Triumph build video.

[Motu]

And take a look at those hammers,not a Warehouse claw hammer in sight,or a ball pein - assembled by feel and sound,stand back and look at what you've done.All the tools a craftsman needs.

[xwhatsit]

Gorgeous stuff. The crankshaft was the best bit, I think.

You can understand why people pay such good money for those bikes today.

As a side note, no wonder people laud the reliability of modern Jap bikes -- having a hand-built bike is certainly special, but you can understand that quite a few more inaccuracies would sneak past a human eye than Mr Robot. Still, no wonder people say those bikes have a soul.

There's a company in Germany which makes French Horns, called Alexander. They're pretty much the last place who still makes horns by hand -- in much the same way as that Triumph film showed. I've played four of the same model, and none of them play the same. Each one has its own character, despite being from the same blueprint and made within the same year. I bet those T100s are the same.

[Brian d marge]

And take a look at those hammers,not a Warehouse claw hammer in sight,or a ball pein - assembled by feel and sound,stand back and look at what you've done.All the tools a craftsman needs.

ahh them the good ole days ..not a DFX file in site ...and there are still some who can scrape a white metl bearing !! ( If I mod my scrapers any more it will be pinholes only !!!

btw ( LUUUUV linux ,,now I know jack about computers ,,but its downloading from command line !!! yea

the beauty of it is i can use synaptic ,,install kmplayer delete a few other and all will be sorted inside big white box wiv on button and off thingy

Stephen

[Motu]

They were still behind the times enough that we were taught the theory of hand scraping bearings in my apprenticeship - but it was unlikely I'd ever scrape a bearing,everything used shells,and if they were poured bearings then the engine rebuilders did it.However in 1979 I was working on compressors,and some had white metal bearings.

So I was hand scraping my first bigend,pretty scary,but it was going well and just taking down a few high spots.The boss came along for a look,and I said I was pretty close,just a few high spots.''Not bad '' he said - then he grabbed my scraper and layed into the bearing,rolling off big scrapings like peeling a potato...I wasn't very impressed,the bastard just ruined all my work.''That was a quarter thou'' he said.I blue the crank again and it was perfect.Never done it since.

[Brian d marge]

One or to things made me cringe ...they STAMPED numbers on the rod ..adding stress raisers and there was some other stuff ,,but i will have to watch it again

oh what a chore

Stephen

[crazybigal]

mate your such a legend!

Hahaha - it was the only transport I had when at varsity and poor so it was a case of having to know it inside out in case it gave trouble.

[kneescraper]

They were still behind the times enough that we were taught the theory of hand scraping bearings in my apprenticeship - but it was unlikely I'd ever scrape a bearing,everything used shells,and if they were poured bearings then the engine rebuilders did it.However in 1979 I was working on compressors,and some had white metal bearings.

So I was hand scraping my first bigend,pretty scary,but it was going well and just taking down a few high spots.The boss came along for a look,and I said I was pretty close,just a few high spots.''Not bad '' he said - then he grabbed my scraper and layed into the bearing,rolling off big scrapings like peeling a potato...I wasn't very impressed,the bastard just ruined all my work.''That was a quarter thou'' he said.I blue the crank again and it was perfect.Never done it since.

What the heck is "scraping bearings"? us young people were never taught these things ya know. We should sit around a camp fire and old Motu can tell us stories about the good old days....when men were men.

[Ixion]

"scraping bearings" is exactly what the name implies. Before the modern Vandervell shell bearing, big ends and mains were made by casting white metal directly onto the inner surface of the conrod (for a big end). You built a little dam inside the conrod eye, and heated white metal up in a little pot and poured it in.

The result was only vaguely circular , and bumpy as hell. So you bolted the rod onto the crank pin with a bit of blue in there, and turned it. Unbolted it and the blued surface on the white metal showed you the high spots. So you took your scraper (every mechanic had his own set always different usually made by bending and grinding old files, though I knew a guy used old carving knives) and you scraped a bit of metal off on the high spots. Reassemble, recheck, rescrape. Until the bearing turned easily when bolted up, and the blue evenly covered the whole surface. Then do the next one.

Craftsmen fitters claimed to get down to a tenth of a thou. Which was pretty likely rubbish because I very much doubt that the crank pin was that accurate.

God, it was soul destroying boring work, and stressful as hell because if you made a mistake in the last bit and removed too much metal like as not the bearing was ruined and you had to start all over again.

[xwhatsit]

Talking to my dad not so long ago on the phone to Aus -- he did his apprenticeship as a fitter and turner. Now he's a businessman, but he still remembers a lot of that stuff. I mentioned my engine rebuild (yay! done!), and I told them about the camshaft bearings in the head. He said, why not just replace the needles? I told him, no, they're plain metal, you can't replace them. He then started talking about hand-scraping bearings. He's only 45 (I think?), but in marine engineering, on the huge diesels on the big ships he worked on (did apprenticeship at the Auckland Harbour Board), there were still a lot of these white metal bearings for years and years -- he said there's probably still people who have to deal with these bearings, those kind of mills don't get thrown out for decades. He said it was a right bastard to do, talked about using the blue for the highspots and all that, and being assessed during his apprenticeship to see how well he could scrape, and they'd come and measure the bearings with a vernier and fail him if he was more than a few tenths out. He reckoned he got pretty good at it, though.

Half of the time I have no idea about my father -- had no idea he had such a archaic and technical skill.

[Blackbird]

talked about using the blue for the highspots and all that, and being assessed during his apprenticeship to see how well he could scrape,

You made me shudder, talking about engineers' blue - had forgotten all about that stuff. I was a student apprentice with a bearing manufacturer in the UK and when we returned to the factory to do our practical time, the women in the Inspection dept would grab us, drop our strides and blue our balls to quote "stop us getting fancy ideas above our station". Do you have any idea just how hard that stuff is to get off sensitive areas????

And these days, it's all about women being harrassed, sigh...

[kneescraper]

WOW! Awesome stuff, gotta love the way things were done back in those days. Makes us young fullas look uesless....well we when compaired. It would have been real cool to learn those old ways....building engines with such little to no modern age technology. Total respect to those 'old school' engineers...I wish I could learn some of those old school methods.

[Brian d marge]

Ask them ole fellas to use whip up a drawing and send the .dfx file to the machining center ,

Different strokes for folks though its a handy skill to have in case of emergency

like when the part you made is 1/2 a mil out ...

Not that that ever happened oh no never ....

Stephen