While I was waiting for the seat unit to arrive from England, I had time to strip the bike down and plan what I wanted to achieve, it became pretty obvious that Triumph parts are too heavy. The front forks and drum brake wheel weigh a ton as did the rear wheel with its cast iron drum, so these were added to the pile in the corner. I was left with a frame, motor, rear shocks which looked new and as I like the shape of the stock oil tank and opposite side cover these two items were kept which filled the gap nicely. The bike was looking a bit bare by now sitting on my lift, so it was time to go electronic and scour the interweb for parts. As most Kiwis do when looking for bits I went to our favourite auction site ‘watch me’ and soon came across a pair of wheels with alloy rims, a little drum rear and disc front, ideal so these were bid on along with a set of jap bike forks which were local so I could collect rather than pay the postal service yet more beer tokens.
With these in hand I could now start, of course the forks were not going to fit a British frame so after a bit of measuring with my trusty steel rule a set of adapter cups were made to take the new taper bearings, this was the front forks in place. Luckily the front wheel spindle fitted the forks and all I needed to do was space the wheel in the middle. Sorted.
The rear wheel was a bit harder, firstly the spindle was a lot larger than the Triumph, the sprocket was spaced too far out to align with engine sprocket and the wheel wouldn’t fit anyway in the stock Triumph swing arm any way without fouling. So in the time it takes to say cutting disc I had whipped the swing arm out of an old Honda 550 frame and sliced it’s pivot tube off and with more careful measuring I chopped off Triumph swing arm pivot and grafted this to the Honda rear, added a couple of new shocky mounts and that was the first part done. As the spindle on the Honda was the same size as my wheel a couple of new spacers had that centred up. The biggest problem was the fact that the sprockets were out by 20mm so I purchased a nice slice of alloy and turned up a sprocket carrier that would place the sprocket inboard the correct distance. I also had to machine the centre out of the sprocket to fit and the end result it looks like a bit like the original drum set up, as those who mess with bikes know that was the shortened version, there was a lot of hours spent getting this very important parts of the job done correctly, after all its my arse on the road if it’s not done right.
I now have a rolling chassis hooray and I have just found the ideal fuel tank off a Suzuki which I have bid on and won.
Laters Jonpan
