Wiring a Triumph

[Bengt_Phorqs]

My local BMW Airhead shop called this afternoon just as I was cleaning up the Man Cave to talk about my insurance renewal.  She asked what I'd been doing today and I told her that me and a buddy had been putting a new wiring harness on a '68 Triumph 250.  After she recovered from blowing her coke through her nose and laughing she allowed as how that was an admirable goal.  Yep, sure is.

Monte the Magnificent showed around 9 am this morning, we had a cup of joe, then he set up his KeroSun heater in the garage.  You can see the little unit in the background.  Got to get me one!  It was cold this morning (at least for Texas).  We started in on replacing the wiring harness on my little Turnip and after several hours, a few beers, and more coffee, we made it all the way up to the horn.  Only thing left was the headlight bucket.  Here are a few snaps that I made.  I'm sure that Mongo has a few of his own as well.

[montmil]

Mike's 1968 Triumph 250 single is in pretty good shape considering it's 1968 vintage and POs rather casual care. Mechanically sound, but the wiring is a rat's nest. A beautiful, new harness required only a couple connection mods to mate up with the terminals on some of the components. We're getting there...



Phorqs was dazzled with my small, butane soldering torch. Next time we work on the wee Turnip, he's gonna wield the flame. The Yamaha TY250 Trials bike -parked under the flags- needs the lighting kit installed and wired. Next project for us... after the Triumph.


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[darrylri]

I helped a firend with a Triumph with wiring problems a while back.  All those red wires bolted to the frame really weirded me out.  

And before I went over to help, I joined the Bonneville Yahoo group and downloaded a wiring diagram.  When I went over, Kathy had a Clymer or Chiltons (don't recall) manual with 8 more diagrams.  They were all clearly derived from one early diagram, with new things and changes drawn around the outside and lines going into the middle someplace.  

They also didn't give an indication of where on the bike the parts would be found.  

It didn't help that someone had really hacked up the existing harness.  There's a toggle switch on the headlight bucket for the headlights (no, not Dim/Flicker/Off, but Headlights/Parking Lights/Off), and the manual indicated that it had a somewhat complex arrangement of connections.  But the switch didn't do any of those things and eventually I twigged to the idea that some kind of set of wiring connections external to the switch could do the job.

Very weird compared to working on a BMW.