Sparks make me smile

I got out to the garage for an hour last night, pretty much looking for things to do. This bike came with a Boyer electronic ignition system and a Tympanium unit which eliminates the zener diode or condenser or some other magical electronic gizmo. These two "black boxes" were found at the bottom of a cardboard box of parts that the previous owner had given me. As I had no way of knowing if these were junk or if they actually work, I decided to run some wires from the boyer box and Typanium unit to their proper places and give a few kicks to see if I had spark. Out came the soldering iron, rolls of wire, box of connections, and roll of black electric tape. I mounted the key switch to the seat mount, since I haven't figured out where it's permenant home is going to be. Then I taped the wiring diagram that I printed off the Rask Cycles web page to the rear fender and got to work. A half an hour later my bike looked like it was covered with spaghetti, and it was time to check for spark. I pulled the plugs and laid them on the head so that I could see spark. I tried to talk my wife into grabbing onto them to see if she could feel anything, but couldn't convincer her to do it. Anyway, I pushed the kicker through a couple times and a big, fat, blue spark jumped the gap with a snap. What a feeling! It's almost as good as hearing the bike fire up for the first time. Now I have to clean up my wiring mess and figure out how to run all the wires without you being able to see them, wire the headlight and taillight (when I eventually get a taillight) and decide where to mount the coil, attach grounds, etc.

More Catching Up

Ok, here we go. I'm trying to catch up and bring you up to date on where I actually am on the bike. If you'll notice, all three blog entries so far have been done on the same day in January. I've been playing around with the Triumph in fits and starts since I brought it home in the middle of last June. I decided to do a blog after watching my friend Rob chronicle the amazing rebuild of his 1958 Airstream trailer. I thought I'd do a blog to keep some of my motorcycle buddies abreast of my work. By the way, check out Rob's blog at http://www.sweetsovereign.blogspot.com/.

In these pics you can start to get a feel for what the bike is going to look like. I've got the fender where I want, the seat is mounted, the gas tank is mounted and secure. Things were going along nice and smoothly until I decided to stick the exhaust on and see how it fit. Well, it didn't fit. I'm going to run forward controls on this bike, and they are directly in the way of the normal exhaust routing. After a couple of days of playing around with the 2 sets of pipes I had laying around, sticking them on, under, around, and over in every conceivable direction, I finally settled on a pipe routing that I thought might work. I made them cross in front of the motor, out far enough away that they would not bother with the foot controls, then they came back and tucked in along side the lower frame rails for a nice tight look. I think it came out pretty nice, especially when you figure I made all the cuts by basically guessing where on the bend to cut and where to weld in a tighter or wider radius. I'm planing to wrap the exhaust with fiberglass heat tape, because I think it looks cool, but mostly because I'm not the best welder and a heat wrap will cover up my seagull poop welds quite nicely.

Teardown - My Way

Everything I read about taking apart a motorcycle (or car, or old tractor, or old anything, it seems), step one is always to LABEL EVERYTHING. Go to the hardware store, bet a bunch of zip lock bags and when a part comes off the bike, bag it and label it. Use a new sharpie because it will be easiest to read with a nice sharp felt-tip. Take pictures from at least 3 different angles, both with and without the flash (shadows can sometimes cause confusion) and write a detailed description of what the parts is, where on the motorcycle it came off, any tricks or particular order ti had to be taken off with relation to parts near by. Be sure to re-write these shop notes at the end of the day while it is still fresh in your mind. That way you can catch any confusing words and fix them. Blah Blah Blah. I've tried to do it the anal-retentive way and I just can't. I'm out in the garage working with my tools and I don't want to keep records (as you may notice in this blog. I'll try to take lots of pictures, but no promises). My day job entails keeping copious records, being subject to audits from insurance companies with 2 days notice, and working at a very stressful pace where mistakes are absolutely cannot be made, as my mistakes have the potential to kill. I am a pharmacist, andmy job means I have to be perfect, all the time, without exception. Piece of cake, except for the fact that I happen to be a human being. So I've got stress from that whole deal. Anyway, when I'm at home in my garage I don't want to have to do it any way except for my way. Taking things apart is FUN! Figuring out how to put them back together again is FUN! Writing stuff down and marking up zip-lock bags is not fun. taking pictures is fun, but sometimes I forget for a few days as you'll notice on this blog. I have to get better at the whole photographic record thing.

These pictures are about 20 hours removed from the "before" pictures. I've removed everything except the engine and forks. I bought a bolt-on hard tail and have it installed. I found a 7 inch flat trailer fender at Tractor Supply and decided it was an inch or two too wide, so I took a slice out of it and welded it back up. I'm having a tough time at this point trying to figure out how to mount the fender while keeping everthing nice and clean, easy to take off and put on, and all the while making sure it hugs the tire.

Time to build a motorcycle

This blog is going to capture the transformation of a 1969 Triumph T100C from an aborted attempt at building a cool bike by a previous owner to my own version of what is cool. I bought the bike from the father-of-the-bride at a wedding that I was a groomsman in, sight unseen. When I finally got a look at it, I was a little bit sorry that I had agreed to buy it. For $1500, I was buying a bike that I had been told was "a runner that needs a little bit of work". OK. I guess a little bit of work means everything. It looked like the previous owner wanted a Harley in a really bad way and decided to try to dress the little Triumph in a halloween costume. Ten inch risers, candy apple / bass boat metalflake / 70's dirtbike helmet glitter red, extra big mustang tank with H-D (and Triumph) stickers, a Harley ducktail rear fender 4 inches too wide for the wheel, and stupid little skull decorations all over everything. No offence to the father-of-the-bride, but the thing was an abomination. I decided to take the project in and, like a sculptor, chip away at the material on the outside until the work of art reveals itself.