April 26, 2012
April 25, 2012
Test twice, solder once
Basic saying goes "measure twice, cut once", and I'm glad I didn't rush through wiring my headlight and tested before soldering & securing the headlight on. As I twisted on the wire nuts, connected the -ve of battery, and powered on the ignition the headlight went on as expect, nice! Then I flicked on the high-beam, bam, high-beam. Then I flicked off the high-beam... I tried flicking the high-beam off again... high-beam is still on.
I doubt that folks at the safety inspection would accept that the latching high-beam is a 'feature', so posted to my favorite forum, addressing some of the very experienced S3 experts on there, here is that account. One of these S3 wizzes suggested that I must have wired the lights in a sort of latch, which absolutely made sense, as did the winging diagrams he sketched to explain it.
The explanation to the latching was that for the two S3 original lights, one of them is wiring straight to the high-beam switch, and the other to the high-beam relay. As I connected the two wires to the single wire of the Monster headlight this created a circuit between the relays input and output, effectively creating a latching relay. The kicker is that Triumph's official workshop manual wiring diagrams are not accurate, but mere rough sketches... good thing for people that really know what they're doing.
I doubt that folks at the safety inspection would accept that the latching high-beam is a 'feature', so posted to my favorite forum, addressing some of the very experienced S3 experts on there, here is that account. One of these S3 wizzes suggested that I must have wired the lights in a sort of latch, which absolutely made sense, as did the winging diagrams he sketched to explain it.
The explanation to the latching was that for the two S3 original lights, one of them is wiring straight to the high-beam switch, and the other to the high-beam relay. As I connected the two wires to the single wire of the Monster headlight this created a circuit between the relays input and output, effectively creating a latching relay. The kicker is that Triumph's official workshop manual wiring diagrams are not accurate, but mere rough sketches... good thing for people that really know what they're doing.
April 23, 2012
Coming together
The triple has really come together in the last week. As an aside: it's fun how new jobs are intimidating, and after having worked through slowly the first time they then seem like a 'piece of cake' in hind sight. For example, setting up the breaks for the first time was definitely intimidating, seeing how critical a component that is. In the end it was pretty simple...
... I say in the end, as the breaks are the ones that had me scratching my head for a bit. I had filled the lines and then bleed them quite thoroughly. But as I tested the lever it kept getting soft. Tried bleeding again, no air coming out... "what's the deal? am I missing some special trick?". Then, as I noticed a puddle of fluid on the ground it turned out that the master cylinder banjo was loose (came loose in the crash?) and required some tightening. There quite a bit of travel in the lever before pressure in the cylinder, but when it does go on, it's SOLID.
The meat of the work was in mounting the triple tree, fork, wheel & breaks. That was time consuming, but in hind sight I could do it 2x as fast next time, not having to use references at each step of the way, and generally feeling more knowledgeable at each step.
The custom fabbed headlight mount went on the bike quite nicely after filing down the steering stops a tad. Will connect up the lighting system to check the level of the lights in case last bit of adjustments have to be made to the brackets.
As for another bit of 'custom fabrication' I love how the Monster turn signals turned out on the triple. First off their better quality items; and their modern design fits quite nicely on the rad covers of the '08 triple. They required a bit of tedious work with the dremel, but were worth every penny. Take a look at the comparison shot with once droopy original signal, and the other the new Monster one.
... I say in the end, as the breaks are the ones that had me scratching my head for a bit. I had filled the lines and then bleed them quite thoroughly. But as I tested the lever it kept getting soft. Tried bleeding again, no air coming out... "what's the deal? am I missing some special trick?". Then, as I noticed a puddle of fluid on the ground it turned out that the master cylinder banjo was loose (came loose in the crash?) and required some tightening. There quite a bit of travel in the lever before pressure in the cylinder, but when it does go on, it's SOLID.
The meat of the work was in mounting the triple tree, fork, wheel & breaks. That was time consuming, but in hind sight I could do it 2x as fast next time, not having to use references at each step of the way, and generally feeling more knowledgeable at each step.
The custom fabbed headlight mount went on the bike quite nicely after filing down the steering stops a tad. Will connect up the lighting system to check the level of the lights in case last bit of adjustments have to be made to the brackets.
As for another bit of 'custom fabrication' I love how the Monster turn signals turned out on the triple. First off their better quality items; and their modern design fits quite nicely on the rad covers of the '08 triple. They required a bit of tedious work with the dremel, but were worth every penny. Take a look at the comparison shot with once droopy original signal, and the other the new Monster one.
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