What You Been Doing With Your Triumph Today

Absolutely nothing as I was severely hungover :face_with_spiral_eyes:

That bike night Yamaha 500/ 3 … :face_with_monocle:

No idea what the crack is as there was nobody to ask.
Nice though

Finished cleaning and polishing my tiger. She is looking extremely pleased with herself.


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While out yesterday I passed a car on the local coast road in a “spirited” fashion and just as I got back on my side of the road I noticed a guy scrabbling to get his camera pointed at me. Thought it was a community speed thing going on but turned out to be Furness Bike pics Facebook thing. If I’d known I would have styled it up a bit😃


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Had a spin to Haweswater this evening. Really quiet up that neck of the woods :smiley:




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Love it up that neck of the woods

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I saw a female cyclist, a couple walking a dog and one other walker on the whole road between Shap and Haweswater. Bliss😊

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Did you have difficulty overtaking the female cyclist? :wink:

She was going the opposite way unfortunately :joy:

Stunning scenery and weather @Dawsy!

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Oh deep deep joy :heart_eyes:when you discover that the 55 year old crankshaft big end and bearing journals are all still within spec. and standard shells are gonna bish the bosh…

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Awaiting new main bearings for the White One so had a look at the Green One’s remaining oil drips (as I find them really annoyingly annoying).
I was convincing myself that one was the gearbox main shaft high gear oil seal. So cleaned everything off, made sure the gearbox had plenty of oil and left it on the side stand overnight. Bone dry today…


So then I had a brainstorm brainwave as I was bleeding the back brakes on the Red One and the White One. (Design on these early disc brake models was a bit sketchy as the bleed nipple is below the pistons, pffft. So the caliper has to come off to tip it up to bleed - and the back wheel spindle needs to be withdrawn to get the caliper off, pffft - it’s a bit of a pain in the bum).

…It’s the bloody leak from the push rod tube!!! Aha…


It’s leaking out of the tube and then down the split in the crankcases! Down there for dancin’, ya bloody little bugger you, gotcha now…over…thank you, welcome… :slightly_smiling_face:

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Today I’ve been very stupid with my Triumph…

On way home from holiday on Friday I had engine temperature warning light come on whilst stuck in traffic, so I resorted to killing engine at stops until on open road where things seemed fine. Sure enough, when home found fan wasn’t coming on, so today I set about investigating.

Following trusty Haynes manual I first checked the fuse, which was fine, then got at connector under tank, but not having handy cables I thought that instead of putting 12V from battery onto fan wire to test it, I’d be easier to get TuneECU to do fan test and look at voltage with multimeter. Sure enough, I could hear relay click and 12V appear on connector so decided problem was with fan, bugger, a new one costs £250.

Even more of a problem was actually getting at fan, I could unbolt it easily (thankfully no rusted fasteners) but to get it out I would have to take radiator off. So I drained the coolant system and tried wrestling it out. Not meeting success I resorted to subscribing to Triumph service manual to see what the ‘correct’ procedure was. Found out that was to remove the engine cradle, the same cradle which I had jack under supporting bike. :frowning:

In the end I resorted to sacrificing blood from my knuckles whilst using three small screwdrivers like mini tyre irons to get coolant hose off engine. Only then with radiator and fan off I decided to double check it by connecting up to battery, and the fan worked! And to add to my stupidity, I had fan resting on seat and the blades put a slash in the coccyx cushion. (I have a spare for an old seat fortunately).

So, it seems like fan problem is a high resistance in the wiring or relay which are probably very inaccessible, so it’s time for a stiff drink and return to this tomorrow…

Forks are out, because I’d decided to referb them and do headstock bearings. Also on the list to do is chain and sprockets as the 1000 mile holiday had produced 20mm extra slack so chain must buggered (done 25k miles so not too bad).

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Impressed with your patience @BrownMouse . Hope the bike goes back together without to many issues.

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Sounds like you went the route that we all would’ve tbh @BrownMouse so definitely not being silly whatsoever

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Today was more bike dismantling…

Service manual also said to get battery compartment lid off, which was rather daunting being as there’s 7 sets of wires and connectors intertwined with it in various ways. As I started to untangle that I was thinking that I’d never get it back together no matter how many photo’s I took. However, it looked to me like the battery holder would come out without the lid so I checked Haynes manual and it implied it did, phew! Finally, after 2 hours I had sight of the relays, though only fingertip access in bowels of bike.

Think I found my radiator fan problem…

I’ve ordered a new relay but was worried how to clean up the socket.

Would love to spray in some solvent cleaner in, but all around there is ECU, regulator and ABS modulator, plus other relays which might not like that. So decided to just spray in some soapy water and use a toothbrush (about all I could get into the space). Relays seem to have dialectic grease on contacts so there’s probably muck stuck in the relay socket but I don’t know what I can do about that. Decided to just clean up old relay pins and put back in and out a couple of times to try and dislodge any crap.

Have ordered 3 new relays, as was thinking of a preventative replacement of the neighbours, but the wire bundle there is stiff and short and goes into an inaccessible connector (to the ECU I think). Will probably leave well alone.

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Does your wife know you borrowed her toothbrush?

A request and a question.

The request is that you check whether there’s a more specific category available for a post, or thread. I can split and move things around if necessary but if you’re not familiiar with the available categories, have a quick look around.

The question is, would it make sense to people if I extend the 'Builds, Restorations and Projects to include maintenance, or would people rather post those sort of threads under one of the Triumph categories?
Advantage of the first option is it keeps the type of topics together and we can tag the type of bike for filtering (thinking of new people coming in and exploring, here) . The advantage of the second is that it’s naturally under a category for the model, but some long, iinteresting threads will be mixed up with all the other stuff.

Thoughts?

I did consider that, but didn’t find a category that fitted. Thinking about this, my stuff could go under Bonneville section, but perhaps a repairs/maintenance category better? Nothing else has been added to this thread that’s not relevant, so you could split this thread at my first post, with a title like ‘Speedmaster radiator fan fixing’.