Triumphrat

meat

I just thought I would start a project thread for this little 250.

My father brought it to me as a birthday gift, best birthday gift I have ever gotten btw! I plan at restoring it to mostly original, not a show bike just a nice cleaned up example. I admit this will take me quite a while but I figured I would start here. That way I can mooch knowledge off of the veterans around here and you guys can laugh at my attempt at restoring a bike.

I am not a stranger to a wrench, actually far from it. I have built several race cars and even a couple of bikes.

The step sons Christmas present this year was a 76 Kawasaki KM100 that was being forgotten in the rain in someones back yard.

Before
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...t/IMG_0427.jpg

After
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v1...t/IMG_0468.jpg

This will be my first British vintage bike though and already I am scratching my head.

Last night I set out to see if I could get spark and succeeded! Sort of.... After patching a couple of wires temporarily back together and mostly guessing where some of them went, and trying to decipher one of the worst wiring diagrams I have ever had the privileged of using. I was able to get a weak white spark out of a random spark plug I had lying around. I call that one small victory in a very large war.

I spent a couple of hours last night going over Triumph service notes in .pdf format. My eyes! I did find a lot of interesting things in there though. I need to get a hold of a parts book and a factory service manual. The one I have is from triumph but isn't really specific to the TR25W, it has the twins in there as well. It's more like a manual for anything triumph put out in the late 60s. Which means it doesn't have any real detail.

Anyway, on with the pictures.









The only broken wires I could find, wiring harness seems to be usable. Although if I could find a new one somewhere....



The only thing I am really missing on the bike is the speedo and a tach? From all of the pictures I have seen of these I have never seen a tachometer on one. Yet as you can see from this picture, my bike seems to have a cable for a tach, *shrug* maybe you guys can give me a clue.

Snakeoil

I'm not a expert by any means. But, I did have an opportunity to pick up a similar bike several years ago and did some research. Never got the bike because the owner thought it was made from solid gold.

What I learned was, first, that's a BSA engine. I talked to a bunch of "experts" who all told me that the engine had a crappy oiling system and the bottom ends always failed. Then I met one of the sharpest shade-tree mechanics I've ever known and to boot, he'd been a Brit and other Euro bike dealer for 45 years. He no longer sells bike, but still wrenches on vintage bikes for collectors, is going to be 72 this year and is mentally sharper than some of my 50+ year old friends. He said that bad bottom end and oiling reputation comes from the bike having a pitifully small oil tank capacity and most 250's being bought by kids with no understanding of the word "maintenance". He said he's sold and had plenty of 250's in his shop that were maintained by him (fathers brought them in regularly) and had many reliable miles on them. He said you only had to run the engine low on oil a few times and it was done.

So, the point of this is if you know the history of the bike and it was maintained, you might get away without tearing the engine down. But if it's a big unknown, you might want to start to accumulate the parts for a total engine rebuild that may come sooner than you'd like.

Good luck with the rebuild. The BSA version of this bike was going to be my first street bike when I was a kid. It never happened.
regards,
Rob

meat

Rob,

Thanks for your reply. Sorry it didn't work out with the BSA back in the day. I know how people can be and how they can get emotional about somethings worth.

After reading all of the service letters I could find for this bike I am aware of the oiling "issue". I also came to the conclusion that it was mostly a lack of maintenance, although some letters also pointed out that the crankcase had breathing issues and the interesting ways the techs would solve them. The fact that the oil tank also feeds the chain oiler was addressed in some of these letters recommending the chain oiler be plugged so that all of the oil was saved for the crank case. This is what made me think that the real issue was people just running out of oil....

I do plan on a complete rebuild of the engine and transmission or perhaps having one of the more knowledgeable triumph guys do it. I know there are a lot of little quirks and mods that only a veteran would know about on these older brits. I am no veteran.

Again thanks for the reply, I know to search for BSA B25 parts when I am online

Gary

Red1959

All Triumph's are built by BSA since 1951

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McGregor

I'm doing the same thing.

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Nineteen Seventy Trophy 250

meat

you are building triumphs since 1951?

epynt1050

Snakeoil is right. The TR25 is really a B25 (BSA) and was built at the BSA factory at Small Heath, Birmingham. Its bigger brother, the B44/B50 won the World Motorcross Championship several times.
Maintenance and especially regular oil changes with the correct oil (20w/50) were the key to a reliable bike. No real reason to modify anything, just check oil level every time you use it and a full oil change every 1000 miles.

dogtired

I larfed!

It is stuff like this that makes this forum so enjoyable.
gold, pure gold.

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meat

btw I saw your thread, nice bike!

I wish the best of luck to ya and will keep you posted on anything I find out. Feel free to pm me or email me anytime.

greaser58

hi,the best advice i could give is try and get hold of a book called THE RUPERT RATIO UNIT SINGLE ENGINE MANUAL.its written by a technical consultant to the bsa owners club[uk].it covers your engine in great detail with lots of good advice,theres usually a copy for sale on ebay.its one of the best manuals ive ever found