What a Drag Pt.2

 The refit

Despite being on back order, Fowlers of Bristol supplied me with a new drag link within a couple of days of ordering the part. I also ordered new roller bearings and thrust seals. The only complaint I have is that the bearings were sent separately. You see, Fowlers say free postage if the order is over £50, which the drag link was. But as the needle bearings were in stock and the drag link wasn’t, they were sent separately. Postage paid for the needle bearings; no postage paid for the drag link. They turned up on consecutive days and while the postage wasn’t a huge amount, I’d rather have received them in the same delivery.

The drag link has been redesigned by Triumph as it no longer uses pinch bolts to secure the spindle the shock and drop links attach to, which was the weak point. There is now a screw that tightens everything up or in my case, a couple of Allen bolts I happened to have lying around, shortened and filed down to fit.

Also turning up on the same day as the drag link was the new YSS shock. I decided to weigh them both to see what the difference was. There’s around 2kg difference between the original and the new YSS unit, not that I’ll notice any difference, after all I’ve never ridden a Trophy.

What it does mean is that I’ve been able to refit the drag link and rear shock to the bike. This meant fitting the new needle bearings to the drag link, a task made easier using an old bush extractor I bought many years ago when I had a Ford Cortina based kit car. With a little thought, I used the extractor to squeeze the needle bearings in without problem.

I've also refitted the battery box and coolant expansion tank and repaired the small rubber mudflap that sits between the swing arm and inner rear mudguard. Yes, I know I’ve done it before but when I first removed the shock, I forgot to unbolt the rubber flap bracket from the swing arm and the rivets got pulled through the rubber.

 

Checklist

Amongst all the other lists I’ve put together, such as a list of jobs, project costs, estimated cost to complete the job, parts list & suppliers, I’ve now created a checklist which gives me a simple list of jobs needed to complete and a rough order. It’s going to hang in the garage on a clipboard so I can see my progress.

It began with 32 separate jobs but I’ve already ticked a few off (drag link, shock battery box and expansion tank) so now only have 28 jobs still to do. There’s some biggies in there and as a simplified list, it doesn’t list all the small little things, such as refurbish the wheels doesn’t include striping & replacing the bearings, brake discs etc. It does give me a nie little paper plan and an order though.