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| Top gear at 4000rpm has me going about 100km/hr, so it looks like I have stock sprockets on the Tiger. |
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| A one tooth more relaxed front sprocket knocks a couple of hundred RPM off the bike at 100km/hr and takes the edginess off low speed throttle. |
Chain & Agony: The Return
Now that I’m off a shaft driven bike, I’m back into the black magic that is chain geometry! A trip to Gearing Commander has me working out the details of an ’03 Triumph Tiger 955i’s chain and sprockets. The stock set is a 18T (eighteen tooth) front sprocket and a 46T (forty-six tooth) rear sprocket. The chain is a 530-50 114.
A number of riders suggested a 19T (nineteen tooth) front sprocket to calm the bike down a bit. The chain and sprockets are happy right now, but when it finally comes to a change, I think I’ll go the 19T way. Motorbike sprockets run backwards from bicycle ones – the smaller sprocket is attached to the engine, so the more teeth, the bigger the gearing.
LINKS & CHAIN INFORMATION
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The 530 114 chain on the Tiger has a pitch of 5/8 of an inch (the 5 is 5 x ⅛” – a 4 series chain would be 4 x ⅛” or half an inch of pitch). Five-eighths pitch chains have a roller diameter of 0.400″. The 30 part of the 530 refers to roller width, which in this case is 3 x ⅛” or 3/8th of an inch. A 520 chain would have a roller width of 2 x ⅛”, or a quarter of an inch. If you want to understand chain sizes, get a handle on that rule of 8 (all the numbers refer to eighths of an inch).
The 114 refers to the number of links in the chain (its length).
 <- 520 and 530 chains & sprockets widths compared
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Tiger Changes of Oil
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| A fifty dollar US ($300CDN) magnetic oil drain plug. |
Triumph magnetic oil drain plugs.
M14x1.5×16
(that’s a metric 14mm width, 1.5mm distance between the threads, 16 mm long drain plug).
Entertaining Triumph oil drain plug banter (and the idea to put hard drive magnets on your oil filter, which is what I’m doing instead of ordering an expensive custom drain plug from The States).
The Tiger has been using a bit of oil (which is evidently within spec) but I don’t know what the previous owner’s mechanic put in it – putting in not Mobil 1 Synthetic (which Triumph states is the preferred oil) would be a great way to make money on an oil change. If I swap in the good stuff, then I know what’s in it.
I’m also putting on a K&N oil filter with a higher spec than the stock one and putting a couple of hard drive magnets on the bottom of it to catch any metal shavings dancing around in there.
I did the oil change yesterday. I’ve done thousands of oil changes (it put me through university). If that oil was changed last fall I’m a monkey’s uncle. The Triumph filter on it had rust on it, the drain plug didn’t look like it had been taken off any time recently. Either the previous owner didn’t do it, or his mechanic lied to him. The oil was black and punky too, looking like it had been in there a long time.
With that all done I’ll now look to see how much oil I’m missing every thousand kilometres (it’s 3-400ml at the moment – but goodness knows what was in it or for how long). The moral here is change the oil when you buy a used bike – you can’t trust what happened before it was yours and oil is vital to keeping an engine running well. I’m looking forward to seeing what new, correct oil does for the bike moving forward.
Other than keeping it shiny and lubricating cables and controls, there isn’t much more needs doing.
It’s supposed to be a beautiful long weekend. I’m hoping to get out for some time on my very orange Tiger in my very orange Tiger shirt.