Wrench'n Ride'n

Playing around with Adobe Lightroom. 

The Gunfigher seat on the Speedmaster looks great. Suits the lines of the bike down to a tee if you ask me. Yet looks are not everything. Not when your wife can't really sit for any period of time on that sloped perch. To fix this I bought the Triumph Touring seat. Pillion area is wider, a bit higher and not sloped backwards. Jan has sat on it and said it feels way better that the original seat. A two up ride will show how good this seat is for her. Reviews that I have read on this seat all rave about how comfy it is for both pillion and rider. I also noticed that the riders position on the Touring seat is different to the Gunfighter. The rear slope of the riders position is further back. Also it seems to be a bit lower. I have also fitted a set of Emgo handlebar mirrors. They look like cafe racer napoleon style but rectangle and smaller. These I have mounted to the holes for the original mirrors. the lower profile of these mirrors suits the style of this bike to my...

For years I have made or modified bits to fit my bikes. Back yard butcher stuff. With the Speedmaster I have changed this. I picked up my Triumph Sissy Bar and Rack today. Well made bit of kit it is too. Fitted straight up with no worries at all. So nice not to have to bodgie bits to fit. Jan now wont fly off the back of the bike.

The indicators that came with the bike ...shudder... They looked crap. So onto eBay and get some front indicators and rear one from local autoshop. Fit a LED flasher relay all done. Looks way better too. Brightness from such smallness. Need something to carry stuff around in besides my old Dr-rider sports throw overs. Again internet shopping. Leather saddle bags from Bikers Gear Australia.  They are of a very good quality leather. They have been mounted with bolts to the rear mudguard brackets. 

I have been bored with the Bandit for a bit now. Even after all the mods. So I got to thinking about buying something totally different. Boy did I what. A 2009 Triumph Speedmaster with 5000kms on the clock.

Rust and chrome. Shudder. I had been cruising through the net reading different forums about restoring bikes. Came a cross a thread where a guy said he could get rid of rust on chromed parts. He was dipping them into oxalic acid. I thought yeah right. He and a few others in this thread said it worked. So I hunted some down. I will give it a go. If it doesn't work I have only wasted a few doolars. So I went and bought a bottle of Reviva  http://www.intergrain.com.au/reviva.html  which is mainly oxalic acid. This is used on wooden decking etc. It draws the water out off the wood. So it should draw rust out as it is water reacting with metal. I did my exhaust nuts. Before. You can see the rust in places. I did clean this with some kero as well to help get the road grim/many years of grim off them.  I let them soak in just about full strength Reviva for 24 hours.  You can see where it has eaten the rust away and left bare...

Tweaked the seat today. You know how the little things bug ya. Well the front of the seat was bugging me. Since I cut the foam down in the seat it just did not look right. Then I realised that I needed to trim the seat base down to follow the curve of the frame tube at the front of the seat. Plus I had forgotten to put the plastic seat base trim back on. So off came the seat cover. Tin snips out. Trim the base. Plastic trim on. Back on goes the seat base. I also wanted to add some upholstery rivets around the seat base as well. I like that studded look. Could not find any so used stainless washers and pop rivets. I really like the look of the seat now. One last touch. A W'nR'n tag was added to the back of the seat. Used an old tea spoon for that.

Rusted fork tops. Decided to take the fork gaiters and headlamp mounts off the forks today. I made some discoveries. So good and some not very good at all. The not good. The forks are rusted quite badly where they have been sitting in behind the headlamp mounts. Looks like the caps that hold the gaiters on has allowed water to pool there and the rust has spread upwards. I do not believe that re-chroming will help. So will have to source a better set of fork tubes. Off to eBay to hunt these down. The good. A look that I really like is the fork springs on the outside. When I pulled the gaiters down that's what I found. A very cool look indeed. Even more so with out the headlamp brackets.