Fighting Irish Forums

to a better man..

OLDER anyway..

I was informed that I'm NOT the oldest fart in the outfit.

I let you guys figure out just who (whom? ) it is..

hell Willie, you're not old man, just ripe with wisdom!

The wife says I'm beyond ripe. ESPECIALLY after the pancakes start fermenting.. Then she says I'm plumb ROTTEN!!!

Cockney Scott?

Mirror mirror on the wall
Who is the oldest one of all?

...Ramford.

I caught him stashing his walker in the car before he came into Gurb's at the last Duxford soire'.

Sly dog, though. Tried to blame the infirmity on the hole in his head.

Some people always have an excuse. Hmmmph!

Pike mentioned the Boer war last Sunday.

'They don't like it up em Captain Mannering!'

:FI:Gadje wrote:Pike mentioned the Boer war last Sunday.

'They don't like it up em Captain Mannering!'

He was talking about his "wood" again?!

Actually Willie, Keppoch is sixty four this month.
Update: Triumph is back on the road and I'm doing the call centre thing with tech support at a prominent cell phone provider. I won a new MP3 player for taking the first call at the centre, so things are looking up for me. I may join you guys if you are still flying on Saturdays. But it looks like I'm pulling the ast 15:30-01:00 shift for the next few days. Oh and I have a woman so my time may be even shorter.

Willie, the Triumph is backfiring something fierce, and I think I blew the baffles out of the exhaust, do I have an option to re-pack them after I lean out the mixture? It's so loud cops are pulling me over. That, and to check out the bike.

Whoops, that's Sixty Three. He's happier than hell right now. Just went behind my workplace and caught about twenty trout. Only call centre I know that you can watch Blue Herons, Ospreys, and Bald Eagles go fishing about fifty yards away. The corperate rep was an Irishman who was based in Texas and he was amazed at how much it was like home here in Antigonish. I don't think he wanted to leave.

Did it just start with the backfiring all at once or has it been been an increasing problem? If it started all at once I'd check the carb float levels and jets to see if they are all as they should be.

Backfiring or after firing is usually caused by the mixture being too lean. I did have a backfiring problem one time with the old shovel when the points collapsed and the spark got real weak. It would shoot blue fire out of it about 5 feet! Went through 3 different carbs trying to solve the problem before I decided to check the points. I'd just put a new set in and they didn't have 50 miles on 'em when they crapped out.

Pull the plugs and see what they look like. Dry, brown or gray, and it is definitely on the lean side.

Black, sooty plugs that look like they've got a coating of black velvet on them and she's rich. An air cooled engine should always be run a tad rich in my opinion as the excess fuel gets rid of the heat inside the chamber.

Running them lean makes them HOT and will burn up valves and put holes in pistons.

I used to run my old hot rod shovelhead so rich that it would stumble and fart if you pulled the trigger hard on a day with the temps above 80°F. It never turned the exhausts blue or brown though. And it would smoke the tire in 3rd gear at 80mph if you dumped the clutch and twisted the wick coming out of second

BTW, another way to check the cyl temps is to see if the exhausts are blue up near the head, if so, then she's leaner than I like to see 'em.

Let me know what you find.

Speaking of backfiring... my Fidelma was backfiring like hell the last few weeks, after I fitted a new switchgear set on the throttle side.

Turned out the kill switch was 'loose' - the bike kept dying too for no apparent reason... problem solved.

One or two other tweaks by my Scottish mate in the photo below and the bikes is as sweet as a nut!

Good to hear the lovely Fidelma is back on track. Methinks you should slow down, or get one of those way cool biker hat thingies, because it appears you've blown off all your hair.. J/K

LEAN..Right got it. Thank Dog I got a hold of you before I made a complete arse of myself. I really wish you hadn't said "check the Plugs" I don't have the specialised tool, (looks like a plumbers snake with a ratchet head) so that means I'll have to pull the tank to check the plugs . Unless the local hardware shop has it.

She's steadily gettting worse unfortunately. The new Bonnies have a reputation of running really lean anyway, because of emissions, and after I had that jet kit and racing pipes put on, I had the air injector removed, which is the main culprit in making the pipes blue (re-burns the exhaust, silly emmisions gear). They all blue really fast because of that, she's pretty much designed to run really hot, so I'm not all that worried about damage, but I'll check.

Good to hear from you guys!

I forgot it is a NEW Trumpet...

Those things have water cooled heads too don't they?

After all the aftermarket add-ons, it might be a good idea to take it to a shop and have them set the carb or fuel injector or whatever they use nowadays since AMAL isn't in vogue anymore..

Stuff like this just shows me I'm behind the power curve..

Don't worry about it Willie it's still an air cooled 360 twin. A friend of the family borrowed it, he's used to dirt bikes and street bikes like honda interceptors, but he had one in the seventies. He said it rides exactly like the old ones, only goes a hell of a lot faster.

All the after market stuff was actually triumph acessories, racing pipes came with a carb kit, and the air injector kit was a triumph thing too. Only thing not stock is the high performance air filter, all that was done in the shop. I'd better get it in there, but last time they changed the oil, they left out the plug gasket, so I'm a little leary.
Anyway after my blast though the weeds I'm just happy it's runnin. Now I need a new rear tire.