Triumph 3TA Engine

[royhall]

Not been on the forum too much lately as I have been busy rebuilding a Triumph 3TA Engine.

After a couple of years with Honda parts these Triumph things are just primitive. I was just saying to someone that they are built like old garden machinery, so imagine the mirth when we came across the name cast into the crankshaft flywheel.

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[JamesH]

Ha ha that's brilliant...

[Orcade-Ian]

Yes, I know what you mean by primitive.  I still have this Norton Model 50 on my bench trying desperately to summon up the enthusiasm to finish the damn thing - it's stopping me from getting on with my favourite Hondas.  Even the original parts don't fit properly and dare not mention the pattern stuff.  I am only a mile or so from the North coast of Orkney and it wouldn't be too much effort to fling the whole lot in to the Atlantic!  Problem is of course it's worth good money when finished.
On a positive note about Qualcast - back in the day they were a very well respected company producing first class products in cast iron, used by many top level companies (and Triumph!)

Ian

[royhall]

Your right about Qualcast, short for Quality Castings. They also make top quality lawn mowers.  Know what your saying about parts not fitting. The number of bits the machine shop is now making bespoke for this 3TA is growing daily, and so's the rebuild costs. Everytime I touch it I find something else broken/worn out/machined wrong etc, sure kills the enthusiasm. How a pro would go about pricing a rebuild on one of these heaven only knows.

[Orcade-Ian]

Yes it could be a nightmare for a pro restorer.  I'm very fortunate that I served an Aeronautical apprenticeship and now retired, have a large centre lathe and universal milling machine plus tools I've either collected, had donated or made over a 50 year involvement with all things mechanical.
The unit Triumph twins were a bit better than some offerings from other Brit manufacturers.  Hence the birth of the Triton all those years back.  That's the very reason I've ended up doing this 350 Norton - I first bought the engine which had lain under a joiners bench after being turfed out of a Norton to make way for T120R Bonnie engine. I then collected all the Norton stuff to make a bike!

Ian

[royhall]

Put some pictures up Ian, sounds interesting.

[Orcade-Ian]

Hi Roy,
It's on my web site with lots of pics and descriptions of making bits.

www.stallard-engineering.co.uk

Ian

[MarkCR750]

Yes it could be a nightmare for a pro restorer.  I'm very fortunate that I served an Aeronautical apprenticeship and now retired, have a large centre lathe and universal milling machine plus tools I've either collected, had donated or made over a 50 year involvement with all things mechanical.
The unit Triumph twins were a bit better than some offerings from other Brit manufacturers.  Hence the birth of the Triton all those years back.  That's the very reason I've ended up doing this 350 Norton - I first bought the engine which had lain under a joiners bench after being turfed out of a Norton to make way for T120R Bonnie engine. I then collected all the Norton stuff to make a bike!

Ian

I was talking to the guys at classicbikes.co.uk at market Drayton , they said they dread working on British stuff because the machining carried out during production was so poor, oval holes that you have to try to seal with a circular seal etc, if you go on their site you will see that their stock bears out their dislike of British stuff, that said a properly sorted pre unit bonnie takes some beating in the desirability stakes 😀.

[Orcade-Ian]

Ah, yes!
The desirability stakes, without wishing to hijack Roy's original post, Bonnies, Goldies and Rocket Goldies, along with lots more British iron, certainly are expensive, for me though not really desirable any more.  To be fair though, they were made on very outdated, tired machinery without the benefit of CAD/CAM for repeatability and development of next years model usually meant a new colour scheme.
It's very time consuming to 'engineer out' many of the original flaws and even preventing cables from flapping about or bits habitually unscrewing themselves can be a challenge.  When I compare the Norton with the GL 1000 GoldWing I am tidying up to use, only 15 years newer, the Wing is light years ahead.

Ian

[royhall]

This 3TA (1959) of mine is the same age as a Honda C76. The Triumph is Noah's Ark whilst the Honda is Starship Enterprise.

It may be a unit engine, but most of the engine and gearbox parts are the same as the pre unit. Some dating back to the 1930's, with crank, cams and gearbox running in plain bushes.

You would think that would make for an easy rebuild, but the opposite is actually true. Some of these bushes are so hard to change they have been in the engine from new, and are so worn they have damaged the hardened shafts which are no longer available. These require the machine shop to grind down the shafts then make bespoke bushes to suit. All pretty tedious really.

Alan told me about a guy that rebuilds these for £250 plus parts. I guess at that price he's another guy that only changes the easy stuff. There's no way you could rebuild one of these properly at that price. Beware the unwary I guess.

[MCTID]

Roy/ Ian....very interesting conversation as I served my Engineering Apprenticeship in a Salford Company which made Textile machinery from 1967 to 1972 and most of the machine tools in the factory were pre war. The Company decided to make another product line and set up a new Machine Shop with brand new multi spindle lathes and centreless grinders etc, and I was lucky enough to work in there for a year or so.

When I came out of my time (newly married with a nipper) I chased the money and moved to an American Compressor Manufacturer in Trafford Park.......what an eye opener - banks and banks of multi spindle lathes, exotic milling machines and best of all, CNC Lathes and Work Stations which completely machined crankcases on every axis......and once they were set up, the repeatability and accuracy was superb. I was in seventh heaven.....and as a Machine Shop Inspector, my job was easy peasy as most of the Machinists were brilliant at their jobs.

Some 10 years later I worked on a Norwegian Joint Venture with Phillips Petroleum (same Compressor manufacturer, but at their Wythenshawe factory) and had to deal with Pump Manufacturer Mather and Platt in Manchester.......I walked into their factory and was gobsmacked to see that much of the machinery was driven via a belt on an overhead shaft running the length of the shed. Most of the machinery there was also pre war...........what an eye opener.

If only BSA/ Triumph/ Norton etc had put some of their fat profits into new machinery/ manufacturing techniques during the good times in the 50's and 60's.......they may have fared better when the Japanese set their sights on the UK, and what is even more telling, Triumph's MD, Edward Turner visited Japan in 1960 to see the Japanese Motorcycle Industry at first hand but didn't seem to bring back any ideas which might have delayed or stopped the Japanese advance and eventual eclipse of the UK Motorcycling Empire.

[Orcade-Ian]

MCTID
Interesting path you have followed with insights into different companies.  By coincidence but relevant to your experience; when redundancy forced my uncle in Manchester to leave the Bradford colliery (main roadway was under Picadilly station) he worked at Mather and Platt, but cleaning the cars of those very same directors who had their workers producing pumps on antiquated machinery.  The cars he cleaned?  Jaguars, Daimlers and a couple of Bentleys.
The brother of a good friend of ours was head hunted from Unipart many years ago by John Bloor and tasked with setting up the Hinckley Triumph factory.  He bought the then very latest machine tools from Japan and even visited (and possibly collaborated with) Kawasaki Heavy Industries. 
Success for the product came naturally of course.
Ian

[MarkCR750]

And it really was a lack of investment that ruined it all, I give you the Norton 500/4, watercooled, designed 1953, built 2017, or at least it will be by Andy Molnar as a special project, actually Norton did build the engine in the 50's but it never made it into a frame, why?, because funding was withdrawn of course, British management couldn't see beyond its nose in those days, if completed it would have trounced every other race bike in the world with an estimated 80bhp, and led to god knows what in road bike development , oh well!

[royhall]

Its not just the bikes though.

The parts list I'm using is a reprint of the original Triumph book, and its useless.

There are parts galore missing from it, there are parts that have the wrong number assigned, there are also contradictions about part numbers between pages. This is the effort they took on the paperwork, non at all.

And to cap it all, over the 59 years since it was first printed nobody has bothered to put it right. They just keep churning out the same old crap. I think there may be a parallel there.

And it wasn't just the bike industry, Austin Princess anybody.

Here's an excerpt from the Triumph factory workshop manual, another reprint. This is what you are supposed to regrind your crank to. Anybody see a problem with it?


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[Orcade-Ian]

A 10 thou regrind is only 1 thou down on standard and the same pro rata for the others, can't be bothered to do the metric conversions.

I had an Austin Princess, but the earlier 4 litre R model, rather than the Wedge.

My mate had a new Austin All aggro and you couldn't open the front doors when it was jacked up, not because the Jack was in the way, but because the shell had twisted!

In defence of British Engineers though, (I are an inginere) we have had and still have some really innovative ones.
Frank Whittle
Christopher Cockerill
Mike Costin/Keith Duckworth (Cosworth)
The aforementioned Edward Turner, not just Triumph, but also responsible for the V8 Daimler engine fitted to the Mk2 Jag
And many, many more

As has been said before it was greedy profit takers who refused to invest because we were untouchable 'Great Britain'

No change there then!

Ian