Part one – taking things apart
After 30 years or so of playing around on old bikes, my wife Jen, suddenly decided she wanted to try riding pillion with me on my magnificent Triumph Speed Twin. Wow, I was shocked, I’m not sure what came over her, perhaps it was seeing the period photo of Hugh and Janny riding the same machine back in the seventies?
She borrowed some gear and we were all set for a ride out one Saturday. As usual I checked the oil and fuel, tyre pressures, and hello, what’s that, it seems we have a broken spoke in the rear wheel. I’d never had one before, how bad is it? Can we still ride? A quick google search revealed small trips were fine, but longer trips were best avoided, along with pillion passengers – ah, slight problem there. Otherwise more spokes could be broken and the wheel compromised – that cut out any thoughts of taking Jen out.
Right, so how was I going to get this fixed? I found a home-business about an hours drive away but otherwise nothing. On Sunday I went to the Hobsonville Classic bike meet, which was a great outing, as soon as I got home I started dismantling the rear of the bike. First things first, off came the panniers – there was a slight pause here while I took some photos and marveled at how great the bike looked without them, way sexier!
Then I started on the rear wheel. After reading the instructions in my original 1956 Triumph manual, I quickly identified that it was the non-quick-detachable type, which, I guess, would be the slow-detachable type then? Following the manual, I quickly removed the rear part of the mudguard, split the chain, dismantled the rear brake rod and loosened the large nuts on the ends of the axle. I had to slowly ease the wheel out enough so I could get at the speedo drive cable to disconnect it. I now had the wheel free, complete with brakes and rear cog. My manual then referred to a diagram with no further instructions, so after some examination I found that the brake shoes and mechanism just lifted out of the hub which left me with eight bolts connecting the brake hub to the wheel which wasn’t a problem.
So now that the wheel was ready for some re-spoke, be-spoke remedial work, I decided some other things could be attended to. I drained the oil tank and after some fluffing about removed the tank from the frame. Now I could flush out the oil sludge in the bottom of the tank. Unfortunately, while removing it an old, and very fragile oil feed pipe broke – ah, something else to fix. Typically, a small job was getting bigger!
Also typical, you spend a not insignificant amount of money on an old bike and in next to no time, it’s in pieces in your garage! However, I was really enjoying all the spannering, I don’t know why but sometimes it seems a real chore, and other times, like now, it seems like fantastic fun. After locating a couple of oil feed pipes, I found the larger pipe fitted over the broken piece and the connection to the tank, so hopefully that’ll work without leaking.
Now I had a wheel that I could deliver to the wheel and spoke man to fix, great! When I met the guy he asked me what sort of bike it was off. When I told him it was a ‘47 Speed Twin, he said ‘Right, you’d better have a look in my garage’, where to my amazement he had a ‘47 Speed Twin!
I made an arrangement to pick it up the following weekend when it should be completed.
To be continued…