for a ride, Carolyn was out of town, so there is no video of me riding off on my test ride.

Given the fact that she was not there to come and get me if the bike quit, and also due to the fact that our steep driveway means not being able to push it back to the house regardless of where it quits, I started out with baby steps.  First, I made a few turns around in the garage apron, and that is when I first got caught in the backwards foot controls.  I was heading towards the garage after gassing it a little, and when I went to put on the rear brake I had a moment of panic when it seemed I had no brake.  Then I realized I was automatically pushing down with my right foot, which was the shift lever on the Triumph.

I made a few loops around the garage apron and then cautiously headed down the driveway, all the time chanting the mantra "left foot brake, left foot brake".  Then I rode one way from the house for about a mile and then back and the other way for a couple of miles and back.  Then the seven mile loop around behind the house, and finally the twelve mile loop to Amboy and back through Farger Lake.  Altogether I rode about 25 miles and the bike never missed a beat.

Here are my impressions of the bike:

It steers really nicely......light and easy to turn.

The riding position is surprisingly cramped.  The seat feels low in relation to the footpegs and my feet are pretty far forward.

Suspension works, but isn't all that great.

Brakes are better than I expected, but it took awhile to even begin to get used to that left foot rear brake.  Thankfully, the front is still the same as what I am used to and that is the most important one anyway.

Engine vibration is bad.  Back in the day, Triumph twins were noted for their smoothness, but compared to a modern bike, especially my CBR, it is a real paint shaker.  Sometimes it seems the CBR is almost too smooth; the other day I was going 75 mph on the freeway for quite a ways before I realized I was still in fifth gear, not sixth.  The bike is so quiet and smooth there are not the normal clues.

Power seems plenty adequate.  I only got up to about 50 mph indicated, but even with only four gears, there is plenty of torque to climb hills in top gear.  The sound, of course, is wonderful.

It's no fun to start.  I can stand on the kickstarter when on the compression stroke, and nothing moves.  I have to make a real stiff legged jump on it to get through the stroke, and often that still isn't fast enough turnover for it to start.

It reminded me a lot of driving the Mustang........pretty physical and somewhat crude, but cool.  Things were really different back in the sixties, but so was I.

Well, no blog is any good without pictures, right?  So here are a couple of pics I took while on a ride with my friends last Thursday over to the coast to get some fish and chips.

This herd of elk was at a wildlife viewing area we stopped at, and is the largest herd of elk I have ever seen.

 And here is a small herd of motorcyclists.

The Triumph Goes Electronic

I had planned to convert to electronic ignition on the Triumph, and some starting problems convinced me that now was better than later.  Since my friend Orv had already done this with his '68 Bonneville I figured the easy way out would be to copy the system he installed and ask him to help me install mine.  In addition to the electronic ignition, I also went electronic with the charging system and got rid of the old voltage regulator/rectifier and the attendant Zener diode and heat sink.

These are the new parts:

Orv came over yesterday afternoon and we launched into the project.  His experience with having done the job before was invaluable and saved me a bunch of time and likely some mistakes.  Here he is checking over the directions:

When we were done we had this small pile of unneeded old parts:

After about four hours the job was done and the bike started and ran well.  It always feels really good to get a running engine after doing major work like that.  Points and condenser ignitions were always a pain, and the new system should be much more reliable and require less maintenance.  To celebrate, we went out to dinner at a new local restaurant.

It's pretty rare that I can have somebody to help me with a motorcycle project and it was fun working with Orv and, for a change, being the guy who fetches tools and does the grunt work.

A New Motorcycle Experience

Our friends Ray and Ellen invited us to take a spin on their new sidecar rig.  It was the first time I ever tried one, and boy was it different.  Sidecar rigs are real old-school and so funky looking that they are the height of cool.  I wore my old-school helmet and jacket for the occasion.

I had read that they are "different" to ride.......turning left is harder than turning right and acceleration causes a pull one way while slowing causes a pull the other way.  And of course they don't lean.

We probably rode it a half mile or so, but that was enough.  I started out riding in my normal middle lane position but quickly realized I was scaring Carolyn with near misses of mail box posts and trash cans alongside the road.  It was all just really weird.  I guess you could get used to it, but it's hard for me to believe I could ever go more than 25 mph.  Another problem is that they take up a lot of space in your garage.

Anyway, it was a unique experience and we appreciated the chance to try it.

Starting the Color Change

First job is to remove all the red bits from the new bike and start swapping over parts from my old bike. Removing the fairings has to be done carefully because of the hidden tabs that I don't want to break.  It takes some effort to separate some of the body panels, but its a fine line between enough effort and too much.

The seats are easy to remove and then comes the side panels:

Off

Then the middle cowl.  This picture shows some of the hidden tabs that I have to be careful not to break:

Middle cowl off:

Next the instrument surround and the headlight and windshield cowling:

The lower cowl and the rear cowl:

And finally, the gas tank.  I had to have Carolyn help me with this.  It took more than two hands to hold the gas tank up while at the same time disconnecting the fuel line from the fuel pump, which is inside the gas tank.

At least the front fender on my bike is the same color and doesn't have to be switched.  The chance to get a look at what's under the fairings on this bike makes me realize this is one very compact, complicated piece of machinery.  What a change from the Triumph.

I ended up with this pile of parts:

I also drilled and tapped new holes for the Ram mount for my Garmin Zumo GPS to be moved over to the new bike:

Since I left the heated grips on Jenny's bike, I bought new ones and installed them on my new bike:

With the lower cowl gone, it was easier to install the centerstand from my old bike:

Next week I'll start taking all the color parts off my old bike and then swap them over to my new bike, but for the rest of this week I'm going to do some riding as the weather is looking good.  I may even get the Triumph out for a spin.

Jenny's New Bike

Well, sort of.  It's actually my old bike.  Well, sort of.  It's getting complicated and is going to take some explanation.

Jenny has been riding for two years and the Kawasaki 250 that I fixed up for her has been a great bike to learn on, but now she is ready for a move up.  There is nothing wrong with a 250, especially for a city commuter, but her 2006 Ninja is a design that goes back to the 1980's and a modern fuel injected bike would be a significant improvement.  The Ninja is also getting up in mileage, with about 35,000 miles on it.  So shortly after I bought my 2014 Honda CBR500R I realized it would be a perfect next bike for her.  She has ridden it a few times and likes it.  Since California rules allow a family member to gift a vehicle to another family member and avoid sales taxes, I decided to give Jenny my bike in return for whatever she can get for the Kawasaki.

That was the plan, but I ran into a couple of hurdles.  The first was that Jen didn't like the color of my bike.

Too "patriotic" she claimed.  You have to cut the girl some slack.......she lives in San Francisco where being patriotic is akin to being a conservative and definitely uncool.

OK, so I would find a used 2013 or 2014 that was in the color she liked (red), gift her that one, and keep mine.  I really like my bike and was perfectly happy to keep it, but I had Craigslist searches going all up and down the West Coast and I couldn't find another one that would work.  What turned out to be a serious problem was that in order to import a non-California smog compliant vehicle into California it had to have more than 7500 miles on it.  Most bikes I saw on Craigslist were left-over dealer models or used bikes with very low mileage.  I finally decided to get the best price I could on a used red one with less than 7500 miles and swap the colored parts with my bike, which has almost 14,000 miles on it and would be no problem.  A couple of weeks ago I found a private owner with a pristine red 2014 with less than 3000 miles at a terrific price, so I bought it.  This, then, is what Jen's bike is going to look like, but it will not actually be this bike, but will be mine with the red tank and plastic bits:

Today I started the conversion.  The first thing to do it remove the hard case brackets and the centerstand from my bike, so they could be switched over to the new bike.  I need a centerstand because I often take multi-day trips by myself and need to get the rear wheel off the ground to lube the chain. It was nice to be working with metric fasteners again.  I can look at a metric nut or bolt and know what socket or wrench I need for it, whereas with the Triumph and its wonky Whitworth or British Standard fasteners I could never figure out what I needed, and sometimes nothing seemed to work.   Here are the luggage brackets:

and removed, with the passenger grab handles back on:

The centerstand:

That was a bit harder to get off as it has a VERY strong spring that has to be unhooked.

Removing the fairings is not going to be easy.  Honda motorcycles are known for their excellent fit and finish, and the way they get such close fitting, rattle free body parts is with a lot of fasteners, of all types......some visible, but most hidden.  I have the service manual for the bikes, so I should be able to figure it out, but as an example of what the directions look like, here is a page for removing just one of the side fairings:

You might think it would be easier to just swap the odometer, but to get to the instrument cluster you have to remove almost all of the fairings anyway.  Since I am going to take some kind of hit money-wise I might as well gain a bike with more than 10,000 miles less than my current one.