New bike

My intention is travelling this year so I needed a new bike up to the challenge, I really wanted the new Speed Triple RS, the faired one but I couldn't bring myself to leave 26k€ on the table so I went about trying loads of bikes, I was almost going to get a S1000XR, but that frightened me aswell, With it's 28k€ price tag with right options, so I ended up going for an ex demo Kawaski Ninja 1000sx. for 14k€.It hasn't got all the right stuff either but hey hoe I'll add. It's missing: centre stand, electrical usb port, and heated grips. Never mind it is an excellent ride and a really smooth engine, with plenty of young ponies and some interesting gadgets : Traction control, an IMU, a shifter up and down, ABS, and all sorts. Can't wait to get her out on a dry road! In the meantime I eventually got my RG heads back from Laurent after a year! what a mess, luckily I managed to find some in Spain to be going on with. More news as it happens. i noticed the kids FZR has a break in the fairing which needs fixing let alone getting the forks staight.

Loads has happened

well the Triumph starts. After having redone the forks, I discovered a brake line that was broken so i replaced the front brake lines with a racing setup i.e. 2lines coming directly from the master cylinder to the brake calipers. I am now trying to sync the carbs and then insurance and a road test. Took the FZR 600 and the 350 to a track day and the both rode really well until the 350 broke a throttle cable which recently been fixed however, I need to lengthen them as they pull on lock.....Other than that I have tried and failed to stop the bench grinder from vibrating. I will buy new stones and see if that makes a difference.

Triumph update on coil wiring

OK I tried to start it and failed and thought I had done something wrong on the valves (which could be the case still). Ididn't seem to have the appropriate wires going to the coils especially coil number one - OK This is half the issue, I am numbering the coils starting with Nr.1 at the back and nr. 3 at the front. I had somehow managed to lose the Nr1 coil wires and in there place I out the coolandt sensor wires which even in my heart of hearts I knew was wrong but hey they had the same connectors as the other coils. Anyway I should be concentrating on what is now right : this is an exert of a thread I read from the Triumph rat.net forum which simplified everything in my head - poor head. the colours, are in the manual but it doesn't tell you which cylinder it should feed The blow gives you all the information you need: left hand mount on frame coil No1, red + green. right hand front mount on frame coil No 2 , red + yellow/blue right hand rear mount on frame , coil No 3 , red + brown/yellow. SHould at least stand a chance of starting now.

TB Idle circuit

So I have been doing the carbs (agin) on Piere Luc's Triumph Thunderbird and one of the pieces of information I was missing was whether the idle mixture screw adjusted the idle fuel or air flow. Important to know as you need to screw these in or out dependant on whether you are rich or lean at idle. The symptom I am still getting is that the engine still hangs onto revs. a little too long to be confortable riding. this turned out to be lean running at high rpm so I went down on main jet sizes and put the needles back on the middle clip, but now I still get the symptom at idle low revs. I found one reference on the internet and decided to take the plunge and screw the richness needles in another half turn to 1.5 turns, in the hope of leaning it out - this would imply that you are restricting fuel to the idle circuit and therefore leaning it out! In the hope that I went the right way. So now I am on 97.75 main jets and 3 x 40 idle jets at middle slot for the needle clips. All the jets are not Mikuni and were purchased at WEmoto.fr. I am going to rebalance the carbs. and take it for a spin. Be back later with the results.

Daytona and calipers

Changed clutch plates 129k and installed heavy duty springs. Both outer clutch friction plates are thicker 3.65 MMS and the outer one goes in the external short slots. Didn't change gaskets on the 3 covers - need to next time!The steels go with soft edge closest to the engine. Seems to work fine. The spare calipers that are used on the street FZR and the 350 have had the seals changed and bleed nipples changed. They were also cleaned up.

Daytona Service 128200kms

Just serviced the Daytona, new front tyre and oil/filter plus spark plugs changed. Cleaned air filter some oil present in air filter box, either too much pressure in the engine or too much oil. Screw the dip stick completely in to check oil.

Street 675 and Daytona955i

I bought a second hand radiator for the Daytona in the UK, got it delivered to Dad's as mine is still weeping from the leak in the lower left hand side, It had been slightly damaged but for 35 quid it was cheap, I cleaned up the fins fitted the fan and fitted the rad. It is watertight and does the job, although really need a bigger rad to do the job. Put Lib's new pads in the front of her bike (disks). nothing special to say easy job - I also changed the DOT4. She's done around 30K kms. Tried to get the Ducati started although it was pissing from the front carb so I purchased 2 new float valves , fitted the front one which solved the problem also adjusted the float height. The rear float pin was jammed despite soaking in penetrating oil and carb cleaner I couldn't remove it. It can be done but you would need to destroy the float to do it, so I left it in place. Went for a 50kms drive popping quite a lot on the left pipe.