Things that haven't worked

I have documented many changes on this blog. My recent review of modifications have caused me to think a bit more about how well or how badly some of my efforts have worked out. So here is a list of things that have not gone so well. They are my attempts to 1/ paint the engine covers, 2/ paint on the rear brake caliper, 3/ wheel paint, 4/ repaint filler cap surround, and 5/ fit an oil pressure gauge. So, as you can see, it turns out my painting skills aren't really up to snuff :-(

1/ Clutch cover
First off, the clutch cover was in a horrible state. I had a go at getting all the old paint off but it was a struggle and couldn't remove all traces from the sections where it bolts on. There are quite a few difficult recesses and angles. The result over time is that my paint has bubbled up. Also, the VHT clear lacquer has started to yellow. The other covers I painted have not bubbled or yellowed, as far as I can tell. I put the clear lacquer on much thicker for the clutch cover than the others because I had polished up the Triumph logo. I wanted to make sure it was protected from the elements. In retrospect, I wish I'd gone easier with the lacquer and committed myself to keeping the Triumph shiny with autosol.

2/ Rear caliper
Perhaps I'm wrong to list this as a 'didn't work'. I had a brake fluid leak when I was bleeding the rear caliper. I thought I'd cleaned it all off afterwards but evidently didn't do a great job. Smoothrite is definitely not brake fluid proof. However, the Finnegan's special metal primer has largely shrugged it off, much to my surprise.

Smoothrite doesn't like brake fluid

3/ Wheel paint
I took quite a lot of trouble over the wheels. Really good degrease etc. then topped off with enamel red and clear lacquer. However the plain fact is that the finish is not robust and has chipped off in many places. I plan to get the wheels powder coated. I still like the red centres and silver rims but I'm thinking of trying a graded transition between the colours rather than a clean line. I've seen some three spoke wheels done this way. It could work on my six-spokers. I'll use the wheels from my Daytona whilst they are away. That's a nice thing about having a pair of T300s.

Enamel paint chips and scratches easily

4/ Fuel cap surround

Wheel paint doesn't like petrol

I stripped the tatty paint off of the filler cap surround when I was treating the tank with POR-15. I used aluminium wheel paint. First trip out, I dribbled some fuel on it getting the nozzle out at a petrol station. It immediately ate into the paint so now it looks tatty again. I had hoped it would be up to challenges like this because, after all, wheels live in a harsh environment. This paint is an acrylic formulation. Acrylic paint is just a terrible idea if there is any risk of getting petrol on it.

5/ Oil pressure sender
I bought the oil pressure and temperature gauges with senders (sensors) from the same supplier. They were cheap! Now, the temperature gauge has worked flawlessly and I have found the information it has provided reassuring and credible. Most of the time, for example, it hovers between 70 and 80 degrees. The factory manual specifies an oil pressure check with the engine warmed to 80 degrees. So that adds up. For what it is worth, the highest oil temperature I have seen was in Coventry on an extremely hot day after filtering in traffic for about 30 minutes. It was 97 degrees! Literally fry-an-egg temps. The engine shrugged it off though in its typically nonchallant power station kind of way, assisted by energetic blasts from the fan.

Faulty oil pressure sender

 The pressure gauge has always behaved strangely, jumping and falling by tens of psi for no obvious reason. It now reads 100 psi  (it's maximum) all the time. I've checked continuity and the wiring is fine. The sender is bust. I'll get a better quality replacement sender and see if it drives the gauge properly.

Work still to do
This is not a thing I have done wrong (a sin of commission) but things not yet done (sins of omission?). I decided to fix up my Trophy from the inside to the outside. The outside - especially the fairing panels - have yet to receive any TLC beyond cleaning. Their time will come, probably next winter.

Old scratches are still old

Ride safe!

Mounting oil temperature and pressure gauges

The pressure and temperature gauge story so far: sensors installed, having sorted out the position of the oil pressure sensor so it wouldn't foul on the exhaust,  wiring harnesses made up to my satisfaction. Time to think through mounting the gauges themselves. The instruments on the mark 1 Trophy are mounted in a binnacle that bolts to the underside of the forks' top yoke. They are offset from the yoke and a bit of measuring suggested there would be room enough to squeeze in the the little gauges I'd bought.  

So the next question was how to mount them. With a bit more measuring, I could see an additional bracket would be possible to replace the bracketry they were initially fitted with. This new bracket would share the two M6 bolts that hold the main instruments in place. I'd already improved the firmness with which the main instruments are held in place so I was pretty confident about the security of this plan. I marked out my design on a bit of cardboard and cut it out to see if the idea would work in the space. 

The gauges came with a swivel mount attached to the front edge of their aluminium bodies. The only trouble with my plan was that the gauges would have to mount upside down because I'd need to attach them at the back of their bodies rather than the front. So I would have to reverse the guts of the gauges so my replacement bracket would screw to the rear edge instead, to solve the problem of the digits being upside down.

 So, idea demonstrated as feasible, I marked out the shape and holes I wanted on a 1mm aluminium sheet. I drilled the holes out before cutting with my jigsaw because it is much easier to drill into flat sheet than the something with bends in it. I decided to drill two possible mounting holes for the gauges so I could choose between two heights.

With the shape cut out, I clamped it in my pretend workmate and banged over the extensions for the gauges with a rubber faced mallet, then tidied up the roughness left by the jigsaw and drill with a my favourite fits.

 A trial fit showed the bracket was marginally too wide and the top edges of the gauges needed to move inwards and rearwards by between 5mm and 10mm to avoid fouling the top yoke and instrument binnacle.

I put a little bend into the aluminium to bring the gauges away from the binnacle (visible) and then another bend just inboard of the 90 degree bend to tilt the gauges inward towards the centre line of the bike (not visible).

I was now happy with the positioning of the gauges so needed to sort out the fact that they were upside down. I was also concerned that these car gauges might suffer in the rain. The electronics for the gauges are mounted on a small circuit board so they are on the opposite side of the mounting screw. Reversing this circuit board ran the risk of the mounting screw contacting the components. I solved this by cutting a piece of plastic sheet (actually the blister from the box the gauges came in) to insulate the electronics from the mounting screw. It was a bit of a fiddle to get it back in reversed with the improvised insulator but I got there with both gauges.

 I bought a box of o-rings in various sizes at an autojumble. I found some rings that were the same external diameter as the gauge bodies and coated them in rubber grease to help keep the water out. I gave my new bracket and the gauge bodies a coat of paint too.

 Here they are in place. I'm not sure about the purple anodisation. Purple and red aren't a great combination so I'll probably get the Smoothrite out again. Still, pretty neat, eh? They might even work ... ;-)

45 degree street elbow saves the day

Preferred location of the oil pressure
sensor, to the left rear of the sump

I'd found a problem with the place I wanted to fit an oil pressure sensor. The sensor is a relatively bulky item and it fouled on the junction between the right-hand exhaust and exhaust link pipe.

Unfortunately, the sensor fouled on
the left-hand exhaust pipe.

I had fitted the sensor on a 90 degree adaptor. I thought about rotating it so that the sensor ran parallel with the back of the engine but that would have made it necessary to ditch a support bracket for the exhaust that bolts to the rear of the sump.

Exhaust support bracket visible at the top left of this image,
bolted to the rear of the sump. 

The silencers are very heavy and so I was reticent to get rid of the support bracket.

I did a bit of measuring and thought my preferred mounting location might work if I could find a 45 degree adaptor. Some hunting around on the internet showed a few suppliers with right part - 1/8th NPT male-female fitting, described as a 'street elbow'. I found an agricultural engineer in Northern Ireland selling hydraulic parts that had some, apparently galvanized. I ordered them up and was pleased to find, after a test fitting, that it was just the job giving approx 10mm of clearance from the exhaust. It'll still be hot there but an awful lot better than if it was in direct contact.

The underside of the engine is a harsh environment - heat and road muck will combine to make life difficult for all components here. I decide to give the sensor and 45 degree elbow a coat of Smoothrite to help them cope.

Similarly, the oil filter housing will get a lot of stick. I found quite a lot of pitting in the large circular cover for the filter so I gave it a good degrease, scrub and coat of paint to fend off the worst of the weather. New O rings and filter plus steel washers that locate either side of the filter. The steel washers were missing when I dismantled the bike. They protect the rubber grommets in the centre of the filter.

 Filter cover in place, drain plug with a new copper washer. 

I don't need this pressure on - but I like it anyway

Inspired by Bostik, I decided to fit oil temperature and pressure gauges. The question was, where to?

The sump has three M16 oilway blanking plugs and the original 1/8NPT hole for the standard pressure switch. The pressure and temperature sensors I bought were both 1/8NPT and one of them (can't remember which) came with a clever but rather bulky four-way adapter block, drilled and tapped to 1/4 NPT and with four 1/8 to 1/4 NPT adapters. I fiddled around for ages with various alternatives for fitting the sensors. I decided to try using two M16 to 1/8 NPT adapters in place of two of the three oilway blanking plugs. I chose a drilling beneath the mesh filter for the main supply for the oil temperature sensor, and a drilling adjacent to the standard pressure switch at the rear of the sump for the pressure sensor. I think the latter is intended for an oil pressure test gauge because it doesn't blank a drilling in the sump casting that serves any other obvious purpose. 

I fitted the standard pressure switch and plug beneath the mesh filter for the oil cooler with permanent thread lock and torqued up nicely.

 The 1/8 NPT to M16 adapter plug for the temperature sensor should have been straight forward. Unfortunately, the one I bought had a fairly short thread and the blanking plugs in my sump are headless allen fittings which engage with a thread that doesn't start until approx 10mm into their respective holes. In other words, I got only two turns on the adapter before its head locked against the casting. Also, because these are tapered threads, the threads that were engaged were extremely loose. I've opted for two remedies. I ground down the head of the bolt to effectively lengthen it by about 4mm. I then wound PTFE tape around its threads to help take up some of the remaining clearance, if any, between the threads. I hope this will do the trick (clearly) but I'll have to wait for the start up to find out. This drilling is to an oil way before the oil pump so the oil will not be under pressure here. Unlike the take off for the oil pressure sensor ...

1/8 NPT to M16 brass adapter plug ready for temp sensor

The pressure sensor is pretty bulky and the exhaust headers run very close to the sides of the sump casting. There is a bit of room at the rear so I figured that would be the most likely place to fit it without interference between it and the hot pipes.

Aluminium 1/8NPT to M16 adapter plug with brass
three-way 1/8 NPT adapter, allowing a 90 degree bend
for the pressure sensor.

Even so, a test fitting of the sump showed very little room so I needed to put an 90 degree adapter in between the sensor body and the 1/8NPT to M16 bolt.  This aluminium adapter bolt was included in the gauge kit - a nice long tapered thread so no problem with engaging this one. I used PTFE tape again to give it the best possible chance to seal.

Pressure sensor body in place on the brass three-way adapter

Test fitting of pressure sensor, lined up against exhaust headers

I tagged the pressure sensor feed with
green tape so I wouldn't confuse it with
the temp sensor feed

Rats nest of wires sprouting in all
directions - 20 stripped ends to be
tinned for joining or termination

The sensors use a blue wire to connect to their respective gauges, the temperature sensor also has a white wire to connect to earth. The gauges need a 12v switched supply, earth and feed from their respective sensors. I made up two little looms to do this. I used 5amp blue wire to extend the temperature sensor, black for the earth and green for the pressure sensor.

The sensor mini-loom was for carrying three wires up from the sump to terminate above and in front of the battery. After scrutinizing the wiring diagram in my manual, I worked out that one of the connectors for the third ignition coil (unused on the four-cylinder models) is switched 12volts. It is a red female spade connector. The other one is brown with a yellow tracer and loops to the ignitor box. Not one to play with. Anyway, this unused coil connection runs very close to a place where the main frame tube joins to the box-section rear frame rails, next to the battery. There is a bit of room just here, above a useful little bracket that mounts the starter solenoid. Ideal for keeping connections out of the weather and tidy.

The gauge mini-loom was for carrying four wires (positive from switched supply, negative/earth, and two sensor feeds) from above and in front of the battery to the gauges which will be mounted between the standard clocks and the top yoke.

Four wires for gauge mini-loom: brown for switched supply,
black for earth, blue for temperature sensor feed, and
green for pressure sensor feed. 

Gauge loom ready for wrapping with electrical insulation
tape. I used heat-shrinking tube to seal the soldered joints and
additional, larger section heat-shrink to cover the whole joined area.

Sensor mini-loom, heat-shrink tube installed under the sump,
the other three wires (green for pressure, blue for temperature,
black for earth/negative) ready for wrapping. 

Termination of sensor mini-look: M6 ring for earth, male
bullets for sensor feed wires. Heat-shrink added to protect.

Cleaning threads with M6 tap prior to installation of sump

Pressure (left) and temperature (right) sensors in place on
sump with loom held out of harm's way with a cable clip. 

When I test fitted the right-hand exhaust, I discovered that the sensor body just touched. It might have been OK - but represented too big a risk of frying whatever is inside the sensor body. So I decided to remove a bracket the helps to locate the exhaust headers and to rotate the 90 degree adapter half a turn so the pressure sensor is now centralized behind the sump. In the picture below, it looks as though it is in contact with rear suspension drag link - in fact there is about 5mm clearance. So, no more interference, wiring in place - the job should be a good one. Only time will tell. If not, I'll have to replace the M16 plug and admit it was an adventure that failed.

Final (for now) position of the oil pressure sensor