Old Bikes New Lives

How Sweet It Is!

10/11/2015
This post is for the gear heads and the inveterate tinkerers of the world.
Read at your own risk!

After a lot of diddling around and quite a bit of work; today my buddy Rick and I reaped the rewards.

We rode the Triumph and the Velocette to the Orange County Vintage Bike Meet.

OK it's just a bunch of old guys talking about old bikes and bad mouthing their wives,

Nah!

Most of them never even mention their wives.

During the run up to this momentous day lots of stuff needed to be done.

When you read the manual for the Velocette, it talks about using a Rizla paper to set the gap in the points. (These are papers used for hand rolling your own cigarettes)

When we were on vacation in Spain with Teresa and Ron (sister-in-law and brother-in-law) I mentioned the Rizla papers.

Look what showed up in the mail.

Of course as these are now an endangered species I needed a safe place for them to live.

This is their new home in the tool box.

One of the other uses for them is shown in this picture.

The paper is placed on the object to be cut and the tool brought down to touch the paper, you hold the paper and pull slightly until the tool is holding the paper.

Now you know that you are set 0.0015" above the part.

This makes setting the cutter depth easy.

I know TMFI.

In an effort to make the Velocette start more easily, I decided to add electronic ignition.

The whole kit came from the UK.

When the kit arrived I checked it out and and it seemed like an easy install.

Rick came over to help with the project and we got off to a good start.

However, we soon found that it was almost impossible to remove the bolts from the old magneto.

Hmm, special tools were required.

So this set of wrenches (spanners on the other side of the pond) were adapted.

Hey, John Charlton, these look like something Teddy Rowntree would have!

The problem being that these are Whitworth wrenches and about as common as rocking horse shit in the USA.

New wrenches were ordered to replace these.

The timing device was designed to fit in the place of the magneto.

All the other bits were mounted inside the tool box to make the install virtually invisible.

There's still some fine tuning to do but otherwise I'm really happy with the outcome.

The Triumph was a different story.

It was a bit sporadic it would run and then not run.

One cylinder would not run at all reliably and it was always the left side.

Rick worked methodically through draining the gas.

Cleaning every orifice in each carburetor.

Checking the throttle sync.

Adjusting the float level.

Eventually we were ready for a test firing.

Lo and behold it worked.

We had a bike that would start and run with a modicom of reliability.

It Runs

Click on the link above to hear the Triumph.

The shake down ride today was, in my opinion, a success.

The next step is to replace the ignition control on the Triumph and put some miles on it.

We are just lucky that we can tinker outside 300 days of the year.

However for Southern Californians and even Texans like Rick it has been almost too hot to tinker for the last few days.

Actual shade temperature on Friday October 9th.

This is 1.5 miles back from the ocean.