Tiger, or not to Tiger, that is the question: Triumph 955i Winter To Do List

 Problems

Yes, I'm swearing at it.

• The idle control problem has returned (stalling)
• This is happening with no errors in the computer (all sensors working then?)
• Fuelly smell (leak? mixture too rich, but with no errors?)
• Poor starting is new (takes many attempts - might be a wiring issue?)
• Triumph not supporting the bike any more with parts or service
• Not a popular model/make, even finding used parts a challenge
• I'm told that this wasn't a bike built to last (with the two above points this is problematic)
• New throttle cable may not be adjusted correctly

Recent Attempts to fix

• new throttle and clutch cables
• balanced throttle bodies and checked valve clearances in the summer
• cleaned the relays under the seat and it started easier (but still not on the button as it used to)

Winter Targets

• 
  recheck all the possible points of failure
• valves
• check throttle position sensor
• check fuel pump (but then do what? Fuel Pump Factory pump replacement - but where to find the filter? Quantum Fuel Systems kit comes with one.
• throttle bodies balanced
• throttle cable adjusted
• replace all fuel o-rings and check for seal
• clean all wiring connectors
• double check all connectors for tightness/connection
• torque set everything with easy reach
• follow the book and keep it tight to spec (don't do any of it from memory)
• Only change the oil (less than a 1000k on it since last change) if everything else is promising (saving myself $120+ in the process)

Goal

• Resolve starting issues
• Resolve fueling issues
• Stabilize the bike and sell it (?)
• What might change my mind:
• understanding the ongoing fueling headaches
• understanding whether they are fixable with the resources I have
• determining if ongoing ownership is worth the hassle
• If viable, consider the 2001 low mileage bike
• Upgrade the headlamps to LED
• Ride the bike to the usual 5k+ kms next summer or
• Sell it for what I purchased it for 8+ years ago

If the Tiger problems are diagnosable (ie: it's not of an age that it's simply falling to pieces) and solvable with the resources I've got, aim at 100k by end of 2025. If it's too 'disposable' and unsupported, move it on to someone with the time and patience to deal with it.

$1900 in Windsor. $1500 for the bike and another $300
to get a van to go get it? If the Tiger warrants long term
ownership then this move makes sense. It has <30k on it!

What do I hope? I can find the time to make it viable and ride it until it's the last one on the
road in Canada. If that happens picking up the parts bike from Windsor makes sense. Perhaps I could park it in the shed and only go to it when I need parts.

The alternative is to let the bike I've put the most miles on and have owned the longest go. My already limited brand loyalty has been stretched to breaking by the lack of support from Triumph. The Tiger replaced a 22 year old Kawasaki 1000GTR/C10 that I had no trouble finding parts and even service for. In between I had a '97 Fireblade that Honda was happy to support, but not so for Triumphs that were built up to only a few years ago.

I'd like to spend my riding years riding more than spannering. The C14/1400GTR has been dependable and with my various adjustments on it I'm still finding that I'm learning about it, though its road focus means I can't trail ride like I do on the Tiger. With the Tiger gone my accidental Kawasaki fixation (I don't go looking for them, they seem to appear when I need them to), I'm tempted to see if a KLR650 would do the dual sporting I'm missing on the Concours. It would certainly be more off road friendly than the heavier, fragile, unsupported Tiger.

Other options could be a Royal Enfield Himalayan, Tenere 700 or CRF 300 Honda (though they aren't good with bigger riders, which I am). The KLRs are plentiful, not overly expensive and well understood as the model has been going forever. I've also got a Kawasaki dealer 10 minutes from the house (as opposed to the 2+ hours for Triumph).

The long bomb would be going in a completely different direction and getting something like a Moto Guzzi V85TT, though that puts me back into potentially fragile, poorly supported European manufacturer territory (they sure are pretty though). If I'm looking for a bike to put miles, it probably isn't that one. Perhaps when I'm riding less one will find a spot in the garage.

This winter will answer this existential question:

Tiger, or not to Tiger? That is the question.

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous mileage,

Or to take arms against a sea of manufacturer unsupported troubles

And by opposing end them.

SMART Adventures and Off Road Performance Dirtbikes

 Over the long weekend I got out to SMART Adventures again for my yearly knobbly tire exercise. If you've read TMD you'll know I've tried to off road in South Western Ontario, but got stick for riding on hydro cuts and farmland and generally got nimbied right out of dual sport ownership. SMART is my release valve while thinking of ways to escape living in the one part of Canada that doesn't make off road riding easy.

If I lived anywhere else I'd have picked up the DR650 I found on a farm a couple of years ago and that would be my dedicated off road machine. My neighbor picked up a new Tenere 700 and I've long had my eye on Honda's CRF300 Rally - both of those would do the trick, though after this weekend I'm thinking a dirt focused specialist might be the way. 

Last year's SMART was an apex experience for both Max and I as we got advanced individual instruction on the off road vehicles of our choice, I even got to ride an electric machine! This year we'd planned to meet with friends at Horseshoe Resort and that gave us a discount opportunity with SMART, so I signed everyone up for the busy Saturday afternoon on the long weekend.

I initially went out on the Kawasaki I rode last year, but the gear shifter had been banged about by a previous rider and it wouldn't go into gear, so I got to switch to a Yamaha WR250F with upside down forks, high compression and proper brakes. I'd never been bothered with any of that and always thought a trail focused machine would be what I'd get as a pure dirt bike, but this Yamaha changed my mind.

Unlike the 230 I started off on or the Honda and Kawasaki 250s I rode last time, the Yamaha demands more but rewards you for it. If you can appreciate the difference between an appliance car and a sports car you can understand the difference here too. Those upside down shocks will get you across pretty much everything with incredible feel, and the brakes are precision tools, but it was the engine that took me to my next level, and eventually let me slip the surly bonds of earth and fly (!).

Trail bikes tend to be tuned for torque low down without worrying about stalling. This higher compression motor needs more revs, but when it comes on song (the exhaust snarls when you get there), it'll pull you up any hill or over any obstacle. If you're riding over whoops, it'll get both wheels off the ground too.

This turned out to be just the bike I needed just as I needed it because I probably wasn't skilled enough to appreciate it before now.  SMART put me with Adam, the brother of my instructor from last year, who did a great job of testing my limits without overwhelming me. We covered a lot of miles through the fall woods. That's a SMART hack: if you know what you're doing say you're 'expert' on the intake form. If gets you out of the kids-who-think-they-can catagory and lets you focus on improving your craft, usually one-on-one with an instructor.

The Kwak wasn't up for it, but that gave me a chance to explore the competition ready Yamaha...

Passed these guys while out on the trail - that's the dream setup.

Adam and I got deep into the forest - he's the red smudge down the trail that I'm keeping up with (because he kepts slowing to check on me). Every 10-15 minutes we'd stop and talk about technique, and then go exercise the talk.

Everyone had a good day out. The girls got out in a side by side and discovered that off roading in one of these is well within their skillsets and not at all uncomfortable. The only complaint came from Max who wanted a more extreme ATV experience as he's now expert in that. Next time he'll be sure to stress that he wants to be in the advanced group.

That Yam is the bomb! It's on my wishlist now.

Taking a 955i Tiger from Triumph Engineers to Vintage Ownership

 I'm bound and determined to keep the old Tiger in motion. Triumph has abandoned me in
terms of parts support, but there is another way and Classic Bike Magazine shows you how to find it. I used to depend on Practical Sports Bikes for keeping these pre-classics in motion, but they killed it.

Rick Parkington writes a lot about the transition from standard manufacturer supported bike ownership to vintage bike ownership, but what he's really on about is keeping a bike in motion when the plug-and-play relationship with modern bike parts isn't an option any more. For a modern Triumph that happens about 20 years after they build it (I've had older Kawasakis and Hondas that kept providing parts, but I digress).

The biggest thing to get your head around is being ready to find alternatives that meet the needs you're facing rather than following the manual and hoping for parts to arrive that you can swap in. One of my issues on a 90k+ bike is slack in the machine. The throttle stop has worn down over many miles so I've been playing with putting a spacer nut on there.

When I had it apart today I used the grinder to try two different cuts of nut to get my idle back to where it should be. The middle one gives me perhaps a mm of recovered space on the pin that catches the throttle when it returns to idle at a point that doesn't make the engine struggle.

Another one of those vintage approaches is around battling fasteners. You can never assume something will come off as it should. In this case the fastener on the throttle casing on the handlebar creates swear words.

While I had it apart today I put in two new cables (throttle and clutch). Thanks to Rogx in Germany (who are still producing new cables for the 955i Tiger which was popular there), I got two new cables with all the hardware and it arrived early and with no headache (I love dealing with Germans!).

The clutch cable was fraying by the transmission so it was well past time. My thought is that if this one lasts as long as the first one (over 90k), then I'll be happy. I ran both cables next to the existing ones to get the runs right and then removed the old ones afterwards. It was a satisfying rainy Sunday afternoon in the garage.

No complaints (other than Triumph not supporting its own machines when they are less than 20 years old). These cables both did over 90k through brutal Canadian temperature changes.

A satisfying Sunday afternoon getting the Tiger sorted. I think another couple of hours and I'll have it back in motion for the end of the riding season here.

I wrote this as I was catching up on the Indonesian Grand Prix in MotoGP after a crazy (but awesome) week at work. I lost Marc after the Valentino incident back in 2015, but I'm starting to find my Marquez fandom again...

Haliburton School of Art & Design: Blacksmithing

 I've been wanting to refamiliarize myself with metal work for some time.  I don't like farming out work that I'm capable of doing myself and there was a point early in my working life when I was welding weekly as part of my millwright apprenticeship, but I haven't joined metal in over three decades. It's amazing how the time flies when quantum cyber research gets in the way.

Finding opportunities to develop these DIY technical skills in Canada where people don't like to DIY is a challenge. The only welding courses I could find were full-bore certificate courses for professionals, but then my wife found the Haliburton School of Art & Design. HSAD takes place in Haliburton, which you'll have heard about on TMD before because it's one of my favourite places to go for a ride in Ontario. It's also only about three hours from home.

HSAD offers piles of course options ranging from visual arts to technical crafts. If you're reading this you'll probably be interested in the blacksmithing course, not necessarily for the smithing but because it offers you access to expert metal workers in a fully tooled shop that will make you hands-on familiar with not only the hot forging of metal but also various other related technologies such as welding, grinding, polishing and plasma cutting. The three of us went up for the week with me doing the smithing, my son glass blowing and my wife water colour painting.

We were asked to bring a project, but what you really need to do for this is to start amassing ideas so when you're in the forge you've got a list to go after, that way you're not wasting time in front of a hot forge wondering what to do next. I showed up with my copy of the Rudge Book of the Road and an idea to build a metal sculpture of the line art in the front of the book.

My blacksmithing experience consists of an afternoon, so I thought this would take me the week, but by the end of day one I'd already worked out the rider in hot steel and started worrying that I'd run out of project.

I figured getting handy with welding would take a some time, but I forgot to take into account technological progression. Back in the day (in the late 1980s) when I was learning how to weld it was all stick (and no MIG carrot). It took about 15 minutes for Amie to talk me through the MIG process and ten minutes later I was tacking pieces together to get my layout right. No sparking a rod to see where you are either with modern instantly darkening welding helmets. Early efforts at joining pieces were messy but by Thursday I was knocking together pieces at will with clean welds. It's now just a  matter of practice to get back to a point where my joins are a point of pride.

Monday was a real hot-box with temps in the mid-thirties. In the forge it was well into the forties and I was drenched when I left. I should have shown up with better heat management methods and was very dehydrated when I left. I recovered as best I could overnight. The next morning I was still not feeling well but got myself in, got a handle on welding and put the rest of the design together.

I woke up Wednesday properly sick with the mother of all summer colds, but the only thing I needed to do to finish was the rider's scarf. With a bit more hot forming of steel and welding I had my 1920s art deco styled Rudge metalwork sculpture done.

On a side note - the propane forges aren't very big and don't work for long, complicated pieces, but the shop had dual coal forges with four working sides in the back room that let you heat longer pieces. The only trick with the coal forge is that it can get so hot it'll burn the steel (which looks like sparklers when it goes). The propane forges are set to not get that hot, but the coal forge can, so in addition to feeding the beast you also have to be careful it doesn't burn your steel. I ended up leaving the scarf in too long and it burned through at the back, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing as I wasn't able to create the creases I was looking for in the ends. After burning it in half I was able to make the creases and weld the two sides back together, making it better than it would have been otherwise.

  

Old school, but it does offer some advantages along with some challenges...

I then got a primer on how the grinding room worked. The temperatures were dropping from Monday but when you're wearing face protection, a leather apron, long trousers, steel toe boots, leather gloves and a respirator, it's hot anyway. Even with all that and feeling right rotten I enjoyed getting a feel for grinding and cleaning up finished pieces. I get the sense that grinding is another one of those hands-on skills that can go surprisingly deep.

The end result was hung outside and I got given a spray on chemical that would prevent it from rusting while showing off the ground metal finish.

The finished piece looked so nice I got a clean image of it and then updated the logo on the site with it, and began the process of moving away from TMD logos focused on what I'm riding at the moment.

 

Amie Botelho was our instructor and she is all about hands-on learning. Most mornings we
did a 15-20 minute demo of tools and techniques that you could immediately find a use for. Any time you needed other equipment you'd do one on one safety and how-to training and be let at it. On the forge (and everywhere else in the shop)  Amie is incredibly efficient and that teaches you all sorts of lessons if you watch closely.

It isn't about how hard you hit, it's about how efficiently you get get hot steel out of the forge and under the hammer. It's also about turning your project over and looking at it closely as you work it. Smithing isn't about brute force, it's about attention and precision, but watching a master smith do it is infinitely better than reading about it in a book or hearing someone drone on about it in in a lecture.

Every demo was immediately followed by the suggestion to 'just do it', complete with lots of support in a class of 16 from Amie and shop-tech John. But the best part is that most of the 'students' are actually experienced smiths themselves. The ones around me had all done the four month certificate program at Fleming, so you're surrounded with experienced metal workers who are very free with support and advice (if you want it - you're left to your own devices if that's your jam).

If you're looking to hone your metalworking skills, or want to jumpstart them from scratch, this is a great place to start. Just make sure you show up with lots of ideas if you don't want to be cranking out spoons and bottle openers all week (unless that's your jam) - they're totally open to whatever you want to tackle. We had students working on everything from building a barrel forge of their own involving big industrial pieces, to yard art metal work using the small stuff.  Those experienced smiths in many cases were churning out all the smithing they needed for the year. One told me he'd make the $700 fee for attending for the week every day in what he was producing, making it well worth the cost.

Why come at it like this? Canada being Canada makes it very difficult for you to do things like forging or doing metal work on your own property without hanging you out to dry with insurance and infinite municipal, provincial and federal paperwork. Coming at it this way gives you access to a full service metal shop with all the tech and consumables, and with the safety and insurance challenges all taken care of. The bonus is you also get to hang with an interesting group of like-minded DIYers for the week, which is worth the price of admission alone.

The bandsaws looked like they were older than I am, and I'm feeling old this week!

Once I had the Rudge line art metalwork done I had a go at plasma cutting. I was originally thinking of making a variation on the Isle of Man TT trophy, but symmetrical wings are well out of my wheelhouse without more practice, so I turned it into an absurd door stop with a vaguely Honda theme.

 

Not bad for my first go with a plasma cutter!

Spoons are properly hard work. I found the edge of my forging techniques there quickly!

True that.

The forge at work.

He was early for lunch... this takes place in Haliburton, there are (lots of) deer.

Yep, I did a bottle opener too.

The propane forge at work.