Motorcycle Parts Fabrication: CBR900RR Chainguard DIY on a 3d printer

The 1997 Honda CBR900RR didn't come with a chainguard, so I thought I'd 3d model one, but I wasn't sure what they looked like, so I did a bit of research.

Honda used the same chainguard on all the mid-late 90s CBRs, so if I can find a CBR600 F2 or F3 or a CBR900, they'd all fit.  If I can't find one I'll cabricate one.

Honda CASE, DRIVE CHAIN (CBR chainguard)

Part # 40510-KY2-700

This Honda 40510-KY2-700 CASE, DRIVE CHAIN (A) fits the following models and components:

Honda Motorcycle 1997 CBR900RR A Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1997 CBR900RR AC Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1996 CBR600SJR AC Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1996 CBR600SJR A Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1999 CBR900RR A Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1996 CBR600F3 AC - SUPER SPORT Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1996 CBR600F3 A - SUPER SPORT Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1992 CBR600F2 AC - SUPER SPORT Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1998 CBR600F3 AC Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1998 CBR600F3 A Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1997 CBR600F3 AC Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1997 CBR600F3 A Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1995 CBR900RR A Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1995 CBR900RR AC Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1994 CBR600F2 A - SUPER SPORT Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1991 CBR600F2 AC - SUPER SPORT Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1999 CBR900RR AC Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1994 CBR600F2 AC - SUPER SPORT Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1991 CBR600F2 A - SUPER SPORT Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1993 CBR900RR A Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1993 CBR900RR AC Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1996 CBR900RR AC Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1996 CBR900RR A Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1995 CBR600F3 AC - SUPER SPORT Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1995 CBR600F3 A - SUPER SPORT Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1994 CBR900RR AC Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1994 CBR900RR A Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1993 CBR600F2 A - SUPER SPORT Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1998 CBR900RR A Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1998 CBR900RR AC Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1998 CBR600SE AC - SMOKIN' JOE'S EDITION Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1998 CBR600SE A - SMOKIN' JOE'S EDITION Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1992 CBR600F2 A - SUPER SPORT Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 1993 CBR600F2 AC - SUPER SPORT Swingarm

Honda Motorcycle 2000 RVT1000R AC - RC51 SWINGARM ('00-'01)

Honda Motorcycle 2000 RVT1000R A - RC51 SWINGARM ('00-'01)

Honda Motorcycle 2001 RVT1000R AC - RC51 SWINGARM ('00-'01)

Honda Motorcycle 2001 RVT1000R A - RC51 SWINGARM ('00-'01)

Stock Honda Chainguard (above)

An alternate design for the same bike:

14cms between the mounting holes on the swingarm.

CBR900rr Chain Guard on Sketchfab

Print that scaled to a 14cm on-centre gap between the mounting holes and it should fit like a glove.  Time to see if we can fabricate something!

Here's the STL file if you want to mess around with 3d printing your own chainguard:  

Motorcycle Book Review: Why We Drive by Matt Crawford

I just started "Why We Drive" by Matthew Crawford.  I was in the middle of transitioning from being an English teacher to a technology teacher back in 2012 when my university prof suggested Shop Class as Soul Craft, Crawford's first book.  It gave me the philosophical grounding I needed to value my manual expertise and to fight the prevailing academic prejudices of the education system I work in.

A few years later I'd embraced my new role teaching technology and found myself constantly arguing for parity with academic programs like the English one I'd just left.  Crawford came out with his second book called "The World Beyond Your Head", which made a strong argument for human expertise in a world where blind allegiance to system think made management a fragile grasp at control for people who have no other skills of value.

I'm only through the opening chapters of "Why We Drive", but I'm enjoying the angle Crawford it taking in using driving (and riding, he doesn't distinguish) as a means of questioning the assumptions we're all increasingly living under.  In the opening chapters he suggests that operating a vehicle is one of the few domains left that demand human expertise as the rest of society falls into a WALL-E like world of of systemic technology driven infantilism.

From Uber's malicious dismantling of existing industries to suit the long term game of its investors to the NHTSA's outright misleading information on Tesla's Autopilot feature (they claimed that it radically reduced accidents when this was simply untrue), and the industry driven big government money drive to chase old cars off the street by misleading the public with even more false statistics, Crawford tears apart many of the assumptions around environmental NIMBYISM and the relentless capitalism that underlies it.

I've questioned the environmentalism of hybrid and electric cars before.  It's a classic case of NIMBYism where the wealthy hide their pollution further up the chain and then claim superiority over all the people who can't afford to give up a tail pipe.  One of the difficulties in being a teacher of technology is that I understand it, warts and all.  Our battery technology is still medieval in both construction and effectiveness.  They don't hold a lot of power and don't last very long, but any analysis of electric vehicle efficiency likes to sidestep that fact.  Nissan Leaf owners can't though.

Crawford also brings up the idea of recycling already manufactured vehicles rather than giving in to the relentless futurism of consumer society where owning anything old is paramount to a crime.  He compares a massive new SUV (all modern vehicles are massive compared to older ones as they get weighed down with safety-at-all-costs tech and grown to maximum size) to his old VW.  They get about the same mileage, but driving the Karmen Ghia is a very different experience to driving a modern safety tank.

I'm about half way through it but the hits keep on coming:

It's a challenging read, but also an opportunity to wake up from the progress pills everyone has been popping and understand that being human isn't about efficiency and management, it's about agency.

https://www.amazon.ca/Why-We-Drive-Toward-Philosophy/dp/0062741969

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/why-we-drive-matthew-b-crawford

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/06/why-we-drive-by-matthew-crawford-review-artificial-intelligence-driverless-cars

What happens when we engineer our own solutions using universal dimensions instead of a manufacturer's parts catalogue...

Five Years: Diversifying Motorcycle Experience and Finding Balance

After the first year on two wheels I began thinking about more challenging motorcycle projects that would diversify my experience.  Starting in year two I did my first away motorcycle ride, renting scooters and then a BMW around the southern end of Vancouver Island - that led to my first article being published in Motorcycle Mojo and gave me a lot of insight into variations in motorcycling.

In addition to pushing my riding experience in daring new directions (like riding two-up with my son on an unfamiliar bike on one of the most challenging roads in Canada), I also began looking for a bike that needed more than just regular maintenance to operate... a bike that needed me.

I discovered just such a thing toward the end of that riding season, a long dormant Kawasaki Concours that we had to cut out of the grass it was sitting in.  Something that old (twenty plus years at the time) had a lot of perished rubber on it, and when I finally got it up to temperature it also had a sizable oil leak.  The winter was spent getting a new oil cooler and lines, replacing a lot of rubber bits and otherwise getting this old warrior back on its feet again.

The Concours not only got me moving mechanically, but it also offered a real blank slate, something I've since realized is only available on well used bikes (unless you're loaded and like to pull apart new things).  I'd enjoyed the aesthetic restoration of the Ninja and was looking forward to doing the same thing on the Concours.  Getting an old bike and making it not only usable but unique looking has been one of the highlights of my motorcycling career to date, and a trend I intend to continue.  It's something that my current too-nice Tiger doesn't offer me.

The Kintsugi Concours became my go-to ride and the Ninja became my first sold bike.  It was difficult to part with something I'd developed such an emotional bond with.  I can understand why the people with the space and means hang on to every bike they buy.  Having beaten the selling a bike emotional roller coaster, I immediately went looking for another, but it took a while to finally find the right thing, and in the meantime the old Concours suddenly became less than dependable.

A KLX250 that couldn't do 100km/hr with me on it made me feel like I was overly exposed and under-powered while riding on the road, though it was a deft hand off it and gave me my first real off road experiences.  I held on to it over the winter and when there was finally a break in the never ending Canadian snow I thought this is the moment the KLX will shine, on dirty, just thawed roads - except it wouldn't start.  It was a lot easier to sell because I'd never fallen in love with it.  Getting $400 more than I bought it for didn't hurt either.

Later that summer I made my next motorcycle buying error and stumbled into an old Yamaha XS1100 sitting on the side of the road.  I ignored the three strikes against it (non-runner with no ownership being sold by a gormless kid) and purchased it anyway; I won't do that again.  I got lucky on the ownership - it was within a whisker of being a write-off and had a long and difficult history (I was the thirteenth owner!), but I was able to sell it on after sorting the ownership and just broke even.  In the process I stumbled onto a balancing act I hadn't considered before.

I love riding older bikes I wrench myself, but they aren't always ready to ride.  When the otherwise dependable Concours wasn't and my only other choice was an ancient Yamaha I'd only just freed up the brakes and carbs on, I found myself with nothing to ride as the cruelly short Canadian motorcycling season began.  I'd gambled too much on being able to keep the old bikes rolling.  With riding days so valuable in the Great White North, that wasn't a viable approach.

I still had most of the money from the Ninja sitting aside and my wise wife said to just focus on getting something newer and more dependable.  Maintaining that balance means having a riding ready bike and a project bike, and not messing up that equation.  To further complicate things, I'm a big guy so I needed a bike that fit, and my son was getting bigger every year and loved coming along, so I needed a bike that would fit us both.  Being the onerous person I am, I didn't do the obvious thing and buy a late model Japanese touring bike that runs like clockwork.

My daily rider suddenly popped up on Kijiji but it ended up being the most emotionally driven purchase yet.  Instead of a sensible five year old, low mileage Kayamonduki, I got bitten by a thirteen year old Tiger.  It was European, over budget, too old and with too many miles, but the owner was a young professional (nuclear operator!) and from the UK and we had a good, straight up chat about the bike.  I was honest about my position (the Tiger was out of my league but I loved it and wanted it), and he was straight up with his position (he was about to take it in to trade for a new Triumph at the dealership and even my lower offer was much better than he would have gotten on trade in).  I ended up feeling like I stole the bike for over a grand less than he was asking and he got more for it than he otherwise would have.  It was an emotionally driven purchase with a lot of rational oversight.

With all that good karma the Tiger has turned out to be a special thing.  I was only the third owner.  In thirteen years it had averaged less than 4000kms/year, and on two years the first owner had ridden it out to Calgary and back (seven thousand plus kilometres each time).  It had been power commandered (that had never come up in the purchasing discussions), indicating that the original owner had really fawned over this bike.  The guy I bought it off wasn't very mechanically minded and it hadn't had much in the way of regular maintenance, but then he hadn't used it much.  Within a couple of weeks I'd gotten it safetied, done all the maintenance and given it a good tuning - it has run like a top ever since.

It's an older, European bike, but fuel injection and a resurgent Triumph Motorcycles Co. using the latest manufacturing techniques means it's not a bonkers choice as a daily rider.  On the second year of ownership it fired right up after hibernating under a blanket in the garage, and it did again this year.  I've fixed some dodgy, plastic fuel connectors on the tank, changed the tires and done the fork oil and other fluids along with the chain, but other than the fuel fittings, it's all been regular maintenance.  The Tiger has been such a treat and it's such a rare thing (I've only ever seen one other) that I can't see myself letting it go.

Meanwhile the Concours became the project bike, but since I wasn't depending on it, the project took on new dimensions.  I stripped the old fairing off and ended up with a muscle bike like no other.  I've experienced some drift with this project and I think when I get it to a riding level I'll sell it with the aim to make my money back on it (shouldn't be too hard considering what I got it for).

I think the drift comes from biting off more than I can chew as far as tools I have on hand and time and a comfortable place to work.  If had welding gear handy and could do the fabrication I needed, I think I'd still be be pushing for an edgy completion to the project which has taken longer and has been more involved than I initially planned.  The heart is willing but I'm too tight money and time-wise to chase this big of a thing.  In the winter it hurts to go out in the garage and work on it and in the summer I'd rather be out riding.  Future projects might be more of a Shed and Buried/SPQR approach where I can get a bike sorted and back on its feet again, have some fun with it aesthetically and then move it on without losing any money on it.  Making enough on each one to keep me in tools and pay for the process would be the dream.

The sophomore years of motorcycling have been about pushing into more challenging riding opportunities.  From riding Arizona (another one that got published), to going to the last MotoGP race at Indianapolis to circumnavigating Great Lakes and Georgian Bay, I've gotten more and more daring and gone further afield with each season.

These years have also been about dusting off and expanding my technical skills and have seen me do everything from oil coolers to complete carburetor rebuilds.  The garage has gotten better and better in the process, though it's still bloody cold in the winter.  If I could find a solar powered heating system for the space I'd be a happy man.  If I had a heated, insulated work space about twice the size, I'd be even happier.  The other side of the coin is riding opportunities.  Living somewhere where you can't ride for 3+ months of the year isn't conducive to building saddle experience.  I'd be happier if I lived in an all year riding opportunity - or at least if I had access to such places over the winter here.

20 hours might have gotten me able to manage the basic
operations of a motorcycle - the Conestoga course was a
weekend with about 4 hours on bikes each day, then some
very tentative rides in the neighborhood got me to 20 hours.

At five years I feel like I've put a lot of time into improving my rider's craft.  I've also spent a lot of energy getting the rust off my mechanical skills.  What I most wish for the next five years is to maintain my hunger for more motorcycle experiences.  I'd like to try  a wider range of different bikes and types of riding and find a way to dig even deeper into mechanics.  This year I'm hoping to take an off-road training course.  In the future I'd love to find the money and time to take track riding, if not to pursue racing then at least to explore riding dynamics at the extreme end in a controlled environment.

If you put ten thousand hours into something you've developed a degree of expertise in it.  In each season I've tried to beat ten thousand kilometres of riding (and succeeded) before the snows fall.  Those fifty plus thousand kilometres have probably had me in the saddle for over a thousand hours and I've easily spent that again in the garage doing repairs and maintenance.  If feel like my motorcycle apprenticeship is well underway, I just need to keep finding ways to feed that expertise.

The light cover in the garage - a reminder...

Replacing Perished Rubbers

I got replacement rubber bits for the now fifteen year old Triumph Tiger 955i in before Christmas, but the weather has been so diabolically cold that even with a propane heater in the garage, the floor is still radiating negative thirty degrees and working in there is a misery.  We finally had a break in temperature this weekend so I got a chance to fit new rubber on the Tiger...

It's only -1°C out there, so it's garage door open time!

My targeted bits were the rubber covers on the mirror stalks, which aren't that important but you see a lot of them while you're riding and they bothered me.  The shift leaver rubber has been held together with Gorilla Tape for the better part of a year (that's some tough tape) and one of the rubber bits that go between the seat and the frame had disappeared, so I was aiming to replace that too so the seat would sit evenly and there would be no metal on metal rubbing.

The shift leaver was a simple thing.  I cut off the tape and the old rubber which was half torn.  With the new rubber warmed up and some WD40, the new bit slid on fairly easily.

The mirror arm rubbers were equally straight forward.  The mirror is on a threaded end.  Undoing that and the nut under it that holds it tight meant I could slide the mirror rubbers off.  The old ones were cracked in multiple places and barely hanging on.  I cleaned up the threads and metal under which was a bit rusty, put some rust paint on there to make sure none comes back and slid the new rubber covers on.  Another quick fix.

The problems arose when I tried to fit the seat rubbers.  I suspect the dealer sent me the wrong bits.  The rubbers that sit between the adjustable seat height bracket under the seat and the frame are circular with a flexible back that holds them to the frame.  Strangely, there don't seem to be any listed on the OEM parts blowups.  What I got were some pieces of rubber with sticky backing that aren't even the same thickness as the circular rubber grommets.

I'd shrug it off but at $3.30 plus tax and shipping for each of these sticky rubber bits, I'm out fifteen odd bucks in parts that seem to have nothing to do with what I was trying to fix.  I did send photos of the parts required and I thought we were clear on what was needed.  Rather than flush more money on parts I didn't ask for, I found a rubber grommet that was a bit too big and cut it down to fit the hole.  It's a snug fit and compresses to about the same thickness as the other grommets.  I might eventually get four matching rubber grommets just to make things even down there, but for now the seat isn't uneven and the frame isn't metal rubbing on metal.

The winter maintenance on the Triumph has been pretty straightforward this year.  Last year I did the fork oil, spark plugs, air filter and coolant and upgraded the dodgy plastic fuel line connectors, so this year the only maintenance was my usual end of season oil change.  I run the bike on the Triumph suggested Mobil1 10w40 motorcycle specific oil and I change it once at the end of the season.

The perished rubbers thing was as much an aesthetic choice as it was a performance fix.  Little details like rubber pieces on an older bike bring it back into focus.  Regularly watching Car SOS buying full sets of rubbers for older cars they are restoring probably intensified the urge.




Since I purchased the Tiger almost two years ago I've done all the fluids and changed the tires which produced a much more road capable bike (the old ones were well past due).  I've also replaced the chain, but other than these rubber bits and the fuel fittings last winter I haven't replaced anything that wasn't a regular service item.  The old Tiger has been a trustworthy steed.

I'm usually able to steal a ride toward the end of winter as the sunlight returns and we get the odd warm day with dry roads.  With any luck I'm only a few weeks away from stealing another one.  The Tiger's ready for it.

A Quick Motorcycle Chain Switch

After previous experiences breaking and installing motorcycle chains I figured this time it would be fairly straightforward thanks to a good tool and knowing what I'm doing.  The Tiger's chain had a pretty severe tight spot in it. When I set the tight spot to spec (40mm of slack), the loose part was wobbling around with twice that.  If I set the loose part to spec the tight part would rumble on the sprockets.  You could actually feel the difference in chain tension under acceleration as a surge.

The tool I got last time was quick to set up.  The blue 500 size chain pin pusher slotted right in out of the handle where it had been sitting since my last chain change on the Ninja over two years ago.

The Tiger chain is a 535 sized chain (wider than the Ninja's, but the same pitch length between the links - the Ninja was a 520 chain).  With the pin pusher piece in place I tightened the outer bolt with a 10mm ratchet and it easily pushed the pins out of the old master link with only mild force on a small ratchet.

With the old chain removed I spent some time cleaning up the sprockets, which were in great condition.  The front sprocket was packed with years of gum from chain lube and it took a while to get it all out, first with a screwdriver and afterwards wiping it up with some WD40.  With it all cleaned off it looked like a bit of rust had found its way onto the front sprocket.

The rear sprocket was only covered in chain oil remnants and cleaning it up was easily done.

If you're not yahooing around and yanking on your chain like a madman all the time sprockets tend to last, especially big, beefy 535 wide ones; this bike has only been owned by gentlemen.  I might swap out the rear 46 tooth sprocket for a 47 tooth one to lower the revs slightly on the next chain, but that's years down the road, and with the sprockets in good shape, it seemed silly to do a full switch now.

A master link came with the chain which is a bit off-putting because Fortnine immediately filled the screen with master links after I purchased the chain, which I took to mean I needed one.  I guess I'll hang on to it, but if the chain I'm buying comes with it letting me know seems like the polite thing to do rather than encouraging an upsell.

The master link that came with the chain had an interesting process for installation.  I'm told this is quite common on bicycles now.  The master link pins have a threaded piece on the end of them.  You thread the long pins on the chain and then alternate tighten the bolts until they won't go any further.



This snugs the outer piece of the master link onto the pins.  When you're done you back off the nuts a few turns and then break them off with a pair of pliers.  It worked well.

A chain so new it's still covered in the wax it was packaged in to stop rust.

With the new chain set to 35mm of sag top and bottom and lubricated with chain wax (preferred because it doesn't make a gooey mess of things, sticks to the chain well and is also a lovely honey colour), it was time for a test ride.  A twenty minute ride in the setting sun up to 100kms per hour demonstrated all sorts of improvement.  The surging feeling was gone making the bike much smoother under acceleration.  In corners that surging could destabalize the bike, it doesn't any more.  The new chain is also noticably quieter.

This time round I think the actual chain removal and installation took about 40 minutes moving slowly and deliberately.  The cleanup of the front sprocket was what took the most time, though it probably did a lot to quiet the new chain (not running through a tunnel of goop on each revolution has to be better).

While I had the tools out I finished the counteract balancing beads install I started earlier in the week by doing the back tire as well.  With beads now in the front and rear tires vibrations through the handlebars are gone and the whole bike is rattle free at speed.  I never really got to try them out on the Concours, but what little I did seemed to work, and seeing as the beads are cheaper than taking in tires to get balanced anyway, why not?  I'm glad I did.

The Tiger is now as arrow straight and smooth as it can be.  It was a joy to ride it home as the sun set on Sunday evening.

A Winter without Winter

These little imaginings are a nice escape, and if I ever become pointlessly rich, I'll be able to torment friends and family who ride with ridiculous Top Gear like challenges.

I've been monkeying around with Furkot and have come up with a themed trip to the end of South America and back.  Starting in October, just as the darkness and cold is closing in on Canada, we head south.  Over the next six months while ice and snow reign in the north, we enjoy equatorial heat and spring in the southern hemisphere.

We reach the southern terminus of our trip in mid-winter/summer (December 21st) on the longest day, and then begin the climb back up the globe on the other coast of South America before finally stopping in Rio and shipping the bikes back to NYC.  With the best part of three months to get south, this isn't a ragged rush to the end and should offer time to really get a sense of the places we're passing through.

We'd be in Buenos Aires two weeks after Ushuaia, coincidentally, just when the Dakar Rally kicks off, which would be an exciting thing to try and follow on lightened motorcycles (we could store most of our luggage in B.A. while we chased the race).  

The Dakar wraps up in mid-January after we follow it into the Andes and through Bolivia before coming back to Argentina for the start/finish.  We'd recover in Buenos Aires and then begin making our way north into Brazil.  A tour of Brazil would have us seeing the Amazon before coming back down to Rio.


If we left South America from the port of Rio and headed back to New York City, it would take about three weeks on a slow boat; a good time to rest, recover and write!

The final piece would be the two day ride home from NYC to Southern Ontario in April, just when we're ready for spring in Canada.

The Five Thousand Dollar Challenge

The evil-rich me would offer to pay for the trip, but we'd be riding the whole way on bikes that cost less than $5000 Canadian (Top Gear style).

I'm still crushing on Tigers.  I think I could talk this one down to $4200 to get it under the $5000 limit with taxes.

An oil change and a check of the obvious bits (chain, tires, cables) and I'd be ready to go.

The North American bit will be a lot of tarmac, but the Central and South American bits will take some tougher tires, which I'd aim to pick up en route.

A quick trip to Twisted Throttle (who have a whack of 1050 Tiger gear) and I'd be ready to take on the escape from winter.

With a $5000 limit on the bike (taxes in), what would you take?

Some 1050 Tiger Farkling

Engine Guard
http://www.twistedthrottle.ca/sw-motech-crashbars-engine-guards-triumph-tiger-1050i-07
Skidplate
http://www.twistedthrottle.ca/sw-motech-aluminum-engine-guard-skidplate-triumph-tiger-1050-07-black-or-silver
Tires for Central/South America
http://www.twistedthrottle.ca/continental-contitrailattack-2-dual-sport-front-17-inch-size-120-70-17-90-street-10-dirt-58w-tubeless-bias-ply-tire
Hand guards
http://www.twistedthrottle.ca/barkbusters-vps-handguard-triumph-tiger-1050-with-28mm-diameter-barkbusters-aluminum-handlebar-installed

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.