Tiger Chains & Parts

Top gear at 4000rpm has me going
about 100km/hr, so it looks like I have
stock sprockets on the Tiger.

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

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).

Sprocket Centre

How to change a chain on a Tiger (video)
Triumph Tiger 955i parts list

Gearing Commander

Chain Specifications

Sprockets & Chains explained

<- 520 and 530 chains & sprockets widths compared

Tiger Changes of Oil

A fifty dollar US ($300CDN) magnetic
oil drain plug.

Triumph magnetic oil drain plugs.
M14x1.5x16
(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.

Chain and no Agony

Follow up to Chain & Agony and How to Size and Replace a Motorcycle Chain...

The whole process of breaking the chain and installing it took about half an hour this time around.  The o-ring chain I got was easy to break using the tool I picked up, and installing the new master link on the chain took only moments.  The three in one DRC Chain Tool I got (chain breaker, outer plate presser, rivet presser) was easy to use and looks good doing it.  It might be my favourite tool at the moment.

The chain-breaking tool comes with two sizes of /privet pushing bit.  The blue bit was for 500 sized chains (the Ninja's is
a 520).  You back off the big bolt and install the push pin, then use the smaller outer bolt to push the pin into the rivet on the chain. The tool automatically centres the rivet, so you're true all the way through.

The new chain was a 120 link chain, the Ninja takes 114 links, so that's 6 links off the end.  The hole in the
top is where the chain pin falls out once you've pushed it through.

Close-up of the blue chain bit .  There is a pin inside it that the outer bolt pushes through, pushing the rivet
right out of the chain.  Once the pin falls out the chain falls apart.  You end up with a clean break and two
inner chain links ready to be re-attached on the bike with a master link.

Six links of the 120 link chain removed.  One pin is pushed right out, the other was pushed
out far enough to dismantle the chain.

I installed the master link on the sprocket - it keeps everything lined up and made installation easy.  After
pressing on the side plate (gently, checking that it's in line with the other links and the chain has play in it),
the only tricky bit was installing the retaining clip, it took a few tries.  When you get it though you know for
sure because it makes a very satisfying click.

With the chain back on and lubricated, everything is tight.  The change to how the bike feels is subtle
but very satisfying.  The engine feels much more firmly connected to the back wheel now.  No sags and tight
spots like on the old chain.

I got this mighty DRC Pro chain
tool at Royal Distributing in
Guelph.

Now that I've got a handle on this and the right tools for the job, chains don't worry me any more.  This process also emphasized how surgical bike mechanics are.  I started off doing heavy equipment repair as a millwright and then did a couple of years in automotive.  Compared to that kind of work, motorcycle mechanics feel more like surgery than butchery.  Patience and a careful hand are more important than brute force.

Now more than ever I'm looking for an old bike to dismantle and rebuild to get an inside feel for how motorbikes go together.