The Ace Cafe day was great, if a bit damp! Hopefully the pictures give an impression of the day. To get to and from the Ace I had a 100 mile ride which was really good for giving the bike a bit of shake down following the work on it. Overall the bike ran brilliantly, it isn't fast but it was fine on the road and the smaller front wheel together with the Avon tyres seemed to dial out any evil handling woes...
But there were problems. First the speedo conked out, having pulled it apart I can see that the internals of the unit work and all the cogs turn so I am fairly certain that the fault is either in the cable or the rear wheel mounted drive unit. I will have to replace them as its an MOT failure if the speedo is not working. Second, the front forks, despite being rebuilt, are still a bit limited. They are the original internal spring forks and are well known for bottoming out fairly regularly. So with this in mind I have bought all the parts to convert to later shuttle valve, external spring forks. I have just about built them up which was a pretty easy job. Next job is to take the old forks out of the yokes and replace with the new ones, not difficult but a bit of a pain...
Aside from that it seems fine!! Also, the fork transplant means that I now have a full 5TA front end - yokes, bars, wheel, brake etc; so I'm on the look out for a ridgid frame, I feel a bobber coming on...!
Monday, 20 September 2010
Saturday, 11 September 2010
Ace Cafe Reunion 2010
Today was the reunion at the Ace Cafe, an annual pilgrimage for aged rockers and old bike fans... I took the Triumph along and was amazed at the amount of attention it got! Anyway, hopefully the pictures give a flavour.
Getting ready to go... Excuse the cheesy look!!!
I don't normally like Hinkley bikes, but this one was pretty cool!:
Plenty of music:
Ace gets dwarfed by the new Wembley.
Getting ready to go... Excuse the cheesy look!!!
I don't normally like Hinkley bikes, but this one was pretty cool!:
Plenty of music:
Ace gets dwarfed by the new Wembley.
Saturday, 4 September 2010
Triumph 5TA Road worthy!
I haven't posted on here for ages, but progress has been made with the bike; it is now road worthy! All that was really left to do was to connect the front brake, make a front mudguard and give the bike a general tidy up. At the same time I also changed the exhaust pipes to megaphones that are shorter than the previous pipes, making them much easier to actually mount, and give the bike a much deeper rumble when its on the road!
The front brake was pretty easy to sort out, but a complete faff when it came to shortening the brake cable. Any cable I could find that was the correct outer length was way to short when it cam to inner. In the end I bought a kit and made my own which, so far, seems to be working fine!
The front mudguard is a simple alloy one that I have cut down to make it more in keeping with the bike. It has been mounted to forks using converter plates from Unity Equipe and it looks pretty neat!
So the bike is road worthy!! Having just done a 50 mile blast on it, there are a few things that need to be sorted. The speedo cable seems to haven given up the ghost so that will need to be replaced. There is a leak on the primary side which isn't bad enough to cause any problems but it does need looking at. The plan is for the engine to come out over the winter and have a bit of a rebuild, so I'll probably just keep on eye on this until then and sort it with the build. So what does it look like? Not to bad!!
View over the bars... ish!!
So the aim of getting the bike ready for the Ace Cafe reunion has just about been acheived!! Lets hope the weather holds for next week and that nothing happens to the bike in the next week....!!
The front brake was pretty easy to sort out, but a complete faff when it came to shortening the brake cable. Any cable I could find that was the correct outer length was way to short when it cam to inner. In the end I bought a kit and made my own which, so far, seems to be working fine!
The front mudguard is a simple alloy one that I have cut down to make it more in keeping with the bike. It has been mounted to forks using converter plates from Unity Equipe and it looks pretty neat!
So the bike is road worthy!! Having just done a 50 mile blast on it, there are a few things that need to be sorted. The speedo cable seems to haven given up the ghost so that will need to be replaced. There is a leak on the primary side which isn't bad enough to cause any problems but it does need looking at. The plan is for the engine to come out over the winter and have a bit of a rebuild, so I'll probably just keep on eye on this until then and sort it with the build. So what does it look like? Not to bad!!
View over the bars... ish!!
So the aim of getting the bike ready for the Ace Cafe reunion has just about been acheived!! Lets hope the weather holds for next week and that nothing happens to the bike in the next week....!!
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