Motorcycle Classics Media Kit - Ogden Publications, Inc.

EJUVENATIONfourth and final chapter of our1 Triumph TR6C projectmonths ago we turned the first wrench on ouriumph TR6C project, and it’s now finally drawing to aose. Sharp minds will note, however, that we didn’tone. Why? Mostly because we won’t call it finishedhe little details (missing side cover caps, front turntc.) are tended to. But it’s 99 percent of the way there,r yet, it runs. And surprisingly, it wasn’t that hardthere.air, pleaselast report, we noted some issues installing ourrb conversion. Namely, the Mikuni wouldn’t work withair box — unacceptable to us, as we think the air boxrs are a key part of the bike’s look. We couldn’t believeew calls to some Triumph specialists confirmed whatovered: It won’t work. Apparently, most folks doing thisn either don’t like the stock air box or simply don’tdo, and decided to see what it would take to make thebox work.up our options, we turned to eBay for a used airould hack on without feeling too bad if we ended upg it. There were a few sets available when we wentnd the first thing we discovered was that boxes for650s were perfect for our planned modification.th the single-carb and dual carb inner box are mademirror-image pieces that bolt together aroundframe tube. The single-carb box, once, has an oblong hole at the front for aeeve to join the assembly to theal carb. But the twin-carb boxnk front with the air tract runeadfrom the outer air boxwith no hole, we couldscratch.dollars and three dayswere ready to begin thetion. With all our pieceswe discovered it was aaightforward processing the twin-carbbox, the conversionand rubber spigot,lining up the Mikunie spigot. Carefullyg the Mikuni’s posicouldn’tinstall it in thecause the Mikuni protothe inner air box), wenes on the air box markingnd bottom of the Mikuni’sroat. Following that, we simplyhe Mikuni’s opening on the airbox, allowing an extra eighth-inch all around for a rubber seal,and cut away with a Dremel tool.It took a bit more fiddling after making our first cut, buteverything went together perfectly, and we ended up with exactlywhat we were looking for: A superior Mikuni carb withoutcompromising the original look of our classic TR6C.Getting wiredWith the Mikuni sorted weturned our attention to installingthe new main wiringharness from MAPCycle, a job we wereexcited about in anodd, god-I-hope-thisgoes-wellsort of way.The oil-soaked andfraying original harnesswas about as trashed asthey come, tying maybe afourth of the bike’s variouselectrical bits together.It was also probablyresponsible for takingthis bike off the road inthe first place, as it had anasty habit of eating fusesevery few miles. The last timethe bike ran it was wired straight,with no fuse, until it stopped. Hmmm.We made careful note of all the original attachments; labelingconnections, taking copious photos and drawing out littlediagrams detailing connections to items like the voltage rectifierand the ignition system. You can’t record too much whenyou’re taking apart old iron.All that preparation paid off when we went toinstall the harness, because frankly, it wasamazingly painless. We made a mistakeor two (like inadvertently separating the hot white wire from themain loom to the handlebar controls, giving us no power to thehorn and brake light circuits), but everything went where it wassupposed to, and more importantly, everything worked. Well,almost everything, but more about that later.Confident we were on the road to our first firing of the TR, wemoved on to more mundane issues like fitting the front brakecable, the rear brake light switch, the rear light assembly andthe rear turn signals (we’re still waiting for a new set for the front),ORCYCLE CLASSICS September/October 2007www.MotorcycleClassics.com