Electrickery

I was in the bike trade when the triples were current. Reading Services were not then built on the M4 and even the 250 would not make it from Chieveley to Heston without a detour to refuel in Slough or Reading town.

We bought a KH750 with the clutch slipping. I bought it new plates & took it round my in-town test track which included a bit of dual carriageway. Giving it a fistful up the two lane blacktop was sufficient to make the clutch slip again.

Frankly, I really could not see the point the triples were trying to make for Mr Kasawaki.

Regards,

J. Kim Siddorn,

"Derek Lord Of Misrule!" said SNIP! .... I was fairly broke at the time, and running a Kawasaki H1

When I was about fourteen I once took Dad's Panther Model

100 (twin port single) around the block a couple of times with neither silencers or pipes fitted. With flames jetting from the ports ;-)

It sounded a bit like a low flying Tiger Moth. Even open pipes tame the noise a little compared to bare open ports. There's a certain 'sharp edge' to the sound when there's nothing between valves and atmosphere. Fascinating to watch on a really slow tickover, you can *see* the shockwaves pulsing.

I'd just turned it back off when a neighbour shambled up, about 18 stone of pissed-off nightworker in slippers and dressing gown, and threatened to bend the entire bike around my head if I ever did it again. Right that moment I think he could have done it ;-)

Gyppo

Pure publicity gimmicks I always reckoned. As they say, 'It doesn't matter what they say as long as they get the name right'.

Rather like the Kawasaki Z1. Turned out to be a pretty decent bike as well, but the bragging rights and ad value of being the

*first* one litre Japbike had to be priceless. As I recall most people I knew called it the Kawasaki 'One Thousand', because back then it was a name to conjure with. Z1 - as a name - held no magic.

Gyppo

The big two stroke Reid at Astle Park the other year was sans pipe at one point & sounded exactly like a field gun!

Regards,

J. Kim Siddorn,

"J D Craggs" wrote:

"J D Craggs" wrote

Puts me in mind of the first stat up of my Norman T300:-

"Will it start? Well not quite first time, but a bit of cranking produced encouraging pops (it was dark by this time so, with no exhaust pipes, the pyrotechnic display was quite impressive) and a few more tweaks here and there had it away. Still not quite right as it won't run off the choke (anyone know what the jet sizes are supposed to be?) but satisfying none the less. Without pipes the lowly T300 sounds like an aero engine and the exhaust flames compound the effect - using the choke you can 'tune' them from yellow to blue to bang and stop! "

Nick H

AHA! Running a "modern" four stroke without pipes allows fresh air to be drawn into the cylinder as the valves slam shut, thus weakening the mixture of the next stroke and lessening its ability to fill properly. They are designed to be run with pipes & the speed of the exhaust gas slug is sufficient to cause a depression in the cylinder, assisting the incoming charge.

So Phil Irving taught me ;o))

regards,

Kim Siddorn

Teach a child to be polite and courteous and you create an adult that can't merge a car into faster traffic.

"Nick H" wrote

Well, the 750 triple was pretty good, handled prety well. the handlebars had lead implants at the end that helped suppess the tank slappers at 85 mph, which you could ride through - the problem was decelerating...and it was much more economical than the 500 triples. Miss the induction roar...

Never had a problem with clutch slippage on the two H2's I've used

The H1/H2 were designed to grab market share. Not well engineered (most H1's suffered from frame cracking below the engine - compare and constrast Ducatis approach as using the engine as a stressed part of the frame) But H1's were fun. Bit like riding a hand grenade.. they weren't called the thanatoid triple without reason. Loved mine to bits.. wish I still had it..

Competition at the time was the Rocket 3 and Honda 750(with dry sump). No contest...

Had a blast on a turbo'd Z1 once. Too fast for the human unit...

Loved the Honda... Rumour has it that Triumph used to employ a man with steel toe capped boots to "align" the exhausts on Bonnevilles..

"Kim Siddorn" wrote:-

Nice idea, but you may recall that subsequent investigation revealed an undersize main jet! I suspect the valve timing on the T300 is far too tame to exhibit such effects anyway.

Nick H

Good lord, that takes me back. I've not seen the word 'thanatoid' since it was used in 'Bike' magazine by Dave Williams or that little dwarf fellow (Harris?) to describe the triple in question.

Gyppo

Arrgh, Rocket Threes. Three cylinders of trouble looking for a home. There was a write up on the X75 Hurricane in one of the glossies recently & although they avoided saying anything REALLY unpleasant about it, even the rose tinted spectacles of 30 years were not quite enough to hide its worst points.

We were Triumph agents & I used to PDI all the Triumphs that left the shop from - erm - 1971 to '78 (I think). I also dealt with all warranty work and servicing. I used to have a printed sheet that I gave new customers before sale telling them what they would need to know. Most were ex Jap bike owners & Brits were something of an undiscovered country for the poor souls. Rather like stepping back in time about twenty years. I made it my business to do

12 miles on each one, bluing the pipes in the process.

On the whole, the twins were very good with only the occasional hiccup and/or oil leak. Tridents used to get very hot & bothered in the summer & I had one of my own which would trill like a bird when it got hot. On one occasion, it even went so far as to melt the plastic of the points where it bore upon the cam!

The Hurricanes were death traps & I refused to ride them further than round the block. The manager thought I was exaggerating & shot off up the road on one, experiencing a nice tank slapper before he got to the lights. He came back white faced & we looked at each other knowingly, but no words passed between us. We had three of them in a dusty, forlorn row in the upstairs window for - literally - years. On every one, although they were bran new, the fibre glass tank & seat unit was cracked at the seat nose. Dreadful things ........

Norton Commandos were worse than Triumphs by a long chalk & would run their mains inside 3,000 miles if ridden hard. The electric start last-of-the-line versions were actually very well made & gave little trouble when new. Not a good bike to sell in the winter though as the starter would not push a new, tight, cold engine over compression!

Favourites? I had a CB750F2, the most comfortable and easy to ride bike I ever had. Did 500 miles in a day on it once & was not completely knackered when I got home. Last of its line, it was a well sorted, finely developed bike & thus was dropped in favour of the new wet sump DOHC 750 that ate camchains, didn't handle, drank petrol & was slower. Well done there Mr Honda.

I ran a Ducati 960 & just loved it to pieces. I still have it tucked away in the garage in need of either a piston or rings. The regulator didn't so I fitted a Zener diode the cheap way - got one from a radio shop & mounted it on a bit of THICK ali plate, concealing it under the tank nose. The electrics were otherwise OK except for once when coming back from the TT in torrential rain, it got in the switch & drowned it all.

Finally, I had a CBX1000 MkI. Big but not scarey, fast enough to be dangerous, too big to pick up on my own with panniers on. I had it 22 years, only selling it in 2003. Smashin' bike & the only one that I rode that never, ever went wrong.

I'll stop now ............

regards,

Kim Siddorn

Teach a child to be polite and courteous and you create an adult that can't merge a car into faster traffic.

Damn .. I had a CB70F2 wet sump- a goodish bike.. Faster than the dry sump 750s Adequate handling.and in my view better than the preceding dry sump 750s.. The old 750s used to cook brakes, I remember an incident when I couldn't slow down much coming down the Snake Pass - thank god for engine braking... the new ones were Much better..Marshall 4 into 1 just had to replace the oil ring on the primary drive to stop it leaking oil onto the pavement. Problem with Honda's was always the camchain, which used to eat metal. Had a CB250 and removed a half inch of shavings from the primary centrifugal oil filter, then had to resort to Araldite to seal up the barrel assembly. Cooked it off in the oven in a shared flat, much surprised other residents seeing a pair of barrels in a baking tray.... And sold it soon... They don't call me the Araldite Kid for nothing..

Sold the 750 two months before the camchain failed. Good timing...

CBX1000 - only rode one once. turbinely smooth... Liked the sticker saying 24 valves...

Oh yes, here's my impresion of a Norton Commando being electric started..

Click.

Silence... :-)

I was still in the trade when I got the CBX1000. It had two good party tricks.

On Saturday mornings, we'd ferry mopeds & minnows up to the training scheme & I'd go along on the CBX to fetch the other rider. The cones in the slalom were set very slightly further apart than at most courses & this was so I could - feet up and with a passenger - negotiate the slalom on the way out! This ensured a positive response when trainees said they couldn't do it when reminded of the example earlier in the morning. Later, they got themselves a Police instructor & he could do it on his BMW boxer twin which beat me.

The other trick was that when the engine was warm, you could give it a touch of throttle & a touch of both brakes until it slowed to the point where neither rev counter nor speedo registered. Under 5 MPH & about 250 RPM.

In top gear .............

Letting go the brakes allowed it to accelerate away slowly without snatching until you could carefully feed it a bit of throttle & away you went.

I'd had it about a fortnight when I realised I was changing up at about

4,000 when driving it hard. Oh. What'll it do when you rev it in the gears? Gosh .........

So I went and got Hazel - a hardened pillion passenger who travelled many thousands of miles with her hands resting on her knees - and took her up over Mendip to a quiet bit of road that was fairly straight. I stopped. "Put your thumbs in my belt loops". "Why?" "Just do it."

- and off we went. My wife was a well brought up young lady & never swore unless it slipped out ;o)) however, above the rising howl of the six as it gathered up its skirts and fled across the landscape, she was heard to shout "F*****g Hell!!"

When it's first set of silencers rotted out I ran it for a short time with sawn off baffle less short meggas, manufactured in two minutes flat from the old units with a hacksaw. God, it sounded s-o-o-o nice.

regards,

Kim Siddorn