Smooth bonnie

baz · Friday at 5:13 AM

Apologies if this is well known
I hadn't seen it before

Chris · Friday at 6:21 AM

Hi Baz
Ash does find some fantastic projects.
I remember reading about the GCE balance weight engine but never saw it in the flesh. The write up sounded good but its not appearance is not very appealing. Would not have sold in my opinion. My mate Nick had the Atv? Rubber mounted Bonnie, not many of those & not heard of one with high mileage.

baz · Friday at 6:48 AM

Chris said:
Hi Baz
Ash does find some fantastic projects.
I remember reading about the GCE balance weight engine but never saw it in the flesh. The write up sounded good but its not appearance is not very appealing. Would not have sold in my opinion. My mate Nick had the Atv? Rubber mounted Bonnie, not many of those & not heard of one with high mileage.

Yep
He's also turned up a left shift rocket 3 to restore

Fast Eddie · Friday at 10:59 AM

baz said:
Apologies if this is well known
I hadn't seen it before

I’d never heard of that Baz.
Thanks for posting.

Fast Eddie · Friday at 11:07 AM

Chris said:
Hi Baz
Ash does find some fantastic projects.
I remember reading about the GCE balance weight engine but never saw it in the flesh. The write up sounded good but its not appearance is not very appealing. Would not have sold in my opinion. My mate Nick had the Atv? Rubber mounted Bonnie, not many of those & not heard of one with high mileage.

Tony and Martin at TMS told me that the AV system worked well BUT all the linkages and pivot points on the chassis wore quickly. They weren’t fans.

baz · Friday at 11:17 AM

Fast Eddie said:
Tony and Martin at TMS told me that the AV system worked well BUT all the linkages and pivot points on the chassis wore quickly. They weren’t fans.

I suspect it was built to entice MZ250 riders

cliffa · Friday at 1:28 PM

Baz, I’d never heard of this before either, so thanks for posting. Can I ask who Ash is, and what the plan is for this bike? ( and the R3, which sounds interesting). Regarding the AV version, I have a picture of a frame somewhere, and it seems pretty simple TBH. It wasn’t like the ISO system, but utilized off the shelf rubber mounts, some of which (I think) were Morris Marina gearbox mounts. I’m not home at the moment, but will post it when I’m home.

Fast Eddie · Friday at 3:07 PM

The AV frame was not so simple Cliffa.
The swinging arm was still solid mounted. So the engine was also ‘solid’ mounted but in a way that it pivoted around that point when vibrating.

baz · Friday at 3:55 PM

This is all I've seen

trident sam · Saturday at 3:18 AM

Cliff, he posts most of his info on the Trident and Rocket 3 owners group website.

Onder · Saturday at 4:55 AM

When I looked at the pix of the Bonnie powerunit , I thought that if you were going to have such a wide crankcase you might as well just add two cylinders.

Fast Eddie · Saturday at 6:30 AM

I find it interesting that Meriden were investing resources into projects like this, and the AV frame, but didn’t invest in ensuring that the cranks in the stock bikes were balanced properly !

A good dynamic balance job transforms most Triumphs twins. I can’t help thinking they’d have been better off doing this than going off on these other fanciful tangents.

baz · Saturday at 6:48 AM

Fast Eddie said:
I find it interesting that Meriden were investing resources into projects like this, and the AV frame, but didn’t invest in ensuring that the cranks in the stock bikes were balanced properly !

A good dynamic balance job transforms most Triumphs twins. I can’t help thinking they’d have been better off doing this than going off on these other fanciful tangents.

I was thinking from the introduction of the t140e that the cranks were dynamically balanced ?

grandpaul · Saturday at 8:14 AM

May as well; after all, "smooth" was mentioned.

Pretty smooth...

Fast Eddie · Saturday at 8:15 AM

baz said:
I was thinking from the introduction of the t140e that the cranks were dynamically balanced ?

I honestly don’t know if that’s true or not. But the many stories about good uns and bad uns leads me to conclude it’s either not true, or it was executed (and quality controlled) very poorly.

baz · Saturday at 8:37 AM

Fast Eddie said:
I honestly don’t know if that’s true or not. But the many stories about good uns and bad uns leads me to conclude it’s either not true, or it was executed (and quality controlled) very poorly.

I seem to remember an article in MCN back when I used buy it that said something like "the Muppets at meriden are finally balancing the cranks"
And I took that as to mean dynamically balanced
As obviously even triumph would have always statically balanced their cranks?

Triton Thrasher · Saturday at 8:59 AM

baz said:
I seem to remember an article in MCN back when I used buy it that said something like "the Muppets at meriden are finally balancing the cranks"
And I took that as to mean dynamically balanced
As obviously even triumph would have always statically balanced their cranks?

Motor Cycle News just printed random text.

Onder · Saturday at 10:04 AM

If T140's did not get balanced then it is seriously disturbing that Royal Enfield Inters were dynamically balanced. If they figured it out what on earth happened to Triumph?
My '73 Bonnie could remove your tooth fillings. By 71 BSA removed anything bolted on to it.

t ingermanson · Saturday at 10:20 AM

Fast Eddie said:
I find it interesting that Meriden were investing resources into projects like this, and the AV frame, but didn’t invest in ensuring that the cranks in the stock bikes were balanced properly !

A good dynamic balance job transforms most Triumphs twins. I can’t help thinking they’d have been better off doing this than going off on these other fanciful tangents.

Design engineers' jobs are to design Trade and Craft workers out of their jobs. Why create an engine that requires an expensive human to operate an expensive machine that occupies expensive floor space in an expensive factory, if it can all be replaced with a couple extra lumps of iron?

Fast Eddie · Saturday at 10:49 AM

Onder said:
If T140's did not get balanced then it is seriously disturbing that Royal Enfield Inters were dynamically balanced. If they figured it out what on earth happened to Triumph?
My '73 Bonnie could remove your tooth fillings. By 71 BSA removed anything bolted on to it.

T140s were definitely ‘balanced’. It’s just that some were balanced (way) better than others!

And, I don’t know if they were dynamically balanced or not, but my money is on not.

But again, perhaps they had a static balancing machine, but little or no control over how well it was operated?!

The Meridian story is sad IMO. Quality control was very poor. Yet it was a co-operative. Workers owned the company. The idea being that that would increase motivation and consciousness. But sadly it didn’t appear to do so.

Smooth bonnie

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