I'm still riding

Despite the fact that I haven't posted for months, in fact my dear old Trophy has been in constant use. Yes, even though this has been the wettest British winter ever, in a nation with a meteorological history distinguished by profound dampness, I have kept on rolling. The odometer is now showing 44,600 miles so I've ridden 6,700 miles on Ruby since she properly returned to action in April last year . 

On the plus side, Somerset has been free of ice most of the time and entirely without snow. The roads have been free of salt thus conditions have been less corrosive than in a normal winter. The incessant heavy rain has caused a lot of road deterioration. I've never seen as much crumbling tarmac and the pot holes are everywhere. I didn't know so much damage could be caused without frost. Consequently, the body work has taken quite a battering from a constant dousing in grit and water and the running gear has got very crusty.

All in all, I'm very pleased with how she has coped with such a cruel exfoliation regime. I wasn't overly concerned about the fairing because I had not actually done anything with it. The paint was already pockmarked with stone chips and some of the decals has suffered over time. I'd pulled all the bodywork off, cleaned it thoroughly with T-Cut, and then waxed it before refitting with new fasteners as required.

I'd fitted home-made mud flaps to the front mudguard, to protect the oil cooler, and to the swingarm, to protect the suspension linkages . These have been brilliant. The 'tide mark' of muck thrown up from the front wheel just stops on the fairing lowers at the lower edge of the oil cooler. The rear suspension linkages are covered in grime but free of stones and mud. They have been caught indirectly by misted spray but entirely protect from direct blasts of water and grit. The only downside is that the front mud flap has split and would not last much longer. So I decided to make a replacement, and to improve it if possible in the process.

 Meanwhile, the underlying quality of the fit and finish has proven to be far more robust than I had imagined. She cleaned up beautifully with good old Turtle Wax shampoo.

Radiator and Oil Cooler cowling

I hadn't got around to fitting the final part of my fairing. It is a plastic cowling or duct that fits between the radiator and oil cooler, behind the front mudguard. The air is getting cooler now we are firmly into the autumn months. I thought it would be good to try it when the heat is easiest for the cooling system to deal with.

The cowling itself is made from a different type of plastic compared to the fairing itself. It is more rigid and, I hope, heat resistant. It has an aluminium heat shield patch on the rear, corresponding to a fitted position just in front of the exhausts.

It is retained by eight screws that wind into spring clips and two M6 bolts that also secure the top of the oil cooler.

I'd bought some replacement clips from Lings as part of a larger order. I decided to use stainless self-tapping replacements for the original black screws and dabbed Waxoyl on the clips to keep corrosion at bay. The M6 bolts were also replace with stainless alternatives: in this case, button-head screws with stainless penny washers.

One thought I had was that the cowling could improve cooling by forming a dam of cool air when the bike is in motion, rather than the cool air 'escaping' through the gap between the radiator and the cooler. In slow traffic, it would be of limited value or worse, with the exhaust being unable to radiator or convect heat back out to the front of the machine. Then again, when the fan engages, it could benefit from the fact that only cool air could be drawn through the radiator rather than hot air spilling back out from the exhausts.

A short ride tonight didn't really prove anything other than that the cooling system is behaving predictably and the fan came on after idling stationary for a while. Fair enough.

Daytona vs. Trophy cockpit

I thought it would be interesting to do a side-by-side comparison of the layout of the '94 Daytona and '91 Trophy cockpits. So I have tried to photograph the two of the so the angle and distance of the camera was pretty much the same. I haven't quite got it right, but it's close.
The key points of reference for comparison are the ignition lock for height and fork centres for width. The bars are also the same length and have the same pull-back angle so help to show how the two variants of the Hinckley T300 project relate to one another. Bars can be changed though so there is potential variability. In fact, the height of the bars is one of the main things that define what they are like to ride for pitching the rider's weight forward and more behind the screen, or backward/upright and more in the air.

1994 Daytona Cockpit	1991 Trophy Cockpit

The Daytona fairing is considerably wider than that of the Trophy at the top of the screen - maybe 30% wider - though the width is similar at the level of the top yoke. In the pictures above, this is easiest to see by comparing where the line of the fairings crosses the switch gear left and right.

The screens are both standard fitments for their years. The Daytona screen is marginally lower than the Trophy. The Daytona bars are mounted beneath the top yoke, the Trophy's are above, a difference of about 2 inches. The effect of bar and screen height when riding is that the Daytona keeps more of the wind off but directs windblast into the middle of my helmet. I'm 6'4'' though so it's conceivable a shorter rider would be out of the wind altogether ... if they could reach across the long tank to get hold of them in the first place!

I have found when riding the Trophy that my shoulders are just in the wind but the wind blast off of the screen hits me around the top of the chest. My helmet is in clear air so it's much quieter because there is less buffeting and the volume of wind hitting the helmet is lower.

The Daytona cockpit isn't quite standard - I made my own carbon fibre clock bracket to the same dimensions as the original and fitted a time clock just above the speedo.

What is TriMotoRevival?

TriMotoRevival is about two things at once: the revival of a rather dog-eared example of the machine that launched the revival of Triumph Motorcycles. She is an early 1991 Triumph Trophy 1200.

Brought home for the first time, August 2010

I acquired her in August 2010 and have gradually restored this extraordinary machine to a condition she deserves, as an example of the machine that relaunched Triumph in the 1990s. My restoration is to a standard that will allow me to enjoy riding the bike in a manner that is true to the spirit of the designers, as I understand it to have been. I have made some modifications on the way but nothing irreversible and primarily intended to improve the robustness of finish.

This blog has been to chart my progress and experiences on the road.  I also have a 1994 Triumph Daytona 900 and from time to time you'll see me write about some jobs on that bike here too. I've owned the Daytona since 1995, bought then when she was 18 months old with 10,000 miles on the clock, and we have since travelled about 60,000 miles together in conditions fair and foul. It was those experiences that made me appreciate the extraordinary solidity of T300 Triumphs and made me want to restore one of the first as a result.

September 2012, just after MOT

September 2012, bodywork back on again

If you are reading this, I hope you find echoes of the pleasure I am experiencing in breathing life and luster into a piece of recent British motorcycling heritage.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After an oil leak from the cam cover in March 2014, I stripped off the fairing lowers to fix it and then decided to leave them off for a while now the weather is improving. I 'borrowed' the forks from my Daytona 900 and fairing trim panels I made up for that bike years ago. Ruby's looking good at 45000 miles !

March 2014, after a wet winter and fixing oil leaks from forks and cam cover

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------