Oily engine - proves its a real Triumph :-)

I'd noticed an oil mist around the cylinder head in the days running up to my winter clean up. Well OK, it was more than a mist. It was a seep. And then a bit more than a seep. And then it was obvious quite a lot of oil was escaping from the cam cover. I must admit I was disappointed by this because I'd replaced the large rubber gasket when I'd been through the engine in 2012. I had also gone along with applying instant gasket as per the factory manual's instructions though at the time I'd thought it was overkill. Oh well.

The fairing lowers had to be removed so I could get the cam cover off and anyway I couldn't bring myself to leave the engine so oily. Also, as I wrote in my last post, the left-hand fork leg was leaking badly and I couldn't get to the lower yoke to remove them with the fairing lowers on. So off they came.

 It hosed down nicely. 'No rusty!' as one of my German friends used to say about his leaky XS650. So degreasing, agitating with a brush and hosing down showed things are holding up well under it all. I was particularly relieved to see that the oil cooler was still in good order.

Oil soaked fairing inners. 

The oil had accumulated inside the fairing lowers. This was not at all nice, especially because the lowers in the early T300s have sound deadening foam pads adhered to the inner surface. They also turn out to be excellent gunge sponges. Yuk. However, Vanish Engine Degreaser did a great job on sorting them out, with a good hose down to finish.

When I'd refurbed the forks first time, I had just filled the rusty pits and repainted the lowers. I'd figured there was no point in putting any work into them until I was sure the filler has taken. I didn't even replace the fork seals in case the repair didn't work. Well the right-hand side has born up well so I'm confident I can sort the left-hand side and so will replace the seals and nylon fork piston ring. I popped by Trevors to get the parts so was ready to go. I tried to strip the forks but got stuck on removing the chromed stanchions from the alloy fork sliders.  Blast!. I'd made up a tool for my Daytona for  separating the sliders from the stanchions. It is necessary to stop the internal damper assembly from spinning when trying to remove the Allen bolt that holds the two large components together. But it was no use on the Trophy because, according to Haynes, it needs a 33mm hex end. The Daytona's adjustable Kayaba forks need a square section tool to stop the M8 allen from just spinning the whole damper assembly inside.

As Ruby is my daily transport, this represented something of a problem. So for the second time, the dear old Daytona came to the rescue by lending Ruby her forks. Further more, in case I had not properly sorted out the leaky cam cover, I didn't want to replace the fairing lowers without being sure it was done. So the Daytona also leant Ruby some little aluminium trim panels I'd made up years ago. The result is rather pleasing, at least for now.

Ruby with borrowed Daytona forks and aluminium fairing trim