One Thing After Another

Summer has come and is nearly gone, the sun dawns later and will be setting sooner as the days get shorter and fall approaches. This means I'm already commuting to work in the dark and soon enough my commute home will be the same. I have the gear to handle such daily slogs but my bike is lacking a bit of kit. The stock headlights are fine until I encounter oncoming traffic, then I'm pretty much riding blind, I have to hope and trust I don't come upon any roadkill (raccoons, possums, nutria, coyotes) or other hazards in the road such as shredded truck tires, mattresses or a 5 gallon bucket of oil strewn across two lanes of a busy corner. (Thanks for the warning Andy).

To combat this I visited ADVMonster and placed an order for their Model 30 Spot Light and Model 44 Flood Light to mount to my crash bars.

Now all I had to do was wait. I ran the bike low on fuel as I knew the tank had to come off to run wiring for the lights. Friday came and my lights were still in transit so I removed the tank and proceeded to do a radiator flush and coolant change. Triumph designers brilliantly placed the fuel tank on top of the radiator cap so to flush the radiator one must remove the battery to remove the tank, drain the coolant, flush the system, fill, reinstall the tank and battery to run the engine to operating temperature, let the bike cool, remove the battery and tank, drain, fill, reinstall the tank and battery, run the engine, let the bike cool, remove the battery and tank, drain one more time before filling with coolant. So this procedure took up all of Friday morning and the garage smells of fuel and coolant, but this service was done.

My lights came in Friday afternoon so like a happy boy I skipped down to the post office to fetch them.

They look like very nice lights at a reasonable price, I read many good reviews on several different forums. I watched YouTube videos of riders demonstrating their newly mounted lights and I was anxious to receive mine and get 'em mounted... but how?

Spot on the left/Flood on the right

ADVMonster LED Lights

I pondered how to mount these and drove all over town buying several different pipe, conduit, cable, wire and bar clamps before finally discovering ground clamps! They gave me a good solid base and a perfect pivot point to attach the housing bracket.

Lowe's online photo

I spray painted them black and attached them to my bars. Mounted the lights and ran the wires up into the dash to power and a new switch I picked up at Napa Auto Parts. I relocated my Hot Grips switch to access the factory blank in the dash so it looks stock.

I installed the battery, checked and double checked the wiring making sure everything worked then decided I better check the air filter while the tank is still off. Got it cleaned, re-oiled and installed.

Now to button everything up, I put the tank back on one last time, plugged in the fuel pump and attached the fuel lines...... SNAP! What was that?!?

I knew what it was but I was afraid to look.

$($%(*!$*^%)@)$%*)$#*%^%(#!#)@$%! A broken fuel fitting!

The bottom fitting is not so fitting.

If Triumph has an Achilles' Heel, it has to be their plastic fuel fittings. There was a recall and they would replace the male elbow fittings but not the female fittings in the tank itself. So when they break, you're in for a bit of surgery to get the plastic threads out of the metal flange. You can read the surgery procedure and what I'm in for at The 520 Chain Cafe. Thanks for the write up Joe C.

I'm in search of the metal fittings now and since the bike is out of commission for another week or so while I wait for the parts to come in, I have an email into my friendly local mechanic to see if he'll fit me in for a valve adjustment. With my luck recently, I'm not going anywhere near the inside of the motor. I already have one bike in pieces, I don't need another one taking up space.



Bad is never good until worse happens.  ~Danish Proverb