And so it begins...

 Daysie's assult on my wallet begins.

It was a warm, dry day when Paul, my brother & I set off for the outskirts of Manchester in a hire van to go & pick up Daysie. There really wasn't much to say about the journey there & back.

 This is now the 4th bike I've bought without seeing first. There's Talulah, bought from eBay sight unseen, the first time I saw her was when I turned up in the Wirral to ride her the 160 miles home. Then there was Tabitha, first time I saw her was when my mate Keith lifted the covers on her after she'd been sitting unused for almost 12 years. That was a trailer job aided again by my brother as I didn't have a tow hitch on my car. That was a short  150 mile round trip to bring her back from Milton Keynes. There was also another Tiger 955i, I bought from a forum member here. Again my brother was roped in to helping me retrieve that one too. That was a round trip of 250 miles.

 No, I don't know why I do it either!

You may recall from Tabitha's story that I name all my bikes, so why Daysie? Well, the previous owner called her 'The Yellow Peril' as was mentioned in an earlier blog well, that was the name his Grandfather gave it, but there are racial connotations so it needed to be changed, I contemplated Pearl (the Yellow Peril) because of her paint scheme being Strontium Yellow, but Mrs L again jumped in & said 'Why not call her Dasie, daisies are yellow? So she became Daysie the Daytona.

When I finally got Daysie home, I didn't really look at her, I just put her in the garage as I was off to Paul's for a nice roast dinner, ably cooked by his wife. So, it was the following day when I first pulled her out on to the drive. in the cold light of day that I got to have a really good look and another week before I washed 10 years of crud off her.

She actually cleaned up rather nice & almost looked rideable.

As I knew the bodywork was in pretty good order now she's had a good wash, off it came. As you would expect after 12 years, this was not without its problems. one othe lower bolts on each fairing was seized, so I had to undo the bracket from the engine to remove the fairings. I have yet to free up these bolts but I have a tin of Plus Gas on the way which I'm hoping will help. All of the Dzus fasteners are corroded, so they'll have to be replaced but aside from that, so far, so good.

Managed to find a little more information about Daysie today. From the Triumph Owners Motorcycle Club (TOMCC) database, she rolled off the production line on 21 February 1997 (17 days before she was registered) and there are currently 6900 1997 Daytona's in their database. That's not to say there are still that many on the road, just that there were 6900 produced in 1997.

I know there is an on-line source to tell you how many are left and this shows only 166 are on the road & taxed and 813 SORNed (IF I'm reading the data correctly)..

With the fairings off, I can now get a look at the huge (& growing) list of jobs. For starters and in no particular order, all filters & fluids, a full engine service including valves, repair/replace radiator, replace all bearings (front, back & suspension bushes) strip & rebuild front shocks, refurbish brakes all round (the rear brake pedal is seized), new battery, new tyres, new chain & sprockets, the list is endless & to date the estimate for new/replacement parts is edging close to £1500. But where to start?

I know, I'll start with the easy bits first & empty the fuel tank of 12 year old fuel.

Having removed the tank I carefully undid all the bolts holding the fuel filter/pump plate & carefully removed it.

The smell was RANK.

I removed around 5 litres of old fuel and you wouldn't believe what state the fuel pump was in.

So here you have it, the beginning of yet another project, one to rival Tabitha and probably more challenging, not least of which is how to get Daysie on the bench. She has a single sided swingarm, so I can't just roll her on & use my paddock stand, or the centre stand - she doesn't have one.