Tiger Triage

I sometimes find myself embroiled in politics. I hate politics. It's one of those things that even when you do it really well the results are always a disappointment. Working with people is frustrating and exhausting. My wife suggested that if I wasn't enjoying it that I should stop and do something else, so I did.

Out in the garage I flipped on the tunes, got the Tiger up on a 2x4 on its centre stand so it's a bit higher up and put a car battery on the back so the front tire tipped up in the air well clear of the floor. The speedometer wasn't reading anything so I slipped the front wheel forward off the axle bolt and double checked everything.

The speedo mechanism (#15 in the pic) has that spacer (#14) facing in from the outside.  That diagram isn't great (the speedo unit is shown as backwards on there (the wider side goes in, not out as that picture suggests).

#14 spacer was in backwards but more importantly the speedometer unit wasn't mounted on the splines sticking out #7 in the diagram.  Those splines fit into gaps in the speedo housing and I'd missed them when I installed it.

With the speedometer unit lined up on the splines properly and the spacer in the right way around the whole thing went back together and I immediately had responsive speedometer again.

The engine light was still on so I threw the exhaust hose on (it's a bit of aluminum duct), plugged in the TuneBoy engine management system and ran the engine for a few minutes to see what codes it picked up.

TuneBoy is a plug in and see what's going on in your bike's computer tool that I've found very easy to use.  It comes with the adapter head that fits on to the output plug under the seat on the bike.  Plug that in and the other end into USB on a computer (I have one wall mounted in the garage) and then open up the software and you can see what your computer sees.  Lots of people get anxious about working with computerized bikes but TuneBoy makes it accessible.

The opening 'screen' is pretty disco (in a 1990s/early 2k kind of app design way).

The computer had collected a pile of errors.  These old Triumph computers will eventually dump the codes if they don't keep seeing an error, but it takes a while.

I took the gas tank off for the thousandth time (I'm WIlliams F1 Team pitstop fast at it now) and cleaned and checked all the connections.  I also pulled the air temperature sensor and cleaned it up in case it was clogged.

With all the connections cleaned the computer still had the errors in memory so I reset it (you can do that in the TuneBoy program) and then reset everything and fired it up again.

With the computer reset I let it idle for a few minutes and it threw no new errors up, and the engine light had gone off!  I took it out for another spin around the road in front of the house and it's now error free.  The engine light is off, the brakes have sharpened up and the speedometer works.  The Tiger is now five by five.  All the new parts are making it work better than it did and all the teething issues from the BIG COVID WINTER MAINTENANCE OF 20/21 are resolved.

It's a glorious thing!  Engine feels strong and certain with none of the stalling issues or hesitancy from last year.  All the cosmetic work makes the bike look much younger than its 18 years and over eight-thousand kilometers.

We're supposed to have a couple of sunny but cool days coming up.  I'm hoping I can get out and rediscover this wonderfully versatile and increasingly unique machine.