Sunday, May 12, 2013

Posh badge

 The top yoke (or triple tree, if you prefer) always looked a bit Spartan to me. The pic below left was taken the day I brought the bike home, the pic below right was taken this weekend, after all the work I've done. Much cleaner and shinier. But I like the Triumph plaque on my Daytona and thought my Trophy deserved something similar and felt I could do something similar.
I found several Ebay vendors of Meriden Triumph patent plaques and couldn't believe my luck when I found one specific for the original Trophy. 

Patent plate and ally cover ready to fit
Unfortunately, it wasn't quite the right shape to fit exactly over the truncated triangular recess between ignition key and steering head nut. So I made up a cover from 1mm aluminium sheet to go between patent plaque and top yoke. If found the shape amazingly tricky to get right. I can't exactly explain why, other than that the rounded corners of the triangle made measurement very difficult.
Patent plate with top two rivets just locating into ally cover
The patent plate came with three brass hammer-drive rivets, each with an OD of 1.6mm and 4.5mm long. The patent plate and ally cover were both 1mm thick so I could expect a max of 2.5mm to secure into the top yoke. The top two rivets could thus locate into the top yoke, but the bottom rivet only to my bespoke ally cover because it was over the yoke's central recess. I used a 1.5mm drill bit to make sure the rivets would be a tight fit in the top yoke, drilling to a depth of 4mm. They took a fair old whack with a hammer to get moving.
Top two rivets driven though patent plate and ally sheet into top yoke
The result pleases me no end. So I consider my posh badge mission to be accomplished.

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