My Triumph Tiger

I have had very few problems with this machine so far, touch wood blah blah etc. The only problem I had with the new bike was that the lock on the handlebars got really loose. From a newsgroup I subscribed to for a while I found out that this is a common problem, they apparently all do that. Basically there are two security bolts holding this lock on and they are designed so you can't undo them which you might want to do, for example, to steal the motorcycle. So Triumph, in their infinite wisdom, used these bolts which they tighten up and then the heads shear off, leaving a rounded stump that you can't easily undo. Unfortunately this means you can't tighten them up if they come loose either. So all you do is pull out the old bolts (6mm metric I think) and put in some new ones with heads on, which you also locktite in. This means someone could undo them with a screwdriver, allen wrench or whatever, but hey I don't live in Finsbury Park anymore (a crime and student ridden quarter of Norf Landon, where I domiciled in 1978 or so and was getting robbed all the time), so I don't think this is likely to be a problem. At about 1,000 miles I was going down the dirt road where I live, and I foolishly lost the Tiger, it skidding in the sand and mud. The first problem was that I realized just how heavy the damn thing is. According to the info from Triumph it should be about 480 lbs on the road, which is only a little more than my BMW GS. I've fallen off the Beemer many times, since I really do ride that in the rough, and I can generally pick it up easily, provided I'm not in a marsh or something. When the Tiger fell over on flat non marshy ground I could only just manage to get it upright by elbowing into the mirrors. I'm not what most people would consider a weed, being 6ft 1in and 190 lbs, the thing is just heavy. The few extra pounds must make a big difference, but the Tiger can also fall further, since the cylinders don't keep it away from the ground, like those on the Beemer do. The bike was not damaged, except for a few minor scratches, but it was still quite annoying, being basically my own fault and all that. Anyway, because of this I put crashbars on the thing, which I got from Thunderbike in New Zealand. These fit nicely and look pretty good, and would I'm sure help if I feel off again, but I haven't since I put them on. They were a bit of a pain to put on, since you have to undo two of the major engine bolts which have funny Torx head bolts, and some of the nuts are fairly inaccessible. However anyone with any mechanical experience would be able to figure some kind of way of getting these things together. At about 12,000 miles the chain had stretched beyond further adjustment, so I decided to change it. I could have got the dealer to do it, but I prefer to deal with this kind of stuff myself. Anyway, this turns out to be quite a bit of work, first time through anyway. The chain is a continuous one, so the recommended way of changing it, according to the Haynes manual anyway, it is to take off the swinging arm. So you bang out the back wheel spindle, check where the spacers were, and remove the back wheel. (as it happens I had to do this anyway 'cos I got my first puncture). Then you undo a spindle that goes through the monoshock, and bang out an tube that goes into the monoshock. Not too bad, though to get to the nut on the spindle you have to take the back part of the silencer off (easy, just two bolts). The nut on the spindle is recessed quite a way into the swinging arm on the right, and I had to hold it still with a screwdriver to undo it. I could n't get in with a 1/2" drive socket, since the end of the silencer collecter was in the way. Possibly a 3/8" socket and extension would fit, but I did n't have those available. You should support the arm at this stage or it will fall down and might damage itself. Anyway then you undo the swinging arm spindle and bang that out, not too difficult, and then the arm is basically loose. Then all you have to do is undo four bolts which hold the cover on the engine chain wheel, and you can slide the chain out past the loose swinging arm. Then you can put in the new chain, and reverse the whole procedure. It's a little fiddly getting it all back together, there are two washers on either end of the swinging arm that keep falling off until you finally manage to somehow get them into the right place, best to glue them in place with grease. The getting the axle and bolt back through the monoshock is a bit tricky, since everything has to be lined up right, and you dare not bang it too hard since the shock has needle bearings in it which you could damage easily. Also, getting the washer and nut back onto the end of that recessed bolt was a pain, but ultimately doable. Finally you need a torque wrench to get the nuts correctly tensioned. Then you have to mess around to get the spacers for the wheel spindle back in and get the quite heavy wheel lined up with the disc brake, then bang the spindle here. You could probably get good at this if you did it a few times, but actually you don't need too; if you break the chain to get it off, and have the right riviting tool, you can put the new chain on without all that hassle. I bought the riviting tool (about $100, a fairly serious instrument) and I'll do it that way in future. The only other problems I had so far, in 14,000 plus miles, were with the electrics, probably a function of the high humidity here in Florida. A couple of times the bike would stall at low speed, and both times this was due to corrosion on the + lead battery terminal. Both times I was able to guess what the problem was, clean the corrosion of the lead, and get on with the ride. So so far a truely reliable bike...

Since I wrote the above I've had several more years experience with this bike, still no major problems. The only thing of any note was that the speedometer drive thing messed up somehow, so the speedometer stopped working, quite annoying. This might have been my fault resulting from me not putting the front wheel back on quite properly. I now have at least 28,000 miles on the bike (I say at least since I didn't get round to fixing the speedo drive for a while and probably did at least 1,000 in that time). In this time I did long trips through the Southern US, got stuck in a swamp and did a very pleasant trip from Gainesville to New Orleans, seeing all of the gulf coast, which of course is mostly quite different now what with Katrina and all. All in all, still a very recommendable bike, actually the Tiger and the Rocket being Triumphs biggest sellers..