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December 7, 2005
SoCal Triumph to the Rescue
I broke my motorcycle yesterday. Aside from being embarrassing, it means I have to get parts which, for a Triumph, I've learned is non-trivial in most of the country.
In fact, when I called him today I learned that my local "wrench" (Burton Motorports, great guy, recommend him) has had such a hard time reliably getting the right party in under a month that he's pretty much sworn off doing any work on a Triumph that requires Triumph parts. (So I guess I'm doing the next valve job on my RS after all...)
So I called the (excellent) shop where I bought the RS - Southern California Triumph - who seem to be one of the few shops that can reliably get parts, and identify the one you need with fidelity. The part will ship tomorrow, USPS Priority, and probably be here on Monday. Which leaves me only to figure out how to extract the busted one and put the whole thing back together.
Posted by dberger at December 7, 2005 8:46 PM
Comments
south bay triumph are gods....
when i was a brit cyclist, they rescued me a, number of times - in fact...
back in 1998, before i ever set foot in their store, i was in huehuetenango, guatemala, and the graunching noise coming out of my engine got a whole lot worse......tigger's timing chain had slipped it's guide, and lay in a pool of dirty oil. visions of warped pistonsnad crushed cogs - disaster had finally struck.
the peasant farmer i finally managed to convince (i.e. bribe) to help happily gave me and tig a ride to town - a few hours away ($25 for 140 miles of twisty two lane mountain blacktop).
being a 'boy scout' i had the address of an american mechanic in guatemala city - he took one look at tig, and sent us out of his shop before we could even offload it from the truck. he did mutter the address of a german mechanic in the city, and soon i witnesses tigger being offloaded, stripped and disassembled, under a canvan awning in the dirt, by a group of chattering, excited, shirtless guatemalan trainee mechanics..
yikes!!
klaus, the middle aged, grizzly german shop owner (don't mention the war!) triumphantly held up 3 parts - "get these and your bike's fixed" he growled. LA Triumph may have just as well been asked to send a pig to the moon. But So. Cal had them to me in 4 days, customs cleared and delivered. I was back on the road in a week.
the point is... if you can't fix it, call Klaus!
Posted by: grant at December 8, 2005 9:55 AM
Will Burton do the job if you supply the part?
Posted by: Hendel at December 8, 2005 1:53 PM
Probably, but once I've got the part, I might as well do it myself... I was hoping to hand off the problem, since I can't, I'll just solve it.
Posted by: Dan at December 8, 2005 2:04 PM
K, not that I'm surprised or anything, but I didn't even know there was a place called Huehuetenango, Guatemala.
Sigh.... need to travel more. :o)
Posted by: Nise at December 9, 2005 8:56 AM