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I bought my '05 Sprint 1050 in Oct 2017 and I'm happy to admit, she was a bit of a spontaneous purchase as I'd wanted a Sprint for a few years. Just shy of 40k on the clock, few accessories including pannier racks for £2k was either going to be bargain of the century or a pup.

Sadly, it was the latter. First the tyres ran out very quickly, the Oxford heated grip controller was dead, the pannier rails were fitted, but not the stabiliser bits were missing & then the regulator died. After insta-killing a second regulator, I investigated & found the alternator was fried & then she killed ANOTHER regulator through excess heat (Positioning the reg on a bracket attached to the engine casing is NOT clever Triumph!).

On top of that, the rear hub had ceased, & been shredded by the previous owner, which meant a replacement needed to be fitted. Final issue was the rear brake calliper was binding, which meant that needed to be stripped & cleaned.

All of this has meant the bike has eaten through about £1k & 5 trips to a mechanic since I bought it, but I LOVE the bike & when she went for her MOT on Saturday, I came away with a spotless MOT & a few words of approval as to how good the bikes condition is, which I was really pleased to hear. She's up to 50k on the clock now, but given that she is 14 years old, that is not bad.

There's going to be a lot less commuting this year so the mileage wont rise as fast, but we've now settled into a very happy relationship after a rocky start.

 

It was always love at first sight for me, the bike had a few issues from previous relationships to work out

 

I've not had any issues with the tank, in fact my mindset is pretty much converted to the idea that plastic is the better option as other bikes I've owned have had internal rusting issues.

Not issues with the sprag clutch either. The bike doesn't have the service book, but I've had a mechanic who previously worked at Triumph give the bike a serious inspection (That was its first trip into a garage after I bought it way back in 2017)

The alternator is an easy test; all you need is a multimeter that can read ohms & is tested via the connectors for the regulator. You do three tests on the connector to the alternator (Worth looking up the specifics as I'd need to remind myself), if they give different readings, then the alternator is going/gone. I gather it's a design flaw that causes it to overheat & eventually fail.

My next spend out is on new heated grips as I think the current ones are faulty (one doesn't heat up & may have even caused the last regulator to blow, was fine until I connected them back in) & source the stabilisers that should've been fitted when the pannier rails were installed, but the moron who fitted them didn't bother.

Also going to get the wheels re-coated as the current coating is flaking off.

Last thing is I would LOVE the TOR exhaust. I won't swap out the triple exhaust (I know, I know, it's just three holes in the single silencer, but it looks soooo cool!), but would like a little bit more volume as the noise it makes is lovely No need to turn it into an Angry-Shouty bike as my '89 CBR 600 already does that.

As you can tell, I do genuinely love the Sprint