Well I waved goodbye to my Triumph Rocket III as it disappeared into the distance, on it's way to the Triumph dealership so they can find out what's making the horrible noises from the transmission. My latest guess is that the output shaft's bearing has collapsed, it seems that some of the 2004-2008 models had this problem, which was apparently a case of the bearings being installed incorrectly on some bikes in the factory, starving them of oil, and causing them to shatter. Great. It's well out of warranty but with only 6000 miles on the odometer, and a known factory fault that can't be attributed to anything I've done, I'm hoping that the dealer will repair it for free.
On a happier note, a huge Samoan man from UPS delivered a box shortly afterwards. I'd been mentally hopping from one foot to the other in anticipation of my new Dyna 3 Ohm coils and leads (and crimping tool) arriving from Z1 Enterprises that I ordered last week for my Suzuki GS1000. These Suzy's are brilliant bikes, fast, with bullet proof engines, and probably the best handling bike from the 1970's, with the possible exception of most Italian bikes from the era. Mine has been disappointing though, mainly due to the ignition system. I installed a NOS Martek 440 ignition last year, but that just highlighted the fact that the OEM coils were shot. Anyway, I opened the box to study my new treasures:
I bought these Bosch spark plugs at a swap meet a few years ago for a buck each, they came in boxes of 8, so I bought 3 boxes for 20 bucks. Bargain!
The installation went well, once these horrible OEM things were removed and deposited in the circular file:
I won't bore you with pictures of the nice new coils installed, (because I forgot to take any pics before I re-installed the tank) but no biggie. I pressed the button and the bike fired right up (it hasn't been run since last Sunday) without me even using the choke, it's never done that before, fantastic! I wanted to see how bright the spark now was, so with the bike happily idling at around 500 RPM on 3 cylinders, I took this pic:
Fark! Anyway, I thought about taking it for a ride for about 30 seconds until the rain came thumping down, dumping about a brazillion gallons of water and hail on my neighbourhood. I decided (quite easily, actually) that discretion is the better part of valour, and came inside to watch TV instead. Oh well, there's always tomorrow! Cheers, Terry.
