Petrol head thread!!!

[billy rubin]

yes. sitting on the stand the motor will rev to 7000.

thats as higgh as i can risk the connecting rods without a load on them. no problems.

but on the race ciurse it wouldnt pull.

it could have been fuel, but everything was fresh out of sealed cans. and fuel flow was excellent. all the connections were good and there was13.35 battery voltage all through the harness and out to the coils.

transistor box.

or possibly the coils are bad internally. cant change that because they are specialized 0.6 ohm micro units, rather than the more easily avalabe 1.5 to 2.0 ohm units

10 months until i can try again.

[billy rubin]

the guy in oz is an expatriate pommy who builds the units on the bench. hw has drawings for the rotor which a machinist has to make. multiple cuts and a taper on the lathe. that will be the expensive part

[billy rubin]

[billy rubin]

[billy rubin]

[billy rubin]

[billy rubin]

9115 is my triumph.

135.259 mph

but not this time. the boy has gone 108 on the little 250 ninja, but that is not nearly the crudely dramatic ride going 100 on something built 40 years before he was born.

[Icarus]

A couple exotic looking rigs in those pix Billy. Some puzzling things too.....The rear tire on the metallic orange bike #1459 and the excessive rake and trail built into that vee twin thing #1918. The rear coilover angle on #1918 is also excessive. Tell the owner of that thing that MotGP bikes can run 180 MPH and need no such excessive fork rake. 

The clean looking Beezer looks like a full stock bike. I like it.   The blue four wheeler #343 looks like a Midget circle track racer. He has those big ole Hoosier Asphalt track tires for a straightaway run that will sure as hell hold him back.

I'd for sure get my rocks off while being a spectator at an event such as that one. The variety of equipment and the inventiveness of the participants is most interesting.

I once had, on loan from the NSU factory, a 49 cc race bike that was good for 70+ MPH. I really liked that little thing. As I remember, it had a five speed gearbox and it would turn way into the 14,000s. Rotary valve two stroker with some very imaginative porting. Amazing for its day. Has anyone run a moped or other 49cc two wheeler? I could get enthused with a class such as that.

[Dark Lightning]

Moped? Funny story. One of my more adventurous gearhead friends had a Moped that he grafted a 260 CC Suzuki engine onto. Took it for a ride, cracked the throttle wide open, and it stuck. He was running along behind it, trying to get it to throttle down,
Lest anyone think that I'm perfect...I may have mentioned it upthread. My BiL's brother had a 350 Kawasaki triple and let me ride it. It was in a parking lot where we were repairing some trucks. I knew they were peaky, so I was in 1st gear, slowly opening the throttle. At some RPM it peaked, and stood up in a wheelie, with me hanging off the handlebars, with my belly on the seat. At that position, it was difficult to rotate my wrist to reduce throttle, but I managed, and was able to collect it and not hit the fence I had been heading for. Too cool! Once I figured that out, I was doing wheelies all over the parking lot, hugging that bike with my legs like a cowboy on a horse. 

[billy rubin]

A couple exotic looking rigs in those pix Billy. Some puzzling things too.....The rear tire on the metallic orange bike #1459

thats the 240 mph hayabusa. its a tire warmer on the back. the racing tires only get a few cool downs before they harden, so they use warmers all day.

and the excessive rake and trail built into that vee twin thing #1918. The rear coilover angle on #1918 is also excessive. Tell the owner of that thing that MotGP bikes can run 180 MPH and need no such excessive fork rake.

he normally gets 171. this time he only managed 160 something because of the headwind.

The clean looking Beezer looks like a full stock bike. I like it. 

thats my pit bike. 1969 stock thunderbot. everything is original except the tach and later silencers.

The blue four wheeler #343 looks like a Midget circle track racer. He has those big ole Hoosier Asphalt track tires for a straightaway run that will sure as hell hold him back.

thats exactly what it is. some old stuff around there.

I'd for sure get my rocks off while being a spectator at an event such as that one. The variety of equipment and the inventiveness of the participants is most interesting.

I once had, on loan from the NSU factory, a 49 cc race bike that was good for 70+ MPH. I really liked that little thing. As I remember, it had a five speed gearbox and it would turn way into the 14,000s. Rotary valve two stroker with some very imaginative porting. Amazing for its day. Has anyone run a moped or other 49cc two wheeler? I could get enthused with a class such as that.

the little stuff is the most interesting. at bonneville theres a 50 cc streaminer that does 149

there was a guy at my event a coiple of years ago who ran a little puch moped, with pedals. he was an academic physicist and did some creative porting and everything else totally stock. it went 64 mph and told me it was terrifying to ride.

[billy rubin]

i think ive posted colin furze before but hes always worth revisiting.

my safety people wouldnt stand for ^^^this, but one guy did mention that nobody has run nitrous oxide on a 250 ninja, and the record is open.

[Asmodean]

Ooh, I like the gallery above. Much eye candy.

[Icarus]

Billy: I can get  1973 Triumph TR5 for almost nothing.  It is a barn find that has been idle for 15 years or more. Do you suppose it is worth the cost of refurbishing it what with new tires and any other that is flexible or rubbery. Tank will probably be rusted. Will need carb and parts cleaners and more....etc.

This is one of those bikes that is said to have had the triumph engine installed in a BSA frame. It is also said to be an oil in frame arrangement. I'd have to verify all that I reckon.

Of course I will do the work myself. I do not know whether the evil Limeys were still using Whitworth bolts and nuts in `1973.  I gave away all my Whitworth tools years ago. I do have a plentiful supply of US and metric tooling.

I have a bit of a nostalgia attachment to the little 500 Triumph. I met my first, now deceased, wife in 1952 when she owned and rode a 1948 Tiger 500. She was commuting back and forth on that thing Between New London and Hartford Connecticut. She worked at Pratt and Whitney operating a Heald grinder. ( precision ID grinder)

[billy rubin]

icarus, what? a TR5? grab it before anybody else knows that its there. it is absolutely worth the cost of refurbishing, if there is a more or less complete motorcyle in there. if its missing so much thats its just a parts bike, its still worth parting out.

the TR5s are extremely popular among the off-road people in any configuration. if its the 73 TR5T, the machine has a racing history as they brought gold medals that year in the ISDT.

i have seen the TR5Ts go from US$1800 or so for derelict projects to well over five thousand dollars for a complete running and/or restored TR5T. and also stupid high asking prices. but any 500 cc triumph is fun. you dont need to keep an off-road configuration. put street tires on it and burble along to the zoo.

the oil in frame arrangement was swapped in for everything except the BSA/triumph triples during 1971. they are excellent machines. ive ridden a 1972 bonneville for 46 years now. the OIF originated with BSA, iirc, but the companies had merged by that time and lots of stuff was in common, although the factoriy people hated each other.

no whitworth after 1970, except rocker adjusters, fork drains, and a few other stupid relict places. SAE spanners are fine.

seat, fork gaiters, tires, cables, grommets, clutch plates, carb parts, anything that might have deteriorated over time is easily replaced these days, as these machines are now "classics," rather than just "old."

my first motorcycle was a 1962 triumph trophy 500, which i rode around between the opium dens of kuala lumpur when i was 16 years old. lovely old things. the 73 will have sort-of more recent carbs, ignition, and so on, and is easily upgraded to labour-saving and more reliable stuff like better alternators, electronic ignition and voltage regulation. you no longer have to live with lucas. you can even blow the horn with the lights on, if you want.

does the motor turn? if not, as you clearly know from long experience, its either a rusted primary chain, stuck clutch, or pistons. most everything else will sit for years if they left oil in it. expect disassembly of the clutch at the least and lots of TLC on rusty stuff.

grab it. take some pitchers!

[Icarus]

Yes the kickstarter allows the engine to turn over.  It has been sort of  "preserved" with a messy coat of cosmoline (grease) all over the poor thing. Rusting not a problem.

The deal is that this is part of an inheritance from a life long, now deceased, friend. There are five other bikes in the barn also. They are two  Honda VFRs, VR650, Suzuki DR350, Honda XR600R much modified bad ass single, 1968 BSA 441 whose parts are scattered all over the place. All these bikes have been in what my friend called a pole barn. The elegant  pole barn has always been sealed with drywall interior and air conditioning.  He was a bit of an extremist about such things. He had not ridden any of the bikes for more than ten years. He also had a Norton Commando, in pristine condition, that he traded for a a damned lawnmower a few years back.

The TR5 is in original condition except for the exhaust system. It was converted to a low pipe that was less likely to burn the riders leg I suppose.

I will glom onto it right away. I have not been an enthusiastic Triumph fan although I was in partnership with a Triumph dealer many moons ago. My side of the business was for BMW and NSU bikes. I did work on a mess of triumphs at the time (in the fifties) Did not have to work much on the Beemers or NSUs or wipe up oil drips from the show room floor where the Triumphs were displayed. Nostalgia.

The estate also has three Dodge flat fender Power Wagons from 1946 to 1964. They have considerable value but I have no interest in any of that kind of thing. They are  cult trucks that may have substantial value but only to the collector. I will stick with what I know a little bit about, bikes and boats.