Featured Resurrecting 1966 Tiger T100ss

There’s certainly nowt wrong with Dunlops but I must admit I was a bit disappointed to find that Avons are pretty much unavailable atm. They’re the tyres I always used in the past. I’ve just got a thing about a ribbed tyre on the front.i hope they make a comeback at some point. Funnily enough I was a bit surprised the other day to find that I had fitted a 3inch ribbed Avon to the front of the Bonnie as the last tyre I’d fitted years ago. I’d been working on the assumption they were 3.25in same as the t100. So the one going on now looks a bit ‘chunky’.

 

“Ahhh.. She got legs…and she knows how to use them….”
ZZ Top.

 

Yeah. like a Cheshire Cat. The Mrs keeps asking what’s wrong with me.

 

Well, that was a dumb thing to do. After fitting the new tyres I refitted the wheels and set about getting the front mudguard into place. I had already assembled them before getting them painted and seemed to have them reasonably aligned, albeit with the exception of deciding which of the three long rear stays I was going to use.

Going by older photos the most likely styled one that would have been fitted from new to this bike would have been the square ended ‘garden gate’ one that doubles as a drop down support for the front wheel in the event of a front wheel removal due to a puncture. I have one of those and also a ‘U’ bend style one that came with the original pile of bits which would have been fitted with a chromed or alloy style mudguard. I’ve sort of settled on going with my preference of the garden gate one just ‘cause I like it. At the moment I’ve got both, painted and another gate legged one that I picked up at the last Kempton Meet.

For a week or so I’ve tried unsuccessfully to get the garden gate one to fit and to clear the TLS brake linkage but its arm resolutely fouls the brake shoe pivot grease nipple. Also the run of the brake cable passes almost exactly through where the retaining nut for the stay bolt lies.

I’ve obtained a selection of bolts with various plain shanks, Nylock and thin nuts and washers, all in Stainless but no combination works or looks right without splaying the legs outward on spacers. The length of the leg also pushes the bottom end of the mudguard outward away from the wheel. To get it right the stay will need shortening.

With all that I took a side on photo of the wheel and the stay to try to work out the angle I’d have to bend the stay to weave past the brake pivot and shorten the leg. While looking at the photos I realised that something wasn’t right. The photo shows that the the brake backplate register isn’t in engagement with the fork slider lug so that the backplate is about 15 degrees out of place. I have no idea how I managed that or missed that fact it wasn’t in place. I guess must have dropped it out of place when I was refitting the wheel. I’ve now substituted the U shaped stay for the garden gate one, refitted the brake hub into its slot and aligned the mudguard. I’m going to leave it like that for the time being and have another go at it when I’ve figured what needs doing to fit the garden gate one. Sometimes I just can’t see the wood for the trees.