Above, Paul, below, his dad
and his grand dad.. notice the license plate, of course, AP 1740
that's pretty damn cool... well, it had been sitting a long while, so, to make it operable again, he started with the fuel system, and cleaning out the gas tank...
with some mechanical agitation before going on to electrolysis... but the evidence in the bucket shows it had starting rusting away
Skipping ahead to after the repairs were finished, I want to add this cool bit of the story:
With the bike outside, fueled up and ready to be started I popped into the garage to get a fire extinguisher - just in case and then stood alongside it ready to start it for the first time back in family ownership since Tom parted with it in 1946 - almost 60 years ago.
With fuel turned on and carb tickled, I was about to fire it up, when I heard a bike coming up our lane and a few seconds later in rode my cousin Steve - we share the same Grandfather and love of bikes. He just happened to be passing by after a trip to Wales and hadn't popped in for over a year and didn't know I was planning to start the bike up
For him to arrive literally a second before I started our Grandfathers bike, I found it slightly spooky and rather wonderful - either a million to one coincidence or perhaps Tom wanting both his living motorcycling descendants present for the starting of his bike!
Tom's Triumph burst into life at the first push of the pedals and ran very sweetly as we both appreciated it running.
he rode it on a 150 mile shakedown run, and wow, a lot of problems pop up... spark plugs, timing, pedals falling off, and a carb jet getting plugged.
us old car lovers know that a lot of things can go wrong, but damn, that one shakedown run sure got a lot of gremlins to pop up!
Next his cousin (same grandfather's bike, so very cool) who is also a biker of many many years took it for a 50 mile run, and another long list of things went wrong, the oil pump busted up, the fuel line broke off from metal fatigue / vibration, and the oil to gas tank wall developed another leak... so oil in the as, and a smoke cloud while running
http://www.go-faster.com/1911Triumph.html
Very cool indeed. I think these chaps need to get Toms sheet metal tools out and fab a new tank. The nicest part is the cousin showing up at just the right time. I'd love to tip a pint with them!
ReplyDeleteHmmm, how many parts should be replaced, vs repaired, when keeping the bike original seems to have been the motivation to trying so hard, so many times, to line and repair it. I'd have told them that they should simply lead line the tank, hot! And with some liquid lead all over the interior it would be sealed for ever! Very easy to machine out of all the inputs and outlets, and the lead would never be affected by gasoline. (I believe) The only thing is that that much hot lead might blister and burn the paint off.
DeleteBut they sure did try to maintain all original parts!