My ex-Steamer

[ghulst]

Well, just because I still think it was a very nice bike, I thought I'd do a topic on a bike I no longer own... Yes, my red Steamer. There already is an introduction topic where I have done a single post on it, but I thought it would be nice to just document the whole story from when I got it to when I sold it.


My bike ownership went from Yamaha XJ660 to Honda Transalp. I liked the XJ660 as it was my first bike. I picked it up for a measly €50 and it needed some work. I rode it for a while, then sold it off for €500 to fund a Honda Transalp as I had ridden the BMW R1200GS and loved the higher seating position. However, the lack of power in the Transalp got to me. I did a couple of trips to the south of Germany and to London and I found it comfortable, but when I needed to push on to make the ferry in Calais it felt really highly strung at 130km/h. Also, the '89 I owned uses quite a bit of oil when you are doing 120km/h on the highway. As I had come across an XJ550 for next to nothing that needed work and that was about to run again, I decided to sell the Transalp and look for another bike.


Even though I could not afford a new bike, a local bike dealership is always a great source of inspiration. And as I knew one of the salespeople reasonably well, I got to do a number of test rides. One of the first I liked, was the Yamaha XT660Z, but I thought that bike was a bit too twitchy. Especially in the side winds we often enjoy here on the Dutch coast. Then the salesman told me to take out a 2014 Tiger 800XC. I came back with a huge smile on my face. That was the bike I wanted. It pulled hard, it was stable and it was not as heavy and expensive as the BMW. My main problem was, that the price tag was just too high for me. So, the search started for a bike to match that Tiger 800XC.


Browsing the classifieds, I came across this Triumph Tiger 900 (1993 T400). I more or less bought it from the second owner. Unfortunately, he had passed away and his heirs had listed the Tiger on a classified site. He owned the Tiger, a Trophy, two fifties CZ's, and a Suzuki Burgman. The CZ's had gone to someone in the village, who had been a great friend of the owner. The son took the Trophy and the Burgman and the Tiger were listed for sale. The heirs were trying to clear the house, but it was not a pleasant experience with second-hand purchasers making ridiculous offers for stuff that they thought they had already had an agreement on. I sent them a message with an offer and told them that that was the offer if the bike was as in the pictures and if it ran well. And they agreed. So, I jumped on the train with all of my motorcycling gear to go pick up the bike. When I got there, it seemed as advertised and it rode nicely, so I wanted it and rode it home. It was around freezing, so I was rather stiff and cold by the time I got home. (It was a 250km ride...) But I was happy to get the bike in. Oh, the previous 82-year old owner bought the bike in 1994 and ran it ever since. At some point in time, he rode the bike to Greece. A great bike to start off with.



Fueling up before the trip home

[ghulst]

For a Yamaha XJ600 site, I described the Steamer and compared the bike to an XJ600...

The first thing that strikes you when you are in front of the bike, is that it is a big bike.  This looks more aggressive and is much wider in every respect. Once you swing your leg over the saddle, you are higher up than most bikes, which gives you a much better view of traffic. Also, the wider handlebars, that are closer to you and are slightly angled towards you, allow for a very comfortable upright seating position. I would like to put a set of bar risers on mine, to straighten myself out a bit more, but the position is very comfortable to start with and it is just a matter of personal preference. The only thing that really surprised me, was the knee angle on the bike. I would have expected my knees to be on more of a straight angle. But as the footrests are situated bit further back, your legs are in a pretty sporty position. That has taken some getting used to as I was wearing a lot of protective gear due to the cold weather. I would like it if the footrests would be a bit further down, but I have also read that you can easily scrape the pegs with this bike as it is, so that might be a bad decision.
Starting the bike means you need to sit on it. When the stand is out, the bike does not start. Not even with the clutch in and the gears in neutral. That takes some getting used to, but it is manageable. Even though that has already caused my first embarrassing moment when I wanted to start the bike outside a friends' house. I had forgotten to put the stand in, even though I was sitting on it, and so it would not start. I tried lots of stuff until he said "Oh, but the stand is out. Could that have anything to do with it?" Duh...   
The engine is nice and free-revving and has a nice but civilized note out of its double exhaust. You know it is running. And it does have a bit of that nice three-cylinder roar that Triumph has become famous for. With 85hp it is plenty quick off the mark. Even if you are just taking it easy at the lights. When you really rev it up to that 8500 red line, it just keeps ongoing. On the highway, I was used to my Transalp which is about the same weight as the Tiger, but has 35hp less when new. At 80K miles, I suppose power on the Honda was about half of what I have now. This means that speed limits have now become a challenge. They never were before. But when I opened up the throttle to quickly move into the left lane I was suddenly doing 155km/h without consciously wanting to be speeding...
The spread of torque on the engine allows for some pretty lazy driving. On the highway, I ran into some traffic and decided to leave the bike in sixth. I went all the way down to 50km/h then sped up to 130km/h without even thinking I needed to shift. To be honest, if I would have, I would have been much faster, but when just traveling, this is a great way of munching miles.
In the corners, this bike is a beast. I picked it up after it had sat for a couple of months. The son of the previous owner treated it to a new battery (and yes, it has a 12V outlet on the handlebars to charge it during winter), but I was careful with the bike because I did not know how hardened the tires would be. Also, we have wet wintery weather here. On my +2C ride home, I was 2 degrees away from freezing and it had rained on Monday, which meant there could have been very slippery patches on the road. However, when I went into my second roundabout, I noticed how easy it is to lay the bike down in corners and how confidence-inspiring it feels. I have read people's reviews about the bike being top-heavy, but I have yet to notice that. With the high up seating position, it is very easy to control the bike and it is pretty predictable.
I need to look into the rear suspension as it does feel a bit bouncy. Not on the highway, but when the roads get rougher, it does tend to be hopping up and down a bit too much to my liking. However, that might just be because I am a bigger man than the previous owner and as damping, rebound, etc. are all adjustable courtesy of a Hagon shock, I just need to take some time to play around with that. I have also read that adding a bit more fork oil, changing to 15wt (like I did on my XJ600), or adding longer spacers will all reduce dive at the front end. Combined with stiffening up the rear, that ought to improve the ride a bit more, though it is very nice and comfy already.

Verdict? Nice bike. Great acceleration, nice seating position as standard, and the ability to do both long stretches of highway as well as some less paved roads. I loved the new Triumph Tiger 800XC when I got to ride it in September and that made me want to have a Tiger. It is a completely different beast from the old model, but it does have that nice triple sound, it pulls strong and I am happy with it.

[ghulst]

In the first 11 months that I owned the Tiger, not much exciting happened. I filled it up a few times and then emptied the tank again.

Just a small problem. My Tiger was missing the backing for the dashboard. So I purchased one on a trip to the UK and mounted it.


And today I received a couple of bar risers to get myself in a more upright seating position.

[ghulst]

Then in December:

One thing that has been annoying to me is that I could not reset the mileage counter on the speedometer. The little axle that should be on the speedo was gone and the whole thing was glassed shut. After a bit of investigating, I think the bike has been dropped at some point and the speedo glassed shut to keep on using it. A couple of weeks ago I was able to pick up another speedo for very little money, but with 5K more on the clock than the speedo on the tiger. So, I fitted it with my drill and ran it down to 85K km's in about 2.5 days. What a noise, but worth it. Only to find out when I mounted the speedo that there was a bit of a difference there...



Spot the difference...

I know, I should have spotted it earlier, but I didn't. The guy I bought it from was completely legit and told me it was off a Tiger because it was in a box of spares that came with his Tiger. Anyway, long story short, it was from a Sprint 900, which is a completely different bike. To add to my nervousness, they then proceeded to tell me that Triumph made speedos that went the other way round, due to the pickup being mounted on the other side of the wheel. And then there was the chance of a different ratio. Needless to say that after the whole operation I was less than excited to find out I had the wrong one.

Due to dark, rainy, and very stormy days, plus a busy schedule and some flu thrown in for good measure, I hadn't had a chance to check the speedometer up until today.

So, I rolled the Tiger out of the garage for its maiden run with the new speedo and it took some time to start it up. Well, no fuel in the carbs, etc. after three weeks of doing nothing, so that is explainable. After I did get it fired up, I mounted my iPhone with my Hitcase on the handlebars and rode off. And...

Nothing.

Nothing moved for at least 150 meters after which, all of a sudden the speedo came to life and worked absolutely fine. Apparently, the connection for the Tiger is exactly the same as for the Sprint 900 that I figure this speedo comes from. So, it gives the correct speed, it counts the mileage fine and so you know exactly when you are speeding. *ahem*


So, I am a happy biker. And if ever a friend with a Tiger has his speedo pack in and all he can get is a Sprint 900 speedo. You can tell him to go for it.


I have also found out it makes your Tiger the coolest on the block. Kids only look at your speedo to see how fast it will go and the neighboring kid told me that my bike was really, really cool as it could do 320km/h.

[ghulst]

Then, in February 2016:

Ok, so this is really, really COOL!

There is this national motorcycle fair in Utrecht next week and one of the exhibitors gave away front suspension overhauls at their stand. And the Tiger is one of their WINNERS! They are going to completely revise my fork legs. :) I am one happy camper.  :

First things first. I obviously had to pull the fork legs out of the Tiger.



I think the "You should be able to reach the tube clamp bolts without having to remove any bodywork" didn't really work out for me...

So I took the fork to the fair to have it revised.


The guys did a great job. The oil inside looked like liquid aluminium, but the parts were generally good. I now have new Wilbers springs and the whole thing feels very different. Not on the bike, but pushing it down, I mean. They did really work on them hard. They look great. Though I might need to look into new gators at some point.



This afternoon I had a bit of time to put the fork back into the Tiger. The whole process went a lot quicker than I had anticipated. Or better put, I was worried about putting it back together because I was doubtful how easy it would be to put the calipers back on the disks. Luckily I found a way to do that quite quickly and easily. That made me a happy man. That hurdle taken, the rest of the process did not take that much time.

Fortunately, it was a very nice day and I had a dinner appointment, so I had a window of opportunity to test the Tiger with its new legs.


I have never replaced the springs in a front fork before, so I was a bit skeptical about the end results. I mean, you read about it, but if you have never experienced it, you haven't got a clue what it is going to be like for you. Let's cut a long story short. The difference is remarkable. It is a completely different bike.

It all started with the new way the thing rides. At first, I thought it was mainly a lot stiffer. Well, that was just the start. It struck me as I felt some of the lines on the road. At the time I was wondering whether I was going to be happy with that. Well, a couple of miles on the road, I left the city and changed to the smaller roads. There the story changed. The Tiger feels like a new machine. The handling has greatly improved. It responds a lot better to all inputs and while in turns it is just much more stable. It feels to me as if the agility of the whole machine has improved a lot. I am very happy about that. I would recommend this to anyone. Now my next question is whether I can still improve on this by tuning the adjustable Hagon rear shock. The guys that did the fork revision have offered to do the tuning for me when I swing by, but it is a 2 hour single way ride, so I am not overly enthusiastic to do that in this weather.

[ghulst]

And March 2016 saw it having new shoes:

Before (about 1mm left on the old Anakee II's):


After:


Tiger on new Anakee III's. Not been able to feel much yet, but I'll probably do 1500km on them next week to run them in. :)

Well, that obviously was a great change. I loved those Anakee III tires. They transformed the handling of the Tiger even more. I was a happy rider.

[ghulst]

Then in May 2016 I took it for a trip:


Had a nice ride yesterday. (Look at that iron thing behind the tree and tell me where I am.

I've been struggling with wind protection on the Tiger for a while, so I purchased a Powerbronze screen. Heading out again on Monday, so I'll see what difference that makes.


Before


After

[ghulst]

In July 2016, I had a strange experience with the Tiger. I was riding through Rotterdam after a good hour of highway riding. Everything was fine. Until I pulled up to a traffic light and all of a sudden, I disappeared in a huge cloud of smoke! That was not the Tiger experience I wanted. I had some frantically pointing and waving car drivers next to me, as if I did not notice the huge clouds coming from the engine. Luckily, I could easily spot the problem right from where I was sitting. Something had pierced the radiator and that had begun leaking with a tiny stream of water going from the radiator straight onto one of the exhaust pipes and immediately turning into smoke. The good thing, was that the water was obviously under pressure and that there wasn't much coming out. The effect was profound though. So, I decided to bet on the amount of water still in the radiator and rode it the last two kilometers to the parking garage where I called our version of the AA and got the bike towed home.



Back home I found great news and terrible news.
The great news was that there still was enough coolant in there and it was clean and green.
The bad news was that the radiator wasn't just leaking, but ut was bent, the fan was partly melted and the right side radiator support had broken off.

Luckily, Nick Calne came to the rescue as he had the spare parts laying around! He shipped them over to me and all I had to do was wait...

[ghulst]

And no, trouble never comes alone. So, I found out that the fairing subframe had actually broken. (Yes, probably because of the damage the bike was sold to the previous owner with. He had tied a bit of rope around it and it had been sitting like that for years...) It is quite a big challenge to sort out, because everything bolts up to it on the front of the bike. But as the Tiger is stationary now anyway, I was able to source a subframe and get into the process of mounting it. It was something I was quite nervous about, as there is lots of wiring running through it, but as it had to happen anyway, it might as well be now. g. :026:

After a while, this is the only thing that was left:

(And yes, I removed all of the wiring from the dash and re-attached it so I did not have to remember the colours and then I put tape on everything with descriptions of what it was and where it needed to go.)


And after a full afternoon of hard work, I was back where I started. But with a new subframe. The only thing I needed was to get some new wellnuts and then the frame would be ready to mount the fairing to, once the radiator and fan have arrived.

[ghulst]

Oops...

And then I convinced myself of something else...

Well, really I was having the crash bars for a while, but I had not gotten around to fitting them. However, to do that, you need to remove the air filter box, but to do that you need to remove the carbs...

Long story longer, that took quite some time. And then the crash bars need to be fitted behind the engine mounts, so another great challenge.


But it worked out well. Another air filter is on its way, so that part is still open. The radiator mount is being welded and then it is back to waiting for the radiator and fan to arrive...

[ghulst]

So, the radiator came in and I cleaned it up, straightened the airflow out, tested it and resprayed it.

[ghulst]

After my holidays and a couple of days lying on the beach, I got the itch. The Tiger has just been sitting since July 1st and that is no fun. So, I checked what else I needed and it turns out I don't have a cap for the expansion tank. So, fixing that helped. Now the only thing missing was a spacer for the mounting of that tank. Fortunately the Tiger has two of those, so I grabbed the one that I had left over and went to the local metal shop where they made me another in stainless steel. Happy camper. Then later that afternoon I was able to get it all back together again and fire it up for the first time, to see if it would warm up and whether the fan would work. With the new bolt kit that came in from the UK, I was able to put the fairing back together and made a couple of minor changes due to rubbing. And then it was all ready to ride!

So, the Tiger doing its first ride since it was towed off on the 1st of July.






It does look nice with the crash bars on there.

[ghulst]

And then I went over a local 5 mile bridge and every time I hit one of the road separaters, the engine cut out. After a bit of research it turned out that the connections to the ignition were bad.


The lock goes over these two square blocks. I think they have to do with the steering lock, but they are mighty annoying.


They are big enough that you have to turn the triple 180 degrees before you can take it off. :(


And yes, in true Steamer fashion, you can only do that when you take half the bike apart. I really didn't want to take off the wheel, the brake calipers and the mudguard, so I kept that together and dropped it down as a unit. Everything in me says that I am going to regret that later.


Anyway, the triple is off. As I moved the wiring, it really seemed that something was wrong underneath that nice cap. So, I am going to have to drill that out. :(

[ghulst]

And to work. I think that I know where the problem is, but I need to open it all up to repair it. To be honest, I am slightly nervous about drilling in this, but there is no avoiding it.


Fortunately it went alright and now I need to get onto the whole wiring repair thing.

[ghulst]

Back to the beginning. I am never enthusiastic about drilling into bolts, but I had no choice. I always feel as if I am going to drill into the wrong thing, or drill too much or... You know, all those doubts. But, it had to be done.


So, the time was there to make a setup where I could do a bit of straight drilling. I had read on a lockmaker website that they often drill a smaller hole and then hammer an allen key in there and easily open it all up. So, I tried that. But... Nothing. The allen key happily rotated and nothing happened. So, back to the drill it was. Luckily it all went quite well.


Tadaa!


Time to get the cap off and to get the first rotating part out.


And there is that beautiful black thing that holds all the contacts, so that needed to come out.


When I was measuring all the cables, I soon found that the white wire had a breach somewhere. When we stripped the wire, it was quickly found. So, the wire was fixed, soldered and everything could go back together.


Victory! Electricity is back!

So, I reassembled the whole thing again. I haven't ridden the Tiger yet, but it seems that everything is working fine again.