Took the dog with me to the garage after taking him for a walk, first pic of him in a long while that shows anything more than a shapeless heap of fur, a grey zoom going from here to there, or a super close-up from his nose

Saw the link to your blog, waaay too tired ATM but gonna look into it tomorrow!

BTW anyone who`s reading this, give a big cheer to Missynet as it`s her birthday today!

Trying hard getting the bike to be paint-ready as I realized the other day that apart from the electrical work, I`m starting to see the bottom of the new parts box! There`s not really that much more to do, well apart from the endless job of tidying everything up but the mechanical side is starting to get there.

Starting...



I took a visit to Biltema after work to get more of those Permaquick-type hose clamps so I can start buttoning up the coolant system.



Managed to get a few clamps in here and there until I noticed it... At first I was that close to ignoring it but seeing what other idiocies has been done with the bike I decided to see why there is some of that wretched red gasket sealer coming out from between the thermostat housing...




PITCHFORK! SOMEBODY GET ME MY PITCHFORK!!! AND LIGHT THE TORCHES!!! THERE IS NO THERMOSTAT WHAT SO FRIGGIN EVER!!! Only a broken O-ring and yet more gasket seal!!! Oh how I wish that I some day will find out the previous owner of this bike and get to show him the finished product... Got me so wired I stopped working for the day on the spot and craked open an advisory beer... Now I gotta find out what size and temp is the original thermostat so I can do a cross-search on what bike`s (or car`s) thermostat will fit there as I sure as heck am not gonna order that from the brits...


I`m not religious but lord give me strength with this one... The checkered line is showing already yet it seems so far away...

 

My compassion. Let me know If There is anything I can do to help you!
Bummer.

 

Gotta see if we could bundle up a group order from WOT big enough to make sense some time, bummer they don`t carry the metal fuel couplers... There MUST be a thermostat in Motonet that will fit, just gotta know what to go ask...

Gotta crash now, can barely stay awake...

 

Bit of a hiatus again cause been busy wrencing with the CBR and doing a lot of stuff for the daytona rather than to it. Gonna be a long-ish post so bear with me...

So, been in the garage a lot lately trying to do a list of all the things that still need to be done to the bike, and although the things are pretty small as is there are a LOT of them, still gotta do one more ebay order spree once I get paid again from work, should come next monday.



The CBR is now fully serviced and ready to roll whichever comes earlier, a buyer or my desire to go for a spin. Hasn`t raised interest in the scale I hoped but I trust that once the roads melt and the air gets warmer the phone gets a ringing, or at least hope cause right now I gotta spend all my savings and then some to get the Triumph painted and cannot touch the Alfa before the Honda goes. Speaking of the Triumph this is the last picture that you will see it in this state.





I started taking the tank protector off and got quite surprised to discover it is not a sticker at all as it is really carbon fiber! Might reuse it, might not. It IS a bit big to my taste, I`ll see how it goes with the new paint job.



New logos to go with the new attire, not the same as the old one, there are in fact 12 different Triumph logos over the years and this is to my knowledge the 1936-1990 version that was in use the longest this far. For anyone interested all logos can be seen here as well as the newest 13th and a TV commercial video as well as other stuff of the same subject, just scroll down a bit.



All set and ready for the paint. Me and my son did a little road trip together today and took the fairings to the paint shop about 1,5h away from here and had a talk with the painter making the last decisions about some details, gonna get them back in about three to four weeks time, really exited about what they will look as if the painter is able to capture my vision which I trust he will they will look pretty darn cool! Don`t wanna reveal too much yet but I will tell three things: there will be graphics, it will incorporate both old school cafè racer spirit and some more modern stuff, and I like H.R.Giger. all I can say is the old clichè: haters gonna hate

There is also going to be one more major coversion that I had not planned to do, but having sat on the bike in the garage quite a few times lately it has become quite clear that I cannot ride the bike in it`s current state due to my own condition. As some of you probably already know I have RSI on both of my wrists so a thorough-bred superbike stance is way out of my comfort zone so this this has to happen even though it is one of the things IMO that differentiates a Daytona from a Speed Triple:



Dirty bars.

Here`s a little comparison me and the wifey did today:



This is how the riding position is ATM and that is WITH the woodcraft riser bars, the original stance is just BRUTAL on your neck, shoulders and wrists.



This is ROUGHLY where it`s gonna be once I`m done with the conversion, a DRAMATIC improvement. It STILL is more forward than I thought it will be but that is something I can live with already as it IS a naked bike so the airflow will carry me some amount too.

These are the mounts that I ordered and what with I can get the bar to mount near the rear end of the top triple. Speaking of it, there`s one tiny little problem:



The top tiple is tapered outwards from both sides so you cannot just bolt the new clamps in and be done with it. The first thing that comes in mind would be to get the triple machined so that there would be straight slots for the clamps but here`s the kicker: it`s not thick enough! The next idea you probly will throw is get a speed triple top yoke, tried, none available, and it would have to be EXACTLY the same year model as 04-> has different kind of nut and top bearing so it won`t fit without machining.

One morning I was driving to work and completely out of the blue this idea popped into my mind, wasn`t even pondering the subject:



What if I`d make this. Two angle irons screwed into a chip board with sandpaper in between as rails and a piece of 2x4 as the sled with the end slanted into the exact right angle measured and "flipped" from the top triple, in theory if I rub the new clamps against the sandpaper with that the right andle should transfer into their bottoms so I would only have to drill the bolt holes for them to sit 100% upright. We`ll see how that goes in practice.

I will also need a few other things like new brake lines from a speed triple, I was thinking about spending the extra buck to convert the crossover type nearly impossible to bleed brake lines to the popular upgrade of two straights instead. The banjo bolts of the right caliper and the master cylinder should cross-fit AFAIK so all I need is to order the new lines. The front brake fuild reservoir will also change once more as I`m not happy with the current one.


Some of you might have noticed the end of the world thread I made some time ago. Well, from that I figured a new hobby for the next summer and times to come: ruinspotting.



I got a bulletin board and a road map of southern Finland to be hung on the garage wall to what I will mark POI:s once I hear of them with one color pins and change them to another color once the place is visited and photoed. Pics will be posted into the mentioned thread once the riding season opens here and I get the bike done.

The red tack in the middle is our house.

 

First off, it looks infinitely better as far as the riding position goes. Not to mention the plethora of bar bends that you can use and change to as you see fit. Anything from a woods-bike bend to drag bars, all in different widths too. Its the way to go (dirty bars) IMO for the street. Although, you may like the forward lean as you start to use more throttle. Too upright of ergonomics, and that motor's power may be useless anywhere but the highway.

The '54 triple is the same way. A few companies have made adapters for standard risers that fix the issue.




I'm sure someone in Europe has done something similar cinsidering the fighter scene over there



That will be very cool. I kick myself for not taking advantage of doing that when I had the chance. Nothing around me now is older than the '70's.... and anything abandoned is torn down and rebuilt...

 

Gonna have to start easy when learing to control this beast after I`m done with it, cause with the -1 front sprocket and the dirty bars moving the center of gravity way back I think the outcome, specially with an empty-ish tank, might be quite nose happy!

Oh I have looked, and oh how I have looked for anything close to those riser adaptors, zip, zilch, nada. There are a few companies that make a CNC machined top triple for this, but the cost with the carriage, bars, brake lines and such would exceed 350EUR and that is a sum I do NOT have anymore, anything I do to the bike HAS to be done on a budget at this point. I searched for FOUR evenings nonstop with every single search phrase I could come up with, from ebay and the rest of the net, finnish and english, generic and spesific, and found nuttin that`ll fit my budget so gotta try that, I saw one bloke do a similar thing to his T595 Daytona (mk1 955) at customfighters` forum but cannot find the thread anymore.

Same here with the ruin thing, most of the cool places have either been repurposed or demolished, there are some very cool places I know of like an old mental asylum that is a real castle from the `20:s, super creepy place but guess what, restricted access and guarded by a security company. There are some places I will be visiting like an old yarn factory I actually photoed to the MFCC thread last summer, gonna try to get legal access indoors, there is an abandoned canal with a log lifter twenty-some km:s from here carved into the bedrock, a definite visit probly the first, an abandoned luxury summer house area in Helsinki that has partly been decaying from the fifties, an old disused harbor and a sawmill in one coast city, they`re out there if you know where to look, but some places I would have wanted to visit I just missed like the legendary Keimola race track that has now been demolished completely from under a new suburb, parts of the track were still there last spring but not anymore...

On with the build.



I mentioned earlier that I`m going to be building an electric latch to the seat but the more I have been thinking about it the more it has started to feel needlessly complex, so I opted the plan B that`s been on my mind all along but have not wanted to do it for a few reasons.



First I took a 5mm SS rod I had lying around and did a quick four cornered "blade" at the end so I could make pilot holes into the tail through the mount holes getting them in the right place.





...and here`s the #1 reason I had feared to do this, the only thing I had that could do a 22mm hole was an auger drill and of course it bit in whilst I was changing my position and gouged the hole! Oh well, bout time I tried some plastic welding...





It`s not pretty but I`m sure it will hold, I made sure I got the plastic to melt all the way through so it will be solid and no one`s gonna see it from there, it`s just that the fact that it is there bothers the # out of me...



I took the old seat someone had fabricated from scratch...



...removed, modified, sanded and painted the metal struts...



...and bob`s your uncle. The seat isn`t going anywhere with those.





a few furniture plugs to seal the holes and it almost looks like factory spec.

And now comes the slightly bigger #2 reason. See that slot on the left? Yep, that is the place for the original coolant reservoir which now cannot be put there cause it will block the hole. I had thought about using an aftermarket reservoir in the crash cage earlier but those buggers are EXPENSIVE! So I studied the original catch can a bit and seems it is NOT a pressure vessel but just a free flowing container si in theory any aluminum bottle with the proper fittings and inner tubes will do, thinking about fitting a sports drink bottle with a bicycle mount inside the cage

 

I got an idea so daft this morning I actually laughed out loud myself so I just have to try how it will come out, and since it is easily removable without trace and doesn`t cost THAT much it won`t matter if I get regretting.



The first thing was getting a 1kg fire extinguisher and blasting it empty into a garbage bag I actually did go first to a shop that services them to ask for an empty shell and got one for free but the smallest they had was a 2kg which I would have had to shorten so I decided to splurge the 12,90 to buy that one.



Just a small tug was enough to open the thread from the nozzle valve...



...so I could empty the rest of the powder into another garbage bag. Now this is a good example that if you ever have to extinguish a fire with one of these, specially with a smaller one, keep the bottle upright, press the trigger and DO NOT LET GO until the gas is depleted or the bottle will not fully empty itself. To minimize the mess I kept the bottle upside down and let the gas out carefully so most of the powder was left in the can.



Little hacksaw and sandpaper for the nozzle to get the pipe and the threaded part, as well as a few pipe clamps...





...an LPG bottle valve, braided hose running under the tank, some blue paint & a NOS sticker and I bet half of the people will not get it is actually a coolant expansion tank even after they spot the level gauge I`ll be doing on the inside Gonna fiddle with the positioning later, just had it laying against the pipes for a photo op, gonna try if I can get it inside the cage, gonna be a tight fit.

 

That. Is. Awesome.

 

Found a pretty good paint for the bottle. It's a little darker than the real deal ( lighter IRL than pic) BUT the power of suggestion is on my side here: if you THINK you're seeing something, you see it gotta go buy a can of clearcoat today as the paint went pretty lo-gloss once dried and shouldn't metal colors be lacquered over anyway? I managed to get probly a keyring's worth of thread onto the sidewall as it is not that thick so gotta put o-rings and gasket seal onto the angle connectors once I get to that. The can however raised another problem: the insides of it is not lined at all so water makes it rust fast! This made me rethinking that since the system is prone to rusting anyway it would probly be a good idea to put waterless coolant in there. just the thing is the bugger costs 84eur per 5 liter jug! Would probly be worth it anyway so not gonna bury that idea just yet. probly gonna seal it when I do the tank but that's probly a next winter's worry.



Ever get that "what the * am I doing" -feeling? After cutting small rings from exhaust pipe bits to get the angle perfect for the last 1,5h and realise it's 22:30 and you have to get up at 5 will do just that but you know how it is with inspiration: use it or lose it, and right now I got a HUGE one! It's currently 8:30 on a friday morning, the sun is shining from a completely clear sky for the first time since gosh I don't even remember and I cannot wait tonget from work and into the garage!

I have also set a fixed goal for the bike to be ready: thursday 14.5. There is an ascension day bike show in lahti marina which I have decided to enter (winner takes home 5k) so the bike just HAS TO be ready by then, and if the sky doesn't fall it shouldn't be a problem!

 

Haaah it looks VERY promising to me!
And glad to see you so exited
And well 5k is quite a motivator

Thumbs up Matti for Great Work!!

Still love the coolant idea. I recon if you change coolant every other year 84 euros is not a killer. Just my view on it. If it keeps even a little down the rust then it is worth the extra.