Pre-Unit

Rob, I found your pre-unit. I recognize this as Lurkingclass's (from the Jockey Journal) garage. That guy must have a bottomless parts/bike stash.

Lund Machine is the shop I' m considering having my carbs resleeved through. 5,600 is a lot of fricken Amals! The success of some nitch businesses never ceases to amaze me.

VL

This was lifted off the Wing Nuts blog. Simply perfection.

What?

I modified the stand pipe in my oil tank last night. This morning I successfully ran my bike for about 20 minutes without any drama. A few minutes ago I took the Trump for a quick and slightly illegal trip around the block. I'm having some carb problems, probably associated with sitting for so long, but I'll get that worked out.

I do have a few quick observations.

• the hardtail makes one seat of the pants difference I didn't anticipate. It seems quite a bit quicker... Less weight maybe?
  
• it doesn't handle much differently than I remember. I'm a little surprised as the wheelbase is about 4 inches longer
• It's louder and more obnoxious than I remembered
• It was the most fun I've had in months!
• I can't wait to fricken finish it now

I also remembered it's been quite a while since I had a good pipe burn.

It's Alive!

I actually fired my bike today!

The oiling system was not as catastrophic as it potentially could have been but it wasn't a total success either. After running for maybe 30 seconds it began spewing oil out the vent hole in the cap. I suspect the stand tube was not evacuating oil quickly enough. Dad went into crazed Engineer math mode and determined a 30% increase in the size of the holes in the stand tube would increase the effective flow by about 70%. I'll have to figure out how much I can increase their size without weakening the stand tube too much since it also secures the lid.

The other option would be to plug the vent hole in the cap and vent the actual lid with something like this breather.

Wiring

Dad and I got the wiring 90% completed today. It was a ton of work. I ended up making mounting brackets for both the terminal block and my Boyer electronic ignition module. I used this stuff for the loom. It ended up working OK I think. The first pic is the original wiring. Thanks Dad! He'll be glad to have his life back I imagine.

For Sale

The only guy I've met with a Triumph bobber in my area is still trying to sell it. He's posted it several times and probably dropped the price $1000. It bums me out a little I haven't been able to find more Triumph guys in ABQ.

$71,000 Velocette

A Burt Munro built Velocette just sold for $71,000. There's a nice write up on the Vintagent. Make sure you read far enough through to see the bit about Burt's mother.

Bike Photos

The red one is a restoration of a bike originally built in the sixties by Classic Cycles Inc.

Wiring

Dad and I finished up the mounting plate for my terminal block and grounding tabs last weekend and ran a couple wires. Yesterday we picked up some of the supplies we couldn't find over the weekend. We may try to get a little farther along today.

Skateboard?

OK, a little off topic but Jonathan just rules. For the record he's always welcome in my house;) See if you can spot the Sydney cameos.


Surprise Surprise from Jon Nelson on Vimeo.

Beach

Further evidence period correct bike pinup girls didn't always have full sleeve tattoos.

49 BSA Single

Just cool.

Nothin to see here... Move along

Boring post to share something with Dad. Sorry these photos are kinda weak, I'm not using the normal camera.

The top photo shows the existing bracket. Part of the problem with triangulating the piece is the overall length is so short I'm not sure it's gonna be all that usable. It's hard to really see the scale in the pictures. If I widen the bracket as shown in the red I think I'll gain width across the total length of about 1/2". If I extend it to nearly the top of the triangle on the far left I might be able to get 3" of width at the far end but so little of is "square" I'm not sure it will be all that useful.




We're gonna have to be careful about how much farther forward (toward the forks) we go or I think it may show in the tank gap. This old pic the the best one I have of that gap.

Here are pictures of the fender bungs complete (well, as complete as I can make them without the bike here).  Also one of my birthday sweater.  Maxing out the nerd meter, as Jim puts it...

I will try to send the bungs on Monday.  Don't worry about the angles in the picture.  The two top bungs are designed to be mounted 3" apart, center to center, but I drilled the holes in the fender piece too far apart.  

I hope the wiring is progressing today.  I took the 45" out for a spin (had to try out the sweater).  It was very cold, but the bike ran like a John Deere. 

Photoshop

Ever notice some people have way too much time on their hands? Check out this link, it's pretty amusing.

For Sale

It amazes/scares me how frequently someone builds a nice Triumph bobber and then sells it less than a year later. Bitten by the build it bug and after a new project? Crap economy? Sick of pushing an unreliable bike? I've never really figured it out.

This one was completed about a year ago and is now for sale.




UPDATE - I got nosy and asked:

Hi John, I'm selling the bike because it's a bit too small for me. I'm 6'6" and I used a dropped hardtail on my bike which made it too low to ride it comfortably (my knees are almost in the way of the handlebars). So I decided to sell it to built a bigger bike, like a Shovelhead Harley or something like that.

Cheers, Richard

Atom Bomb Customs

Clay at Atom Bomb Customs just finished one of his Triumph projects. Pretty nice.