So I’m starting work on my girlfriend’s 1970 Triumph Daytona. I thought it would be an alright idea to post the progress through a blog, so here it is. Cindy bought the bike from a guy out east and she trailered it back to Detroit where she was living at the time. It didn’t get ridden much and then she moved out to Seattle. The bike sat next to the house sort of covered for a couple years. I had it shipped out to Seattle where it sat for maybe another year covered in the street. I decided to try to give it a start one day and in the midst of doing all that, the kickstart gear broke. I had a local shop take a look at it, though that turned out to be fruitless. I won’t name the shop, but they work mostly on newer bikes. I hear they do excellent work on the newer bikes, but they just didn’t have the connections for getting parts. Ultimately, they had the bike for 6 months and gave it back to me with the transmission in a box. It has sat like this for maybe a year now.

Below are some pictures of the bike as it currently sits.

I am starting with the transmission as it’s already out of the bike. The main tasks are just being able to identify the parts and figure out what needs to be replaced. I’ve got a Hayes Manual on Triumph 500 twins. It seems to make some sense, but I’m already starting to see that I may need a little more help than just the book and some grainy black and white pictures. Tonight I was trying to get the high gear bearings out. The mainshaft still has a couple gear cogs on it and I can’t figure out how to get them off. I heated up the bit where the bearings are and gave a tap and they moved out, but I can’t get them off the mainshaft. So we’ll see. Here are some pics of the transmission.

Those are 2 gears I need to replace – the layshaft high and 3rd gears. I took the advice of Ian from Twinline Motorcycles and went up to Dewey’s to talk to Phil and bring him a half rack of Henry’s. Unfortunately, Phil didn’t have the parts I was looking for but he pointed me in a couple directions where they may turn up.