Triumph Shimfest (long-ish)

well, that was fun. Not.

Shim check time on Niall's T'bird and my Trophy. He's checked his a
while back, determined two valves were way out, and asked Jack Lilley to
do it.

They'd reported that all shims were A-OK. Niall didn't believe them.

Anyone ever contemplating doing a major overhaul on a Trophy - don't.
The bodywork is a nightmare. There are about 50, yes *fifty* fasteners
holding on just the two side panels, the belly pan, main fairing sides,
and the interior plastic. That's without removing the main front
section, tights, clocks etc.

Once that's off, but it's a big once, verything is easily accessible,
and a swift check revealed that at 6200 miles, all 16 valves were within
spec, although a couple were just on the tight side.

Niall, meanwhile, was removing camchain tensioner and loosening off cam
caps (after zip-tieing the chain to the sprockets because we'd
discovered that the early Triumph shim remal tool I'd bought doesn't fit
1996-on bikes. Great. Back it goes on ebay.

As he loosened off the tensioner the engine jumped. We later discovered,
after refitting everything and turning it over, that it wouldn't start.

Oh dear.

Yup, the camchain had jumped off the crank sprocket and was, at the
crank, about 90 degrees out. As we could turn the engine over by hand,
there were valves kissing pistons, thank God, but off everything came,
off came the engine side cover, off came the tensioner, and enough slack
was fed into the chain to allow us to rotate the crank to the right
position, re-fit the chain, check all the timing marks (which, yeah, we
should have checked before), and time it up.

Yup, looked OK, and Niall decided to start the engine with the cam cover
off, just to double-check before we buttoned up everything. Coo, don't
Triumph's have a healthy oil feed to the top end?

Refitting the fairing on the Trophy was even more of a nightmare than
removing it. Anyway, it's done. No need to do it for another 12,000
miles and to be honest, next time I'm paying someone to do it. Not Jack
Lilley, though.

 

On Sun, 9 Nov 2003 19:48:01 +0000,

<snip horror>

You're determined to kill off the dodgy spark plug tag, aren't you?

--
| ___ Salad Dodger
|/ \
_/_____\_ GL1500SEV/CBR1100XXX/KH500A8/TS250C
|_\_____/_| ..61132../..14035.../..3157./.19406
(>|_|_|<) TPPFATUICG#7 DIAABTCOD#9 YTC#4 PM#5
|__|_|__| BOTAFOT #70 BOTAFOF #09 two#11 WG*
\ |^| / IbW#0 & KotIbW# BotTOS#6 GP#4
\|^|/ ANORAK#17
'^'

 

^^^^^^
Rocky Horror Triumph Servicing?

 

The Older Gentleman was seen penning the following ode to ... whatever:

Oh great. That is, as you probably know, the same bunch that changed
a fuel union the day I was supposed to set off for France and didn't
bat an eye when a rather enraged Timo walked in the following day
with a bike that was leaking from precisely the same connector.

While the mechanic was fixing the split hose that had caused the leak,
he kindly informed me that these hoses should have been checked for
weakness/softness at the service a few thousand miles ago.

A rather cold comment from my side as to why *he* didn't spot the
weakend part of the hose when he changed the union less than 24 hours
before shut him up rather quickly.

That's probably a good start, that. Much as I hate to say it. Mind
you, they've always been very helpful with the succession of
emergencies I've had with the ST, and AFAIK they are one of the
better Triumph dealers in London. Which admittedly is hard considering
a large part of the competition is made up by Metropolis.

 

He was adamant that when he checked the inlet valves on No.1 cyclinder,
they were so tight that his smallest feeler gauge wouldn't fit in the
gap.

So we checked this time. And he was right. The valves were not "just out
of spec". They were very, very tight. Because JL had told him they were
OK, and he was certain he'd measured them right, he decided to have
another look. Hence today's Shimfest (which lasted, I might add, nine
hours).

He's mulling over what to do now. The valves are now properly set, but I
reckon he should go in, and have a quiet and very serious word,
otherwise their tame monkey (s) will do the same stunt again.

They had actually checked the valves, or at least removed the cam cover,
so we can assume they checked (because they use a different colour of
gasket goo!), but they just measured them wrongly.

 

They're probably using Rizlas...

Nice. Not.

Well, they didn't seem to be particularly flustered by having a rather
angry German jumping about on their forecourt. Doesn't mean that it's
not a good idea to complain. I know I would.

The fact that they removed the cover doesn't mean they used a feeler
gauge anywhere near the engine...

 

This is what we figured.

"Oh, any clearance will do. As long as there's some....".

 

On Sun, 9 Nov 2003 22:16:34 +0000,

TBH I reckon he should save his energy because they really wont give a
shit. I'm still waiting for an apology for not telling me my brake
disks were 300% [1] over the maximum recommended adjustment.

I wrote to triumph too who bascially told me to take it up with the
shop.

its a shame really cos they are brill if you just need parts.

[1] no thats not a typo.
--
Adie - capable of leading darsy astray.
(replace spam with nickname to reply)

Triumph T595 / FZ750
MRO#11 BOTAFOF#7 BOTAFOT#130 DIAABTCOD#17 MIB#24 YTC#16 BOB#15 UKRMMA#22