pendraig
New Member
I have owned this bike since 1984 when she started her life as a stock (with dealer supplied sissy-bar) T140D Bonneville Special. After buying a new Hinckley bike in '97, she has mostly slept in the corner, unused yet not unloved for the past 13 years. Three years ago I decided to get her out of mothballs, but just about everything that wasn't metal had gone to $h:+. I decided that since I had all of this crap to replace, I was going to tart her up a bit. The original seat had gone to crumbles and mouse turds, so I found a (drop-side) T140E seat on eBay. The alloy tank came from a guy in England who had really dented it up pretty badly. I cut holes on the underside and in the tunnel, had my friend Art straighten out the dents, and my friend Dave welded up the holes I had made. I got rearsets, oil cooler and "M" type handlebars from Norman Hyde. Installed an NOS wiring harness, with a Voltpak rectifier/zener diode replacement unit. Had aluminium air cleaner sides from an early oil-in-frame TR7 Tiger machined to accept the parallel mouths of the Amal MkII carbs.
Latest mod was yesterday when, during a shakedown run, the welch plug fell out of the tach drive. On the advice of an old Triumph hand , I put a couple of pennies and a dime inside the drive housing as shim/thrust bearings for the gear and spindle and then drove a nickel in (a perfect interference fit) in behind them as a new welch plug. Works great, cost me 17 cents!