I spent the morning and early afternoon working on the truck, despite the temp being below 20 degrees… After I get bundled up, and start doing stuff, I warm up quite quickly. Today, I spent more time working on getting things ready for the new rear axle… I thought it would be quite a bit easier than it has been, but mostly, the delays are due to it being an old truck and all of the fasteners being rusty.

I had forgotten to drill a locating hole in the u-bolt plate during my initial fabrication process, so I spent the time and did that today. Also, since I am planning on putting the axle on top of the springs, I need to drop the spring mounts in the rear. Well, that is a LOT easier said than done! I tried following the directions in the shop manual, but I can’t get the spring pin out, so I ground off the rivets holding the bracket to the frame, and even then I am having to pry it off!

So, here is how the truck sits today. I’m hoping I can spend some more time on it tomorrow.

The last time I worked on the truck was after work on Valentine’s day. It was the last day above 10degrees fahrenheit. I don’t work well outside in the cold, even bundled up, because my face freezes, and my nose runs, and I spend more time wiping my nose than working. Plus, my breath fogs up the welding helmet, and safety face shield, so I can’t see what I’m doing, and then when you try to wipe it off, it’s either frozen, or your hand has a bunch of grease on it, so it gets dirtier yet! Ugh. Hurry up spring, I’m excited for you to show up!

Well, I don’t have photos, since it’s too cold to use the camera, but I pulled the old rear axle out of the truck, and have the new one ready to go. I’m getting excited to actually see some progress on this thing! Oh, and also, I’m looking into having some work shirts made with the ‘Henry’s Rod Shop’ logo on them, since it looks to be cheaper than buying them with S&S or Legend logos! Happy day.

During the time I was rebuilding the motor, and assembling/modifying the frame, I also purchased a Harley-Davidson Sportster gas tank, which I intended to modify and use as my gas tank.

I also found a really cool, funky ‘coffin’ style tank at a swap meet, that I couldn’t pass up, but I sold it with the bike (kicking myself!!).

I continued on the motor, putting the head back in place, after doing a basic valve job.

I also worked on putting the transmission back together.

Buttoning things up…

I also bought some Kawasaki ZX-11 inverted forks, thinking they would be sweet, but when I got them, they were bent… so much for ebay parts. Worst part was the seller wouldn’t take them back. I ended up selling them again on eBay as damaged, and made my money back, but just barely. They sure are cool looking though… I would have loved to use them!

About this time, I had the frame sand blasted at LNE blasting in Harris, MN… on a side note, Curt Peltier, the guy who bought my parent’s house in Harris back in 1996 or 1997 acquired LNE blasting in December of 2005. He’s a really good guy, and I’m sure I’ll use him to do a bunch of my blasting in the future!

Back to the triumph, here is a shot of the frame, and misc parts after blasting.

I assembled it (with a Honda rear wheel I had laying around), and rolled it into the daylight (or twilight as it were)…

Wow I just found a cute photo of Michelle and Jessie! It must have been Halloween… maybe 2003?

I tried the Sportster tank on for size, and realized it looked really… well, bad.

So I decided if Jessie (James) can build a tank from scratch, so can I! I started by making a cardboard template for the top and side, and taping them on, to see what I thought. Looks good.

I borrowed a powerhammer from Richard Kleinschmidt (shopdog powerhammers)about this time… didn’t have a good place for it, so it sat pretty close to the floor… oh well. It worked so good! I wish I knew how to use it better, and had more time to play with it. My wooden buck is in the foreground.

I got the buck covered in bondo, and pulled a ‘flexible shape pattern’ from it.

About this time, Richard also had a get together at his shop in Minneapolis, where I got to play with some big boy metalshaping toys… pullmax, e-wheels galore, planishing hammers, more shopdogs, and some other brand power hammers. I also got to play with TIG welding for the first time. Oxygen Service Company borrowed a Miller 180SD for us to play with, and I spent about 12 hours over three days doing just that.

And then my Jeep was broken into, and my digital camera stolen.

Way back, before I had back surgery this past summer, I bought a Ford 8.8″ rear axle from a 2002 Ford Explorer. It has disc brakes, and is the correct width for the truck. Anyways, the spring perches were in the wrong spots, so I needed to cut them off, and put new ones on. I spent some time today chopping the old ones off, and getting the new ones modified to fit (the axle is 3.25″ diameter, and I could only find 3″ diameter perches). I also continued working on getting the old rear axle out of the truck, and figured out how to get the leaf springs disconnected, so as to make putting the new axle in easier.

I am quite proud of the u-bolt plates in the photo above… I managed to ruin my chop saw making them… ugh. I think I can just weld a bit of a ‘flange’ to the rear side, and then drill a hole, and use it for the shock mounting location.

I’ve got the truck up on four jackstands now, and it’s looking a bit rough… I also have all four bolts off of both sides of the rear axle u-bolts, but I can’t get the axle to drop!?!

I’ve been thinking long and hard about how to lower the front end of this truck… I think I may finally have a solution.

It’s a combination of several things. First off, removing some leaves, and reversing the eyes on the springs, then reducing the height of the rear spring mount, and doing a kind of ‘z’-type thing on the front mount.

Well, here is some history on the Triumph 650 project I’ve post some pictures of. It all started by purchasing an incomplete, non-running engine on ebay back in 2002. It was delivered the day before Chad and Jenny’s wedding, so I didn’t have any time to play with it for several days, which drove me nuts!

I started tearing it down, and found that it was a rusty, dirty, sludgy mess.

If you’re building a Triumph engine, then the cam gear puller pictured is an absolute must! I ordered up some brand new pistons, and cylinders, and all of the bushings and bearings for the engine and transmission.

One thing I’ve learned over the years is to keep things organized. Not that I always heed my own advice, but this time I did… Mom, are you proud? Haha!

I tried my hand at polishing the aluminum intake… it worked… sort of. I don’t think I’ll try doing that again, unless I have to. It took a really long time, made quite the mess, and wasn’t really much fun. Also, it didn’t work so well…

I bought a frame and little mustang gas tank on ebay, from a guy in Florida… the frame was cool, but it was gobbed up with bondo. The front end is a CBR600 setup, which I adapted to work with the triumph frame.

Man, what an ugly beast! When I first put this together, I wasn’t sure what I had gotten myself into… I got the engine cases back from the bead blaster, and spent about a week cleaning them in soap and water, with a gun cleaning kit… it’s amazing how much junk gets in the oil passages!

I also bought a rim, and spokes at work, and a sportster hub at a swap meet. The spoke wrench was a freebie that a vendor sent to us to see if we wanted to sell… I believe we didn’t… and the reason is because it didn’t work so well…

I did a mockup of the bike with an 18″ Honda read wheel and the partially clean engine to see what it would feel/look like. Look at the gap between the top of the fork sliders and the bottom of the triple tree in the next photos. I shortened the forks about 3″ to keep the stance with the new 21″ front wheel. I was feeling pretty good about the bike at this point.

Oh my lord was there gunk behind this plug in the crank! If you’re ever rebuilding one of these, be CERTAIN to pull this plug. Ish.

I bought some lopey-er cams off ebay, here are the new and old ones.

You can never keep your build area clean enough! The red is not blood, but red loctite.

Another must have when building one of these, is an engine stand like this one. I bought it for about $45 plus shipping. It made assembly so much easier!

This is why I bought new cylinders… the old ones were really rusty, crusty, and pitted in the bores. I would have had to sleeve them, and the cost was almost as much as new ones.

Installing the new pistons, cylinders, and pushrod tubes. It’s really handy to have two ring compressors when doing this type of engine…

Now this, this is a mean looking bike. Despite Pete’s best efforts to make it look cheesy. Haha!

…to be continued…