boil some water, lot's of it, get clean towels and pass me the stanley knife.........

 after a great day yesterday to-ing and fro-ing between the counties of derbyshire, staffordshire, cheshire and shropshire on the ducati's, taking in some great roads, good tea, nice cake, the cat and fiddle public house, [travelling the most dangerous road in great britain to get there, so dangerous that the authorities have installed average speed cameras along the route to slow the thousands of motorcyclists who travel the route every weekend] it was time to stop dicking around and nail the keihin smoothbores onto the 'false' triumph, after a cursory inspection last weekend i knew that i needed a tee piece to connect the fuel lines up to the new carbs, the original triumph o.e.m items are fed off a single connection, i picked the tee piece up at oulton park last weekend and it was a simple job to splice it in, a little more tricky was routing the fuel lines so they didn't restrict the flow or 'fret' against the throttle mechanism, the standard cables fitted up easily and adjusted up ok to take out the slop. the beautifully machined adaptors proved more challenging, well not the adaptor rather the 'o' rings which kept rolling off the machined lip, in the end i just applied a dab of superglue to hold them in place while i made them in, a squirt of wd40 to ease the airbox back onto the carbs, bolted up, battery back on, rear mastercylinder reservoir re-mounted, tank and seat back on and a quick brew in the warm sunshine, helmet on, primed the carbs and press the button, bloody hell! it fires up straight away. the bark from the pipe is fruity to say the least, a lot different from the stifled standard pipe, jump on, select first and off for a highly illegal, no mot, no tax, no registration plate quick four laps of the village, initial thoughts? so different from the bike i bought, much more responsive, no farting, popping or holding back like the standard machine, it's got a definite kick up the arse rather than the bland, big honda superdream power delivery of the stocker, the brakes are more responsive, loads of feel and bite, the rear suspension is a hundred times better than before but it does show up the shortcomings of the standard, [bar heavier fork oil] front end and a set of cartridge fork emulators and a possible visit to a suspension specialist is deffo on the cards. it's definitely not the bike that i set out to build, don't get me wrong, i love it, the bike i set out to build was going to be a 'nice' bike, a bike to potter around the lanes on, go to the pub on and just be, well, 'nice' what's happened is that we have somehow created a bit of a frankenstein machine, a hot-rod in the truest sense of the word, dangerous jumped on it when i returned and with a total lack of respect for the law and the gentlefolk of the village, wearing the really sensible riding gear of shorts, a t-shirt, no-gloves and my two-sizes-too-big-arai-helmet rattling around on his head proceeded to rip four more, very fast, very loud laps off, grinning like a fucking idiot and 'whoo-hooing' everytime he went past. when i eventually persuaded dangerous back in to the sanctuary of the shed before someone called the cops i adjusted the tick-over and the bike just sat there, no hunting or surging, the carbs are a revelation, they really do work straight from the box and what a revelation, the clutch is slipping under hard acceleration, no drama there, just needs adjusting, a quick check reveals no fluid leaks, all in all a bit of a result then, stoked? you fucking bet..........................