Broadford Bike Bonanza 2017

[harper6t]

This years event was all about Ducati, but that didn't stop me from going with my son Alex. Almost a 1600 klm round trip, its a big effort to get there and this year we decided to ride the road track.
We loaded up the trailer with a Kawasaki, a Triumph 650 and the Velocette Venom, its pretty much open to any pre 1990 bike for any session, the divisions are based on the rider experience, not the bike and consequently you find yourself running a 1959 Velo with Honda CB1100R and anything in between, but there were few incidents as most people left plenty of room.
We had a great time on and off the track, unfortunately the Kawasaki kept fouling spark plugs and was put back on the trailer after 2 sessions(it was a cheapie and has probably been sitting for over 20 years before I changed the oil, put a battery in and fixed the brakes and got her going, but it will be off with her head to see what the insides are like.
The Velo ran perfectly all weekend, but the Triumph has a problem, I had last run her on the racetrack in '95 and put her on petrol and on the road for a year or so. She lasted Saturday OK but Sunday morning she holed a piston. It means a full tear down to see what has been damaged, I am hoping to get away with just new pistons and I am converting her back to Methanol fuel as its much more forgiving with 11 to 1 pistons.

 

[Rocky]

Wow, that looks like a great event!
Too bad about the Triumph.
Thanks for posting

 

[DaveM]

I would love to be able to attend an event like this and see all those bikes going at it. This one sure looked like a great event and there were some nice bikes around by the looks of it.

 

[Mad On Triumphs]

That's looks like a great event indeed.

 

[hemibee]

Looks like it was a good time for the two of you.

 

[harper6t]

It was a great weekend, despite the troubles, my son had never been on a proper racetrack and it was his first ride on the Triumph and the Kawasaki 900, this and instructions to ride as fast as you can had him hooked, the talk on the long drive home was all about next year and which bikes to take.

 

[Baldeagle]

Glad you had such a good time,lovely sounds and memories!

 

[harper6t]

The Triumph is back together again, a full tear down and clean out of the motor and the oil tank to remove all the little bits of metal.
It seems that the only damage was to the piston and a bit of a score in the bore.
I had a set of 11:1 + 0.040 pistons in my cupboard that were the same as the bike had and although it probably could do with being bored, I have just honed the bores and fitted the new pistons and lapped in the valves, it is after all just an occasional (very occasional) track bike and not a racer anymore.
I have been trying to find the cause of the issue and I was thinking it was a leaking manifold as these were unchanged from when last used in 1995, but on the last step of setting up, I think I found the real cause, When timing the magneto I found that when I set one side to 40 degrees BTDC the other side was about 25 degrees BTDC. This would certainly explain why one cylinder was lean while the other was nice and sooty.
The fix to this magneto issue was simple in that the cam was fairly loose and I shimmed up the cam ring under the lobe that was retarded and this brought the timing for each cylinder to within a degree or so of each other.

Back together again




nice new manifold rubbers (cut from a radiator top hose), carbies retuned for alcohol fuel and that pesky magneto.

 

[Rocky]

Good job