My 1938/39 Triumph. A Retrospective Review.

[TechNoir]

Re: My 1938/39 Triumph. A Retrospective Review.

Here is one for the oil pressure gauge nerds.

This is the "post war" oil gauge, you can see it is a different instrument altogether.





John

[TechNoir]

Re: My 1938/39 Triumph. A Retrospective Review.

The reason I took those pictures above on the first ride was because I had a breakdown. As I mentioned previously I entrusted some of the engine work to a "specialist" Unfortunately he put too little clearance on the valves/valve guides and I got a stuck valve. It was easily remedied by reaming out the guides to the correct clearance but it was a bit annoying.


After that I still had a couple of minor items to do like putting numbers on the front plate but for all practical purposes it was done.

I put a 500 hundred miles on it through the next few weeks. I would do a few miles and then iron out some issues then do some more miles then iron out some more minor issues etc. In August I took it to a VMCC ride out. The ride out started about 35 miles from where I live although I went there along the long scenic route and had done about 50 miles and had nearly got there when the bike stopped.

Here it is parked up waiting for the tow truck. I had tools with me and a few minor spares but not what I needed to fix this (minor) issue.






Here is a close up of the problem, if you look closely you will see petrol running down.





Its hard to see whats broken in the above picture but in this next picture its obvious.





The problem was caused by 2 things. First, the rear tank attaches to a flat mounting bar bolted to the frame. The bolts between the bar and frame had worked loose and so the tank had started vibrating badly causing the tap to fracture. This was easily remedied using Locite.

The second problem was my laziness. I had bought a new pattern tap for the bike from an autojumble/swap meet and it was made of some crappy metal. Also it is a later type of tap and so it is different to the one originally fitted to my bike. ( In hindsight I have no idea why I bought the pattern part but it has been a useful lesson)

I say laziness because I have this box in my shop.




I had an original one made from brass of the right type but it needed some work. It needed new cork, it needed a gauze filter adding and it needed the thread that screws into the tank reducing from 3/8" BSP to 1/4" BSP. An hour or so later had it sorted out.

The one on the right in the next picture is the correct tap and the one on the left is the correct thread for those not familiar with British Standard Pipe (BSP) thread.












John

[TechNoir]

Re: My 1938/39 Triumph. A Retrospective Review.

Other than those 2 breakdowns the bike has been good apart from one more issue. That issue is that I vibrated too much. I entrusted some of the engine work to a specialist but I only had the crank statically balanced and it was un-rideable above 55mph. This bad vibration led, at least in part, to the broken petrol tap.

2013 & 2014 was spent building an extension on my house so working on bikes took a bit of a back seat so it wasn’t until 2015 that i got around to pulling the motor apart and getting the crank dynamically balanced.

What a huge difference that made to riding it. I recommend to everyone that if you are building a motor you need to dynamically balance it.

This brings us up to date on this bike except for that oil leak I mentioned a few weeks ago which i had lived with since last year (when I rebuilt the motor after balancing the crank) because I was so engrossed with the HD.

In hindsight I like to remember it as being an easier project than it actually was but in reality some of it was really hard work. Some parts were easy to find because they were used on bikes up to 1949 or even beyond but some were very difficult to locate.

Also it was a bit like a jigsaw puzzle without a picture so some of the small details were hard to get right and I would end up spending hours and hours getting some small part like say a bracket right. I am sure a lot of people on here have had similar experiences.

Something that I would do differently is the fasteners, remember I mentioned above that there were none with the bike. They are mostly Cycle Thread with some Whitworth. There a few firms that do fasteners to order in Cycle Thread but only in stainless steel. I opted for these stainless fasteners because this was much easier than making the hundreds of nuts and bolts and screws that I needed myself especially because lots of them are unique to this bike with domed heads or other unique features. I don’t like how the stainless items look and also they like to gall which obviously I don’t like either. Along the way I did collect a few original fasteners so at some point in the future I might start changing them out for steel ones and making the missing ones myself.

This point alone made the 20F so much easier to do. It came with most of the fasteners and I have probably only had to make 30 to 40 items myself and at least half of those were because the ones with the bike were too rusted but at least I had a pattern to work to.

Here is that picture of the 5T from my introduction again, its not a recent picture but its a good one. (since then I have put numbers on the front plate)



And that’s it. (well almost, I have vinyl letters on the number plates but having had the 20F painted by a sign writer I think I will do the same on my 5T at some point in the not too distant future because it looks so much better)

It starts mostly on first kick and compared to the 20F it is quite a modern bike. It does still have the odd oil leak so I can see why old British iron had such a reputation for oil leaks. I keep sorting them out but I don’t think it will ever be 100% leak free. But it is a good bike and because I had it for so long before I managed to get it together and because it was so hard to find all of the bits I am quite attached to it so I think it will be a keeper.


John

[painterdale]

I enjoyed reading this, John. Beautiful bike! Dale

[TechNoir]

Thanks Dale. I enjoyed the trip down memory lane, finding my old pictures and writing the posts.

John

[smcdammitt]

What a lovely job, you should be very proud.
Scott

[Shaky Jake]

That's a beautiful machine. Lovely. Nice job.




Kevin


.

[TechNoir]

Thanks for the comments guys. I was just thinking about waking the Triumph up from its winter sleep. I have a couple of minor jobs to do so when I have done them I will post an update.

John

[exeric]

I have a good friend here in Florida who is British, and a motorcycle collector. I have told him many times; how can a Brit, who loves motorcycles, not have a Triumph in his collection

John, your Triumph is stunning, and your documentation is excellent, as it was with your J model Harley. When you look at the beautiful lines of that bike, you wonder how modern motorcycle design got so out of touch with classic styling.

[TechNoir]

Hello folks, I said I would do an update.

A few weeks ago I serviced the Triumph and did a couple of jobs i have been meaning to do for a while.

First up was the sump plate. There are 2 issues here. First, the standard plate is pressed steel and is prone to warping slightly and leaking. Mine is no exception. One remedy is to fit a machined alloy plate which is what I did. Also the studs go through the cases and oil gets down the threads and leaks. My remedy for this was to fit the studs using Delta 333 pipe sealant. I am a big fan of Delta sealants, for most applications they are as good as the equivalent Loctite product but much cheaper.

Old plate



Old vs New




However I ran into another problem. There is a gauze filter in the sump that the scavenge pipe sucks oil back to the tank through. When I took mine off I noticed that the gauze was starting to separate from the brass plate. When I investigated it came completely away with almost no effort. It seems that this repop filter is just glued together. The originals are soldered. I thought about soldering it back together but I couldn’t get the glue off the gauze so i bought a better quality item from SRM made of stainless steel and it is crimped together.

Old one



Broken.



New one



This is where it fits. You can just see the scavenge pipe.




I also needed to put a new gasket on one of the pushrod tubes.


Here is the front tube.




Gasket kits include rubber gaskets for top and bottom of the tube but I always had trouble sealing the top. Oliver Barnes at TriSupply advised me that the early bikes had a thick paper gasket (between 5/32" and 3/16") and he sold me some and it fixed them. However last time I had the top off the engine I reused a gasket and had a weep so i needed to replace it. Now the gaskets are, for what they are, not cheap. Ok they are not exactly expensive but I took the time to make a die and bought some paper and now I can cut as many as I like for the cost of a couple of bought ones (if you include the postage)

Here are 2 bottom gaskets to the left hand side, you can see that they are thicker. To the right is a modern top gasket and a paper one. The paper ones are, in my experience, much more effective.



Here is the die. Its just made from scrap and is in 2 parts which makes getting the gaskets out of it easier and also makes making it easier.



Last job is something that i do every year which is boil my petrol tap. These old Ewarts taps have a cork seal inside and they dry out and shrink, especially when I drain the fuel over winter. When they shrink they leak and the best method to fix this is to boil the cork for 20 mins. This usually make the cork OK for another year.

Tap

[TechNoir]

Plunger with cork seal.



Boiling



After boiling. You can see it has swollen up.



As I said this usually sorts it for a year.

I planned to go for the first proper ride out of the year today (Sunday) so I filled the tank right up and gave the bike a quick check over on Saturday. After I had parked it in the garage for a short time I could smell petrol. Turns out the cork has reached the end of its life. I have a new cork but the parts are riveted together. Looking through my box of taps I noticed I had another plunger that had been taken apart and soldered back together so I used that plunger with the new cork and soldered it together. The tap is now quite stiff but it seals fine and no boiling required. I think I could make a new plunger with O rings the next time I have a problem so that is a job for the future.

Close up of old cork on the soldered plunger.




Old cork. I forgot to take a picture of the old and new corks together. the new one is much bigger.



Replacement plunger, note solder.



As opposed to the original riveted construction.



So I went out with the local section of the VMCC. Liken that to your local chapter of the AMCA. It was a short run of about 35 miles although they were 35 miles of English lanes like this so even though it was a short ride it was nice. Also its about 20 miles each way from my mouse to where we met so I did about 75 miles all in.

Here is the sort of road for the most part of the run. The width is the same as the width of one car.



I didnt have a route holder so i had to follow someone who did. At first I was behind a 1918 Triumph doing only about 30 mph. Then a faster group went by so i tagged onto the back of them. They were much newer bikes, a 1970's 750 Honda, a Trident, another Honda etc. They were probably going at a comfortable pace for them but i had to work hard to keep up. I had enough GO but was lacking in the STOP department. Its fair to say that for at least 20 of the 35 miles I gave the Triumph a hard ride with a couple of "moments" when my muscle memory went for the gear change rather than the brake. It didn’t miss a beat and is running better than ever.

Home



Needs a clean



This afternoon I managed to do some work on a milling machine that I am doing up so all in all today has been a good day.

John