50 Year Old Triumph Bonneville Restoration: Amal Carbs and the Fuel Tank

A place where logic, precision and cause and
effect still matter in a world gone mad.

 After the random weirdness of work, time in the garage with the old Bonneville is remarkably
straightforward and logical.  I suspect the bike was in the middle of a Captain America Easy Rider customization in the early/mid eighties when it got parked and time left it behind.  I got it from Brian’s storage shipping container where it was out of the weather and raised off the ground.  I don’t know where Brian got it from but I suspect it was always stored inside.  I battled with a mid-nineties Kawasaki that had been left outside back in 2014 and this much older machine is nothing like as seized, rusted and difficult to get into.

Anything that doesn’t immediately loosen gets a bit of heat and then comes free without any headaches.  Not being in a rush and leaning on the spannering skills I’ve refreshed over the past decade is making this an enjoyable and meditative process.

The surface rust came off the tank with a bit of sanding.  I’m going to see if I can knock out the dent and then strip it all back.  I used Metal Rescue on the Honda Fireblade tank in my last project and it did a fantastic job of cleaning that unused and rust tank out.  I’ll let it sit overnight and then do the power wash tomorrow and hopefully the tank’ll come back to me.

The Amal carburetors on the bike are remarkably simple compared to what I’ve been up against before.  Last time around it was a bank of four last-generation-before-fuel-injection carbs on a ’97 Honda Fireblade.  Before that it was a bank-of-four on a ’94 Kawasaki GTR1000 and then another complex bank of four on an ’81 Yamaha XS1100.  The old Bonnie’s single Amal carb per cylinder is a simpler design from a simpler time compared to those complex Japanese four-pot carbs.
Airbox sleeves off.

Carb clean up with a fine wire brush and wd40.
Some aluminum corrosion in the bottom of the carb bowls but it cleaned out nicely.

They’ve been sitting for a long while, but all the hard parts look to be in good shape.

After an initial cleanup I’m going to break down each carb and clean the hard parts in a ultrasonic cleaning bath before reassembling with new gasketry from British Cycle Supply Co..

I think my plan is to get the bike operational mechanically and have it going next spring having cleaned up and rust painted the frame and body.  Once it’s operational I’ll ride it for a season rough and get to know it before looking to a complete engine rebuild and deeper restoration of frame and body panels at a later date.

In order to get it back to rideable, these are the parts I think I’ll need:

  • carb gasket rebuild kit x 2
  • exhaust pipes x2
  • mufflers x2
  • ignition cables (and possibly some other electrics)
  • headlight
  • indicators
  • battery
  • head and sump gaskets for the motor (I intend to go in and clean things out/have a look around before I run it)

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Peculiar, Chancy & Fluid

 Almost ten years ago I came across Matt Crawford’s Shop Class As Soulcraft, a brilliant little book that helped frame the value of my tangible real-world skills after years of academic abstraction.  At that time I was changing gears from English to technology teaching and this book helped me reclaim my millwright apprenticeship and years of hands-on skills development in information technology I’d left behind when I wandered into ivory towers.

In addition to framing skills honed in the real world where results rather than opinion mattered (you can’t fake brake repairs like you can literacy test scores), Crawford’s philosophical treatise on manual skilled labour also explained the challenge of trying to manage in a world where success criteria are both invented and met in a fictional world of plausible deniability:

“Crawford also does a brilliant dissection of the ‘peculiarly chancy and fluid‘ life of the corporate manager (substitute administrator or educational consultant for equal value here). In a world with no objective means of assessing competence, the manager lives in a purgatory of abstraction using vague language “…staking out a position on all sides of a situation, so you always have plausible deniability of a failure.” Crawford goes to great lengths to point out that this isn’t done maliciously but rather as a means of psychic protection for the people trapped in this morass.”

Dusty World quoting Shop Class As Soul Craft back in 2012

This chancy and fluid nature has been stretched beyond breaking during the pandemic as the people running public education, sometimes in the same sentence, can offer completely contradictory direction.  From “students must maintain masked cohorts while in class” followed by: “everyone should leave the building in large unsupervised, unmasked groups at lunch” to the arbitrary rules around classroom layout (all tables must face the same way, unless we’re trying to stuff 31 students into your room then you can ignore that), I’ve come to find that I don’t thrive in a chancy and fluid world of conflicting absolute rules.  The past two years in OntEd provides ample examples for another Milgram Obedience Experiment.

This was cast in a stark light in a recent online PD session my lovely partner attended on equity.  This is another wildly contradictory example of what is either cynical manipulation or peculiar, chancy and fluid management think:  equity matters, but pivot online during snow days even while we refuse to provide any connectivity or technology support for students in need.  When it costs something or requires effort, equity suddenly becomes quite diffuse.

In that PD session, Alanna noted that many of the people in ‘lead’ roles aren’t walking the talk.  A righteous curriculum lead jumped in to tell her she was wrong and that everyone in administration got into it with the best intentions.  When I heard about it after I found this rhetoric interesting.  I don’t doubt administrators get into it for all the right reasons (and never because classroom teaching was something that was beating them up causing them to look for an alternative).  I’m also not so oblivious as to think that administrators have any say in what is going to happen – they’re middle management and are told what to do by people higher up.  What I am curious about is, if they’re so intent on looking after students with best pedagogical practices, why they push directives that directly hurt student well being and learning.  This has happened a lot in the past two years.

As things have staggered back from the brink last year we continue to see irrational and often cruel decisions being made, often under the auspices of public health in order to prevent an ongoing pandemic health crisis, but they seldom make sense.  I set up my room with as many tables as I could stuff into it following public health requirements and then was told to change it out of compliance with those guidelines so we could stuff more students into the room… during a pandemic.  We’re told we have to wear inferior, poorly sized PPE even when we’re willing to bring our own superior, properly sized masks.  Staff are being made to cover (but don’t call it coverage so we’re in compliance with our contract that would have limited the number of coverages) other classes putting them in front of what can end up being hundreds of students every day in order to make a cruel, marathon class quadmestered schedule work.  A schedule that is utterly meaningless as students mix freely before and after school and at lunches every day.  Yesterday I watched a dozen boys leave a washroom together, most of them not wearing masks correctly, and walk back to different classrooms.  The union is very proud of dunking our membership in this much face to face teaching every day in order to enable the directives of a vindictive government.

Nothing makes sense, in many cases it’s contradictory and completely irrational, and it’s also hurting students.  An English colleague the other day told me her applied 2.5 hour class is one step away from complete chaos every day.  Many other teachers are noting the impossibility of covering curriculum in marathon classes that directly contradict the data we’ve collected on best practices around student learning.  Yet when told to execute this cruelty everyone in management makes it happen, though, I’m sure, they all got into it for the right reasons.

I’ve been reflecting on Dusty World this fall but the negativity of the posts has me not publishing them as I’m trying to find some sense of well-being in this ongoing mess.  Wallowing in the cruelty and absurdity of what we’re doing won’t get me there, but I still record what’s happening because one day I hope the public education system does more than talk about student learning and wellbeing and actually acts on it.

These past two years have turned into a cautionary tale about what a vindictive government can do during a public health crisis.  They’ve also shown that the people running public education are willing to do whatever they’re told even when it’s contradictory and cruel.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, until education (and healthcare) can operate according to best practices rather than the whims of populist politicians this will keep happening.  I need it to stop happening.  I can do good work when given the framework or even when the framework isn’t actively working against me while trying to support student learning and well-being.

Not yet but 2022 is looming large.  COVID might be behind us by next summer, and if Ontario comes to its senses we might have a government that isn’t so maliciously short sighted.

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1971 Triumph Bonneville T120 Online Resources

Searching the internet for parts and technical details for a 1971 T120 Triumph Bonneville 650cc air cooled twin.  Here’s what I’ve found – hope it helps if you’re looking for similarly vintage parts and details.

Technical Details

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0717/0717/files/1971_Oil_In_Frame_650_Unit_Twins_All_Models_EXPORT.pdf?2276925620862086622

https://www.tomcc.org/Triumph/FrameNumbers

https://www.fagengine.com/blogs/tech/triumph-engine-and-frame-numbers

https://triumph-tiger-90.com/dating-your-triumph/

https://www.baxtercyclebooks.com/FB/Triumph_1971_650cc_models/index.html

https://wiringdiagram.2bitboer.com/1971-triumph-bonneville-wiring-diagram/

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sbSds50ChTpY_7q8SkhFVOQ5QoRAgc6y/view?usp=sharing

Love me some hand drawn drafting!

Parts

https://vintagetriumphparts.com/?model_filter_id=7

https://www.lowbrowcustoms.com/collections/vintage-triumph-parts

https://www.trojanclassics.com/header-pipes-triumph-tr6-t120-1971-balanced-pair-g

https://burtonbikebits.net/triumph-parts/

https://www.baxtercycle.com/product-category/vintage-triumph/

https://www.thebonnevilleshop.com/

https://kmjonesmotorsports.com/about

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CBR900RR Bits & Pieces

1997 Honda CBR900RR parts, but I’m buying too many online when I’d rather buy them locally.  For someone who would rather support local business, I’m frustrated at the lack of competent parts people.  Canadian Tire needs to do better.


Fram oil filters:

The oil filter for the CBR is a fairly common filter – but the big Canadian Tire in Guelph didn’t have one… or anything else I needed.  It’s things like this that force me online to purchase when I’d rather just purchase locally.


Strangely, the Walmart across the street, the only place I can find the Mobil 1 oil Triumph calls on for the Tiger, had an oil filter for the Honda.  Not a great weekend for Canadian Tire.  You can’t really brag on having 200,000 parts if your sales rep can’t find any of them.



Winter flushing oil:
This is what I’m going to put in the Honda over the winter as it gets sorted.  In the spring I’ll do a flush and go with Mobil 1 synthetic.


The only place I can find the Mobil 1 is at Walmart – it’s the only time I usually go there.  Since I’m already there for the Tiger, I’ll go for 7 litres and do the Tiger and CBR with the same super-oil.  Running the Mobil 1 in the Tiger has stopped any oil burning in it.  It’s good stuff.


K&N Filters for CBR900:
https://www.knfilters.ca/honda/cbr900rr/900/1997
The HA-9092-A air filter is a strange thing – I thought the filter element would pop out of the plastic, but it’s a single (expensive) manufactured piece.  Finding these is tricky.  You can find cheap, paper filters for about $40 a go, but I found the K&N on Amazon for $120CAD, so that’s going in and getting cleaned regularly.  That should pay for itself within three changes.


I’m not in a place where I’m going to put the front end back together again and pop in the replacement LED when it comes in this week.  With the replacement carb from NCK Salvage in hand, I’m going to try and rebuild as much of the Honda as I can over the long weekend (it’s Thanksgiving Weekend in Canada).


The Strange World of Dash Bulbs:


12v 1.7W wedge dash light is the warning light bulb needed for a ’97 Honda CBR900RR.  These are hard to find – Canadian Tire was no help and the girl at the parts desk in Guelph couldn’t remember the numbers for parts, so I gave up on trying to find them.  I want to buy locally, but with that kind of floor help, it just isn’t happening.


I found LED replacement lights that should last better and use less electricity in the process on Amazon.


This light search led to a crash course in bulb sizing.  The dash lights on the CBR900RR are T-5 Wedge 12v 1.7W bulbs.  T5 means it has a 5mm base.  In this case they’re 1.7cms long on that 5mm base.  The LED should be cooler, use less electricity and be brighter.

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1971 Triumph Bonneville Motorcycle Restoration: the baseline

 Baseline photography for this 1971 Triumph Bonneville restoration project:

According to Low Brow Customs, this means I’ve got an A (January) E (October 1970 – July 1971) and was the 9125th 650 twin made that year (00100 is the starting number for each grouping so this was the 9225-100th motor made in the 1970-71 batch).
The frame was tricky to pick out – one of those sites mentions that the stampings are sometime very thin and this one’s barely there – our best guess is AE07050, which would put it in the same month/year as the motor, which seems promising.

The chopper stuff has started to come off and the bike is up on a wooden base on the stand in the back of the shop.  

Next up will be taking the tank off and beginning the GREAT DISMANTLE OF 2021!

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Riding In The Rain: A ride into Algonquin Park in October

 Deerhurst Resort to Algonquin Park and back again, chased by the rain.

Algonquin Park in the rain at the height of autumn colours. The Theta 360 camera held up but I eventually pocketed it when the deluge become too heavy.  The camera is mounted on a ball mount on the handlebars and set to fire automatically every 10 seconds.  Photos captured in the Theta camera app and then modified/enhanced in Photoshop.

This is the raw photo out of the camera. The fixed lense doesn’t collect a lot of light, so on a dim, rainy day like this the image is quite muddy.  I brought up the shadows in Photoshop and the result (with a bit of cropping) is the same photo above.

If you’re curious about how to put together on-bike photos, check this how-to out.  It’s also available on Adventure Bike Rider Magazine’s site here.  You can pick up a simple 360 camera for a couple of hundred bucks.  Fully waterproof ones (which I obviously need) start a bit higher.

I got into this with Ricoh’s Theta way back in 2013, but Ricoh has been stingy about support and won’t even offer me at-cost options for educational use.  Looking around recently, the Insta360 offers some interesting combinations with next generation 360 imaging, though it’s very video focused and I prefer still shooting.  Gopro also has the 360 Max, though it isn’t as aerodynamic and therefore might not be the thing to put on a bike in the wind, though I’m willing to give it a go.
Gopro goes out of its way to support users and especially ones who advertise for them on social media.  I wish Ricoh were so forward thinking, but they aren’t.  I’d suggest the Gopro if you want to get into 360 photography.  It’s remarkably easy to set up and the results look fantastic.  You should give it a try.

Post from RICOH THETA. – Spherical Image – RICOH THETA

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One To Add To Your Ontario Rides List: Huntsville to Rosseau to Port Carling

https://goo.gl/maps/ss7VMTaf1LVey7j76

If you’re up in the Muskokas, this is a nice ride.  It’s about 60kms through Canadian Shield/lake of the woods on some very non-southwestern Ontario windy roads.  It started off overcast but then the sub broke through and painted the already incredible October Ontario fall-colours with a nuclear paintbrush.

The Concours and I managed it in about 90 minutes from Huntsville to just outside of Port Carling.  The road is in reasonable condition (for Ontario) and it’s never dull.  The initial bit on Muskoka Road 3 is a nice warmup, but it’s the 632/7 from Rosseau to Highway 118 that really pops!

It sure is pretty in October…

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Your 2017 Motorcycle Road Rally Schedule

 It’s on this year and this time it’s a four event season! If you’re anywhere near Ontario hop on your bike and come along for a great day of riding: Sunday June 11th, Saturday July 22nd, Saturday August 19th and Friday October 13th. Pick your day(s)!

 

Last summer my motorcycle buddy Jeff and I did our first long distance motorcycle scavenger hunt/rally, it was a blast! We spent an exhausting, hot, August day covering more miles than anyone else. Our lousy trip planning skills aside, we had a great day seeing all sorts of hidden spots we’d never seen before.  I just found out that Lobo Loco is back for 2017, and bigger than ever!

 
The idea of this kind of rally is that you begin from wherever you are at 8am with a gas receipt to set your starting place.  From there you find your way to gps points shared with you a week before.  Different places are worth different points depending on how hard they are to get to.  You can go after themed stops to try and get the highest points in a particular category or go for the rally win by planning out a route that collects you the most points quickly.  Or you can just take it easy and pootle about, enjoying the camaraderie that is infectious in an event like this.  You’ll be seeing a lot of other competitors on your travels.
 
Last year Jeff and I decided to ride out of the cities because neither of us really like riding in the urban pall.  We rode along miles of country roads through scenic little towns all the way to the shores of Huron before working our way back to Brantford, arriving with three whole minutes to spare.
 
We did it on our big adventure bikes, but the parking lot at the end of the race had everything from a 200cc Yamaha to massive Harley v-twins, and everything in between.  There is no ‘right’ bike to do this sort of thing on.  There is no ‘right’ way to plan your route (though we missed top score by thousands of points, so I don’t really know what I’m talking about).  We had a great time doing our high mileage country route.  Others had a blast cashing in on close together points locations in the Greater Toronto Area.
 
 
Whatever you like to ride, however you like to ride, you can customize the Lobo Loco Scavenger Hunt to how you want to do it.  We ended up being the only people to make it to the bee beard for huge points because it was in the middle of nowhere and was only happening for about half an hour (no one else was crazy or quick enough to try it!).  Our half assed approach got us the top bee keeping score and the longest ride iron butt award.
 
If you’re looking for a single day event that is both fun and will show you new places you’d never otherwise find in your own backyard, the Lobo Loco Rally is your ticket.  The first ride this year (the WTF Rally) happens on Sunday, June 11th.  Here are the specs from the website:
 
WTF Rally
“Weird Things Found”
… or something like that…
​Sunday, June 11th, 2017
​
This is our first of 4 Events for 2017.  We’re going to start the season off with an easier and fun Scavenger Hunt Rally.  You’ll be rolling through the back roads of Southern Ontario stopping to take pictures of some of the most bizarre roadside items, signs, or places… things that will make you say, “WTF?!”
​
8 Hour Rally – Remote Start
​8:00am Start
Start ANYWHERE in Southern Ontario.
The Finish Line is in Woodstock, ON
Scoring begins at 3:00pm
Time Penalties begin to accrue at 4:00pm
DNF if not at the Finish Line by 5:00pm
​ALL YOU CAN EAT DINNER BUFFET and AWARDS BANQUET begins at 5:30pm
 
​$80 per Rider, or $100 for 1 Bike – 2 Up Team Riders
 
I’m aiming to be there.  Hope to see you at the buffet.  Sign up here.
 
The stop in Lucan had us wanting to return to get some garage art…

 

Over an hour on sand and sand covered pavement getting to a single stop on the shores of Lake Huron was our biggest navigational error (too much time for too little reward).  Even then, it helped get us the iron butt high mileage award and it was all part of the adventure.
 

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Taking My Motorcycle Restorations to the Next Level

Heavy rain all week made Beaver Valley a
muddy mess.  The Tiger waded through it all,
spinning it’s wheels in the deep mud but
always getting me down the track.

Sunday was a long ride up north to clear my head after another week of pandemic teaching where they pile on extra work going on two years into a pandemic and then reduce your ability to do it.  The trusty Tiger was on song and we sailed and sailed, up past Horning’s Mills and through Creemore before tackling the Grey Highlands.  I was timing the ride because I had a meeting!

Last week I joined the Canadian Vintage Motorcycle Group and then connected with their Facebook page (that part is free – if you’re into old bikes I’d urge you to join up!).  By dumb luck the admin who accepted my FB group request happens to live nearby and has a lockup ten minutes from where I live.  He asked if I wanted to see what he had kicking around in terms of project bikes I could buy.  That CVMG membership is already paying off!

Four hours and three hundred kilometres later I rolled up to a farm just south of town and met Brian and his lovely wife Terry.  We drove down to his storage containers out of sight at the back of the farm and he unlocked a hidden magical kingdom!

The bike I think I’m going to do a full ground up restoration on is a 1971 Triumph Bonneville.  This year was the first oil-in-frame model.  There are benefits to this model that suit me, the main one being that this bike has a taller seat than other Bonnies.

The bike in question has been partially ‘choppered’ with a big sissy bar and king/queen seat.  It also has long front forks – someone was on their way to turning this into some kind of Easy Rider homage, but it won’t stay that way.  I’m not stuck on the stock-at-all-costs angle but I like motorcycling for the dynamic feel of it and a chopper isn’t about that.  A modernized custom that stays true to the original look but makes use of the bits and pieces that will make this classic a bit more dependable is where I’m at.

Fortunately, Brian has lots of stock spares which he’d include with it so I’ll be able to strip it down and begin working out how to put it all back together again without having to start from scratch.  When I pick up the bike I should also be getting some tupperware boxes full of additional parts.

Classic Bike Magazine had a great issue in June about Steve McQueen, On Any Sunday and desert racers.  McQueen himself did a Bonneville desert sled back in the ’60s.  I like the stripped down scrambler look of that kind of bike, though I’m not going to go all knobbly tires and brown seat with it, but a simplified, high piped Bonneville for the road?  That’s something I could get into!

I’m going to have to wait until after Thanksgiving Weekend to get my hands on it. I ‘ll also have to figure out how to get it over here, but I’m looking forward to my first deep bike resto after successfully putting a number of early retirements back on the road again.  This one’s going to be an engine out, frame up restoration, Henry Cole style!

Back to stock? The ’71 was the first of the oil in frame Bonnevilles and an odd duck with
a tall seat height, but it was also a handsome thing!

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