One of the improvements over the years was a necessary upgrade to a cush somewhere in the drive line. I found the Newby belt and clutch to be a top notch piece of kit, but with the big jumps of a standard 4 speed 'box, the rigors were maybe a bit too much. I wallowed out the spines on the engine aluminum pulley, so it just wouldn't stay tight. As much as the conical hub is supposedly the part to fit on a Triton, I decided to replace it with a hub from a Suzuki GT550. It has a really simple and effective cush, is readily available, and the hub shell has the same ribbing as the front GL1000 hub.
I converted two hubs, one for the Triton and one for an upcoming Dominator project. The Suzuki chainline is outboard of the Triumph and Norton, but the cush plate is pretty thick and is easy to thin in the lathe for a more inboard chainline, so that's what I did in addition to fitting a larger OD bearing for the larger diameter axle on the Triton.
Same bearing for the hub shell. The bearing tower has a pretty generous wall, and the bearing wasn't much larger, so no biggie. I hope.
Larger axle hole in the brake plate.
A handful of 4140 steel spacers.
All polished or powdered.
I got some custom cables from Venhill with an m6 threaded rod pressed onto the one end of the cable and had to route the cable from the drive side rear set to the timing side brake, which is a bit more complicated than the rod scenario of the conical, but not really a big problem. A tab for the torque stay had to be brazed onto the swingarm as well.
So far the hub has worked really well. Bearings still smooth, no cracks in the shell, etc. The brakes work way better than the conical. The one thing that is noticeable is the stiffness of the wheel is much less than the conical. The spoke flanges are much closer together than the conical, thus, it is more axially flexible. I've gotten used to it, but at first I kept thinking my rear tire was going flat.
Once I added the cush to the driveline, and thinned the engine pulley by .060" (the smaller diameter part that rests against the splined end of the crank (I'm not sure what you'd even call that -- the nose?), and replaced it with a .060" washer to get a good amount of torque on the rotor nut without the steel crank's splines digging into the pulley, no more belt drama, and smoother power delivery to the wheel.
The available gearing for the Suzuki hubs is in a spread that is smaller in size than for the Triumph hub, so I recently geared down to a 43:17. It's pretty dang close to the 46:18 I ran previously, and both prime numbers, so should last quite a bit longer as well. I haven't used it yet, so we'll see what I think of the gearing. If it doesn't work to my liking, I might just go back to the larger sprockets, using another type and making some type of aluminum carrier. Those big steel wheel sprockets are heavy!
I took the opportunity to change to a 520 x-ring chain, but there are no 520 Triumph countershaft sprockets, so I had to grind one down. No pics of that. Not terribly fun, but very dirty. I did re-harden it and lit my can of quench oil on fire. That was pretty fun. Glad I did it outside.
