Featured Resurrecting 1966 Tiger T100ss

Okay, thanks for the advice. I’ve got that on my to-do list now.

At least it feels like I’m making a bit of progress now, but it’s slow going.

Dave.

 

Heh. I’m progressing, but the trouble is when you’re not sure of what you’re doing and having to check everything over again, then it throws another curved ball. This whole business with the threads change about the year of my bike (‘66’) and not really knowing if the bits I’ve got are the original issue, is a real pain. I’m looking forward to getting the forks finished and on the frame. At least the rest of it might follow the book a bit more closely.
I’ll probably break a bottle of 66 fizzy stuff over it when I get that far, but that might break something else. I don’t think summer this year is very likely unfortunately, I’m in for the long haul I’m afraid.
Thanks for the encouragement. I’ve learned a lot from your builds.

Dave.

 

I’ve assembled up the headstock to the frame with the new bearings and It all seems to fit together quite well. It seemed to be a three handed job so I co-opted some help to hold the yokes together and a lot of grease to prevent the ball bearings dropping out while I screwed down the top crown nut. I didn’t lose any and the whole thing adjusted up with a good smooth action.

I’ve also offered up the new stanchions into place to get an idea how easily (or not) they pull into place. They slid up into place with minimal friction but next time it’ll be against the pressure of the road spring.

First though I have to get the fork legs assembled completely. What looks like it may become problematical is to get the small bolt in the outside bottom of the leg to engage and tighten up on the shuttle valve restrictor cone inside the leg. I can reach the cone with an extension and a long socket but the hex head of the bolt is recessed in a hole on the outside with fairly minimal clearance. I’ve got an old cheapjack socket that might be able to grind thin enough to engage. Also the bolt is sealed by an aluminium washer but I suspect a dab of Loctite may be in order.

 

I’ve been putting off assembling the right hand fork leg while waiting for the next jumble at Kempton Park in the hope that a Slider leg might become available to replace the one I’ve got which isn’t as perfect as I’d like it. Last Saturday, I made the rounds again but still no sign of another leg. They seem to be like hens teeth and nothing like it available. I’m just going to have to use the one I’ve got and replace it if one comes up at a later date.

Like the Slider, I’m not very happy with the head I’ve got. It seems to have been sand blasted and cleaned, overhauled with new valve guides and had a new left hand exhaust stub fitted. To my inexperienced eye though it doesn’t look quite ‘right’ though. Despite the new guides there’s no valves been fitted and the seats don’t seem to have been recut, one seat at least seems to have a sort of rounded appearance. Also there’s what looks like a hard black substance smeared around one of the new guides and up the inlet tract. It’s quite hard and at first I thought it was coke that hadn’t been removed. It wouldn’t scrape off but dissolved into a black liquid with a squirt of degreaser.

There’s also what looks like epoxy resin smeared on the inside of the inlet rocker recess which won’t clean or scrape off. But more worrying is the repair to the right exhaust stub. It’s a new stub and the threaded hole it fits in seems to have been drilled out and re threaded. The hole seems to be off centre and out of line. Looking through the new stub you can see the edge of the port encroaching into the stub aperture. There’s also a gap of about a quarter inch behind the stub, but only on one side. The stub’s been epoxied into place and is resisting my attempts to remove it to get a better look. Also there was the previously mentioned difficulty getting one of the new head bolts through its hole and having to run a needle file through it to clear its passage, which, as it happens, is the hole immediately behind the exhaust port in question. On top of all that there’s a broken fin adjacent to the same exhaust.

Of course, for all I know all that may be perfectly okay and serviceable but I had thought that I might save myself a lot of trouble if I could pick up another head without all that baggage. This time I did find another cylinder head. I’d taken numbers and photos with me just in case and I came across one, and I did on the second stall I visited. It has received some attention with a half hearted decoke and the the valves ground in, but it will have to come apart as it needs checking out.

 

Thanks for the pointers.

I’d already more or less decided to replace the head as I think the misalignment of the port is just a step too far. Actually I didn’t mention that the new stub pokes out at a slightly different angle to the other one. Repairs to it will probably cost more than the ‘new’ head I bought at the autojumble. And there’s no telling what the epoxy and black stuff around one of the guides is hiding.

I saw it there and at least I’ve learned not to pass up an opportunity when it occurs so I grabbed it while the going was good. I haven’t taken the valves out yet but everything I can see looks ok/original and I had the casting number which matches. The only thing wrong I can see is that one of the fins is broken. I would fit new valves and guides anyway but I’ll have to find an engineering shop that can clean it up and cut the seats as I don’t have that kind of equipment.

anyhow I need to finish off the forks first.

 

I’ve pulled the valves from the ‘new’ cylinder head to see what’s going to be needed by way of refurbishment to replace the suspect original one. The answer is pretty much everything. I first went to remove the inlet manifold and took off three of the four self locking nuts. The fourth came away with the stud it was on and took most of the thread in the head with it. Great start! The manifold stayed put and had to be released from the glued-in-place double layers of gasket.

The valves came out to find one exhaust being brand new and the other three loose in their guides like the proverbial in a shirtsleeve. Even the new valve rocked a bit. No surprise there then. What really got me was that absolutely no attempt to decoke the ports had been made and large flakey layers made up an incomplete lining all the way through. The cleanest bit was the seats where the valves had been lapped in.

The upper outside of the fins between the rocker boxes was home to a layer of old grease and dirt anyway, so I set about cleaning up as best I could. An overnight soak in a detergent cleaner and the application of a stipple brush and the garden power washer produced a head which was a bit cleaner, but not much.

While I was at it I loosely assembled the crankcase er.. cases, barrel and head to see if they at least fitted together and to give it a once over to try to discover any other little surprises. I had first to clean up the dowel that locates the two halves together, to get it into the hole it’s supposed to occupy. Both halves mated reasonably easily together and I have a crankcase. Except that I also have a broken off bolt in the rear cylinder location.

The cylinder barrel fitted okay to the new studs which had been fitted in the earlier aborted refurbishment by the previous owner. Unfortunately it seems that the two dowels on two of the studs that locate the barrels positive position have been omitted. There’s no trace of the dowels in the spare parts heap and new are on back order from the supplier.

Both original and new heads locate and screw down into place so I’m going to have to decide which is the best option to use. At the moment I’m veering towards keeping to the original if the work that was done to it is okay.


NB: The word ‘new’ should be loosely interpreted to mean as in ‘new to me’. Most of the ‘new’ stuff is at least 20 years old.

 

I can’t think how many times I’ve got to the point where I thought I could get the b*****y forks completely assembled and onto the bike. There always seems to be something I’ve missed or not quite right that I’ve passed up previously as okay and when it comes down to it, I’m not so sure. I went through another dry run of the assembly of the lower leg sliders again and the first thing I found was that the bolts holding the restrictor cone in the bottom of the leg wouldn’t screw in far enough without jamming. I had previously tried them in the hole but hadn’t thought to see that the bolt goes all the way to the bottom of the hole. I have a number of old taps but none of the right size or thread, so I decided to splash out for a set as it’s becoming increasingly obvious that I’m going to have to do a lot more thread checking and chasing before I’m through. Two days later a cheapo set arrived and the cone threads cleaned out a treat. It was surprising just how much junk came out the bottom of the hole.

Next, the bolts holding the restrictor cones sit in recesses at the bottom of the slider leg which leaves next to no room for a socket or spanner to hold the bolt’s head while tightening it down. Just for a change I found that I’ve got a small socket from an old electric screwdriver kit that almost goes into the recess. Fitting it in a drill chuck I’ve been able to clean off a few burrs on the outside and reduce its outside diameter very slightly, just enough to get it into the recess and hold the bolt. The actual cone itself I can fit inside the slider with a deep socket and extension. The bolt doesn’t actually screw into the slider itself but it’s plain shank just passes through and an aluminium washer seals the head of the bolt and is the only thing that stops the entire amount of fork oil draining out past the bolt. So although I’m fitting new washers I think I’ll have to put the bolt in with sealant around it’s neck to prevent any loss.

I have also (now), checked out the bolts holding the lower wheel spindle caps to the sliders only to find that three of them wouldn’t screw completely down. I hadn’t fully checked these either. On closer inspection I found that the bottom quarter inch of the holes have the same sort of dried up residue partly filling them. I could remove a lot of it with a fine pick but the bolts remained tight to screw down. Unfortunately I don’t have a tap for these either. These appear to be Cycle threads, not included in the new kit, so work stopped again while I obtained taps for that job. Re-tapping the threads in the bottom of the slider brought out another whole bunch of junk but the bolts now fit in as they should. Clearly I’m going to have to be a lot more thorough and am going to have to get other size taps and dies as I go along. The only saving grace on this is that I’m probably going to need these same tools when/if I ever get round to fettling the other bike.

Meanwhile, the nut holding the lower bearing and shuttle valve in the fork stanchion still presents the problem of how to torque it up. In my original efforts to get the nuts off I had to resort to a drift to loosen them, which worked with the application of a lot of heat but burred the slots in the nuts in the process. I was set to replace the nuts but after two were sent by the supplier that didn’t have a thread that matched that of the stanchions, I’ve given up on that idea and have now cleaned up the originals to refit. There doesn’t seem to be a spanner or tool available that will fit this slotted nut so I’ve worked on an old socket that I’d previously tried to modify to fit the slots and now have a better engagement that I hope will do the nut up to the required torque.

A closer inspection of the shuttle valve sleeve shows it has a slight indentation in the wall of the thinner part. It looks as if it’s distorting and having previously passed that over as ‘probably okay’ once again I’m not altogether so sure now, as after all it’s just a bit of plastic so I’ve obtained new and replaced them.

I also had a bit of a moment when reading up the Workshop Manual on how to remove and replace the oil seals in their holders and found mention of an ‘auxiliary wiper seal’ above the main seal. This auxiliary seal isn’t mentioned anywhere else as far as I can see and it’s not in the parts list, at least for my year. As I read it, it apparently isn’t needed on my model/year as the primary seal is supposed to be ‘double lipped’. Needless to say on removal of the seals from my holders it looks as if one is double lipped and the other is single. Certainly they are a different thickness and checking the new ones both of them are double lipped. So, it looks as if it’s good to go as it is. Panic over.

The one tool I have balked at springing for is the special wrench used to loosen/tighten the fork leg oil seal holders). The cheapest one I can find is about £30, while others retail at anything between £35 to £50. All that for one solitary job and ironically I only have to fit and tighten them up as I was spared the original strip down by the previous owner. However, I thought that a G cramp, modified to fit might just be able to provide enough purchase to do the holders up tight enough. Looking around the tool shops I found a a small mitre clamp that had ball end sockets on the clamp ends. I removed the floating ends to find that the ball ends fitted nicely into the locating holes of the seal holders and the clamp frame gives just about enough purchase to tighten the holder up effectively. The clamp cost just £6, so something of a saving though I’m not sure how well it might fare if called on to get a stuck one undone.

 

So.. I’ve come up against a real snag. The top edge of the right-hand lower fork leg slider is damaged where the upper bearing fits into the slider. It’s not much and the bearing fits quite snugly, but there’s a gap and the very top threads are also partly worn and damaged where it engages with the chromed oil seal holder. I thought that a dab of blue Hylomar between the bearing and the slider would be enough with the O’ ring seal that’s also inside the holder taking care of any possibility of oil getting out of the leg. What I hadn’t realised is that it’s that top machined land of the slider that engages with the O ring to seal it off, and of course it’s that land that’s damaged. Oil is bound to be forced out due to pressure in the leg under compression.

When I first assembled the leg in earnest it was tight to turn when it came up against the O ring and wouldn’t go fully home and there we were several turns of the thread still showing under the seal holder. Getting it back off again was hard work and for a while wouldn’t turn either way. Eventually I worked it off to find that the O ring had caught up on the damaged edge of the slider, jammed in the threads and had split the rubber. Using my Heath-Robinson spanner hadn’t helped either as trying to hold everything together without wobbling while tightening up and keeping it aligned wasn’t easy. So I’ve now got another four O rings in, and at great expense, the proper tool for tightening the seal holder.

Anyway, I should have realised that it was going to be necessary to replace the slider. I have kept an eye open for a replacement but haven’t yet found one of the correct year. I’ve come across later ones, mostly with some sort of damage or slightly different mudguard fixings using a caged nut instead of the bolt fitting. I think I’m just going to have to assemble all this up temporarily so I can get on with sorting the front brake and hub. The search continues though.

 

That’s a good thought. I’ll see what I can find around here

 

Just for a change I had a stroke of luck this week.

Almost since I started this refurb I’ve been on the lookout for a right-hand front fork leg. Admittedly rather halfheartedly, as I hadn’t really appreciated the full extent of the damage to the threads and machined land at the top of the leg and I’d thought I’d get away with using what I’d got. When it came to it, building up the leg, it became obvious that it wasn’t going to work and the leg was going to leak around the damaged top face and threads and would have to be replaced.

So, a couple of weeks trawling through e-bay, the small ads in various magazines and even to joining the Triumph Owners Club to put a ‘wanted’ ad in there produced absolutely nothing that would have been useable. Trouble was I haven’t seen one that’s been correct for my year bike that hasn’t been damaged or ‘modified’ in some way.

But suddenly a pair of the correct year and in a reasonably unadulterated state came up in the US on e-bay. A check with the seller confirmed the TPI was correct and I put in a bid which turned out to be the only one. So I’m now awaiting delivery which is currently scheduled for early August.

The postage is almost double that the legs cost.

 

The new(ish) lower fork legs arrived from the USA yesterday, dumped unceremoniously and unexpectedly on the doorstep. Almost too good to be true as this is almost a month before the due date. I’m feeling a bit better disposed towards the postage cost.

A quick once over doesn’t show any problems and they seem to be in a lot better condition than those I already have. The interiors seem less worn and they both have their restrictor cones in place which is of the shuttle valve variety, so it appears these are of post ‘88 vintage.

This morning I’ve checked out the threads and everything seems to fit as it should. I’ve chased the threads in the end cap bolt holes and the bolts fit well and seem to have rather less play. Even the oil seal holders fit although that may be because the leg threads have been painted along with the rest of the leg when they’ve been tarted up with a rattle can spray.

They need cleaning and painting but they’re looking hopeful.

 

While waiting for the fork legs to be delivered (in August) I started looking at another large job that needs to be jobbed, namely the petrol tank and mudguards and painting. I know that they have their own problems but thought I need to make a start on them. Needless to say there’s more to do than I thought. Why is there never anything just straightforward?

The bit I knew about was a broken off screw end in one of the parcel grid holes, which has been soaking in WD40 for the last couple of months. I’ve looked inside the tank with an Endoscope and it shows very little by way of surface rust, but there has at sometime been a leak at the back corner opposite the opposite the tap. There are threaded mounting plates welded on at each corner and a hole through the tank right under the right hand one. The weird thing is though that the plate seems to have been cut off and re-welded back on again and a load of filler applied under it. And to cap that, it seems to have been welded on the wrong way round, at least the bolt hole is too far inboard and doesn’t line up with the mounting bracket. I guess I’ll have to cut the plate off to get the hole welded up Oh joy!

The broken stud end is defeating my efforts with an easy-out, even with heat applied. I don’t know how much force it’s going to take before I break it off. I’ll have to think about this a bit before I try drilling it out and completely f*** the whole thing up. Back to the forks in the meanwhile.