Petrol head thread!!!

[Icarus]

Billy is it possible to use modern coil on plug setup....like on my Honda Element automobile and a whole bunch of others vehicles?

[billy rubin]

what a strange motor. like halfway between a flat crank and a V? how dou you balance that?

are the cylinders orthogonal to the crankn? if not, what about side loads on the pistons? if so, what about the non planar deck configuration? all in the combustion chamber?

cant do more than glance at it atm

[billy rubin]

shit theres a lot going on in that motor. the centerline of the cylinders is out of line with the crank, so the sideloads are real. but the block has a single flat deck, so they can be ground in one plane.

but two counter rotating cranks? im wondring about about other double crank attempts like the old ariel square four. im not convinced the torquing is really that much of a problem-- the old BMS would push to the side when you spun th emotor, but it wasnt much. ill have to go through this again.

i also dont understand the camshafts. SOHC with a central third shaft to drive them rather than separte chains? i lhh have to look again

[billy rubin]

Billy is it possible to use modern coil on plug setup....like on my Honda Element automobile and a whole bunch of others vehicles?

with enough time and creativity you can do anything, and people do. but you would have to engineer more than is necessary to do that. the TR5T will use 14mm plugs, and i think most modern systems use 12mm. that by itself would require welding up and redrilling the pkug holes.

 also modern conventional coils and ignitions are vastly superior to what these things came with. i would suggest an electronic ignition from boyer or pazon. ive used em both and only have had occasional issues.

you can even keep the points, but that has problems as most of the automatic advance units are worn out, and finding quality igniotion points is hard to do these days. but i know people who do, and i run points in an old B44.

you should look over this place

https://www.britbike.com/

its a forum with a great deal of expertise and crazy aficionados for various british marques

[billy rubin]

okay, im almost done withis slow motion ignition upgrade.

heres the new plate mounted coils, and the weird wiring necessary to fire them separately:



its lkess of a mess than it looks. just two coils connected to positive hot, then to transistor box negative to the trigger. the box is grounded both to th ealuminum coil mopuntint plate and directly to th ebattery. easy stuff.

the battery is mounted onto a coip[le of motor mount bolts under the breather catch bottle. im using negative ground on this, although neither the motor nor the ignition care. most of my machines are positive ground, if i havent changed em.



from the battery the electrons run up to the kill switch on the left handle bars:



^^^this is a cheap chinese toggle switch. theyre cheap, so i buy them five or six at a time. none have ever failed, but i have so many different ignitions sitting in boxes for thjis motorcycle that i use them up.

from there th ehot circuit runs to a deadman switch on the right handlebar. series wiring-- all the juice runs from the battery through two kill switches and then back to the transistor box.



the deaman has a lanyard that i clip to right glove. if the motorcycle tosses me during a run, the lanyard pulls a little connector out of th eswitch and breaks th ecircuit to th emotor. so th emachine doesnt rideoff into the distance without me. theoretically, anyway.

tomorrow i have to solder the bootlce teminals onto th ethree ignition sensor leads, then time it. might try to start the pig and see how well the igniotion rotors were machined.

woo lookit the typoes

[Icarus]

Looks like the LSR scoot is getting xmas presents and some TLC.

Pleased to learn that you have multiple kill switch circuits, especially the dead man switch.

I have not begun to restore the TR5T yet. In fact it is still in the barn across town,(air conditioned barn) where it has rested undisturbed for 20 years or so. It has been lightly coated with cosmoline for all that time. Gonna be a bitch to get it cleaned up. 

Meanwhile I have to make some space in my garage. It seems that the garage has been the keeper of about 60 years worth of gearhead treasures. What the hell will I do with a Jacobs chuck with a R8 mount?  I do not now have a milling machine or anything else with an R8 spindle. What to do with all those manometers, the DC power supply that weighs 50 pounds ( I used that for anodizing aluminum in my other life), Carbide lathe bits, An Adler industrial sewing machine and lots of folder attachments (it is a big brutal walking foot machine that will sew plywood if I chose to do so) I need the sewing machine like I need a paper ass. Plenty more stuff like a whole set of commercial grade grommet setting dies, A sail makers 5 pound rawhide hammer.....etc.. Maker/do-er type dudes seem to collect too much stuff that has "I might need it one of these days" imagined value.

[Icarus]

P.S.  Billy I still have the Flow Quick stuff (poor mans flow bench). I promised to send it to you way back in time. At the time, I plugged it in to see if it still works. It did not work. I checked with the supplier and yes they have repair facilities. I will still send it to you if you want to mess with it, maybe even get it working. The computer program is in the box too. I kinda doubt that it will work on a newer computer but it did work perfectly on a Win95 and computers a few years beyond that.

If you do not want to be bothered with that stuff I will trash it. Let me know.

[billy rubin]

Looks like the LSR scoot is getting xmas presents and some TLC.

Pleased to learn that you have multiple kill switch circuits, especially the dead man switch.

I have not begun to restore the TR5T yet. In fact it is still in the barn across town,(air conditioned barn) where it has rested undisturbed for 20 years or so. It has been lightly coated with cosmoline for all that time. Gonna be a bitch to get it cleaned up. 

Meanwhile I have to make some space in my garage. It seems that the garage has been the keeper of about 60 years worth of gearhead treasures. What the hell will I do with a Jacobs chuck with a R8 mount?  I do not now have a milling machine or anything else with an R8 spindle. What to do with all those manometers, the DC power supply that weighs 50 pounds ( I used that for anodizing aluminum in my other life), Carbide lathe bits, An Adler industrial sewing machine and lots of folder attachments (it is a big brutal walking foot machine that will sew plywood if I chose to do so) I need the sewing machine like I need a paper ass. Plenty more stuff like a whole set of commercial grade grommet setting dies, A sail makers 5 pound rawhide hammer.....etc.. Maker/do-er type dudes seem to collect too much stuff that has "I might need it one of these days" imagined value.

that sort of stuff is priceless, though. the problem is getting ahold of the people to whom it is priceless, because to everybody else it is junk. ive seen truckloads of stuff go to the landfills that somebody would cut flesh to own, but it isnt to be.

my mother in law says, you cant keep everything. where would you put it? and she's right.

ive been cursed by floods, so periodically i lose my possessions like a buddhist monk and start over. except now i refuse to start over, and strip as much stuff out of my life as i can. in my opinion, if you dont have it in your head, its not really yours. you can fool yourself that youre keeping things for a future person who will treasure them, but rust, mice, corrosion, and misadventure get everything in the end.

on that TR5T, nobody even knows what cosmoline is these days, so you can pretend you dont know either. if its been sitting in a climate-controlled building all this time, then if it ran when they pushed it in, it will likely run when you push it out. the TR5Ts are approaching cult status, but screw that, theyre a ball to ride. light enough to burble around the neighbourhood on, fast enough to get out of the way of traffic. depending on how deep you want to get into it, you might consider lowering the compression ratio with different pistons. it makes em easier to start, and lots easier to make em run run on modern fuel without blowing up.

[Icarus]

I have no intention of riding the TR5 on the street or the road. I might tool up and down and around the cul de sac where I live. That's all. I'm way too old for recreational riding. In addition to that, I would like to avoid unintended crashes into any of the dumb asses who make a sudden left turns.....you know the drill. Plenty more hazards out there too.

I will work on the little scooter for the satisfaction of making it somewhere near its original appearance and performance...............Actually, if I re-do the forks,rear shocks,and brakes, give it a set of modern tires, it may work better than it did when new. The tires mainly accountable for whatever improvement.

I did register with Britbikes.com   Thanks for the heads up. On that site, I was able to discover  that my bike was made in November 1973. Damned near the last of the breed. I do hope that they were not using the old scrap parts that would have accumulated before their final goodbye to the 500cc types. 

[billy rubin]

you will find that a competent mechancial person can take one of these things these days, and make it better than new. what you do with it then is a whole different philosophy.

in my case, i i frequently use them as an exercise in understanding physics and chemistry. i have too many motorcycles to wear them out by avtually riding them, and so some of them are intellectual exercises.

like my B44, which i will consider a success if i can just figure out how to start it consistently. i cannot get that achievement under my belt, and dont care about anything else. its not much of a rider anyway.

others i run on the street, some i run on the track. some i just preserve for a possible future person who will be interested in it.

whatever you decide to do, it will be worthwhile to you if its worthwhile to you. its as simple as that.

put up some pictures of what youre planning on doing with this thing. id like to follow along.

[Icarus]

I will try to make this link work.....if I only knew how to do it correctly.

Tank and other non Americans might find this amusing or outrageous or perhaps revealing of the American culture.

The F1 race at Las Vegas was either a colossal success or a colossal fuck up. The writer has it both ways.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/formula-1-las-vegas-debut-successes-failures-1234941512/

[billy rubin]

vegas.

[Tank]

I think Vagus is going to grow into a great F1 venue. This year was right at the bottom of the learning curve.

[billy rubin]

hey icarus this is your motorcycle

http://www.epnat.ca/MY%20TIMES%20WITH%20TRIUMPH%20TR5T.pdf

[Icarus]

Yep.The one labeled Adventurer.  I still do not have that bike in my garage however. I am trying to make space in the garage that contains a lifetime collection of stuff "I might need so I will save it".  As recently as this afternoon, I trashed a whole bunch of stuff that was once regarded as priceless.

I will pick up the bike in due time. It is safely locked away in the air conditioned and/or heated barn. It has several barn mates.... 2 Honda VFRS, A Suzuki DR350, Two Honda Hawk vee twins, a Honda XR650R that has been been extensively, and professionally, "breathed upon".  For all practical purposes useless. It is a life threatening exercise just to start the damned thing. The other barn, the less fancy one, has a BSA 441 complete set of parts that could make a whole motorcycle if we could only find all those parts. . My deceased friend who owned all those bikes was good at taking things apart but not at all good at putting them back together.

Fortunately he had not taken his wrenches to the TR5T.