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OUR LATEST POSTS

  • For sale: Progressive fork springs
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  • Home
  • About Us
  • Areas
    • Northland
    • Auckland
    • Franklin
    • Waikato/BOP
    • East Coast
    • Manawatu
    • Taranaki
    • Wanganui
    • Canterbury
    • Otago/Southland
  • Events
  • National Rally
  • Galleries
    • 2025 Gallery
    • 2024 Gallery
    • 2023 Gallery
    • 2022 Gallery
    • 2021 Gallery
    • 2016 and before
    • Posters
      • Past Rally Posters
      • Past Event Posters
  • Buy/Sell
  • Contact Us

Workshop Hints

TOMCC is privileged to have secured the services of Nigel Sprocket, ex Triumph UK to give us the benefit his advice, and to add interest with anecdotes from his years at the Triumph factories.
Nigel joined Triumph in 1903 as an apprentice on the shop floor. He moved with the company to Meriden where he was soon promoted to Head draughtsman on the parallel twins project as a result of his ground breaking work on preventing leather drive belt slippage. When designer of the first Triumph parallel twin, Val Page, pointed out that Triumph hadn’t used belt drive for thirty years and he had already developed a parallel twin engine, Val was immediately transferred to BSA. (as an aside Val’s engine eventually became the BSA A7/A10 range).
Nigel moved on to develop Harris Bonnevilles where his innovative work on saving weight by developing porous castings astounded Harris Bonneville owners worldwide.
When John Bore started Hinkley in a stunning coup he poached Nigel from the dole queue to work in the experimental department where to this day he is developing a standard whitworth thread pattern not only for Hinkley bikes but eventually for all motorcycles. Imagine only one set of spanners required and they’ll be British!

Fuel Blockage/Dirty Tank

by TOMCCWorkshop HintsPosted on May 3, 2012May 3, 20122 Comments

Had a bit of trouble with the carbs blocking after one of the old Meridens had been sitting for a few years. Apparently the go is to get this inside of the tank fiberglassed (costs more than $100 though) and I was looking for a more economical solution at the time (yeah I’m a cheap …

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Broken Throttle Cable

by TOMCCWorkshop HintsPosted on May 3, 2012May 3, 2012No Comments

This one happened to me on the two ferries and a bottle of rum tour a few years back. About ten k’s before Opononi one of my throttle cables broke right at the twist grip nipple. It was dark so I carried on to the pub (I run a separate cable to each carb on …

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Valve Spring Compressor

by TOMCCWorkshop HintsPosted on May 3, 2012May 3, 2012No Comments

Lots of ‘Repco’ type valve spring compressors don’t work for Trumpy heads and you don’t really need to fork out the coin for one if you have an ordinary carpenter’s clamp. Cut a piece of 25mm water pipe 75mm long. About 2/3’s of the way along drill a 10mm hole right through the pipe. Cut …

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Head Torque Without Rocker Box Removal (OIF Bikes)

by TOMCCWorkshop HintsPosted on May 3, 2012June 11, 20129 Comments

The OIF is the problem here, the rocker box had to be modified to get the motor to fit the frame, so instead of the stud that passes right through the rocker box on the 1970 and earlier 650’s a bolt is threaded into a stud that finishes inside the rocker box. British Spares market …

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About the Club

The club was first formed in 1993 by Darryl Payne and a group of enthusiastic Triumph owners in Christchurch.

Read more about the Club here

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