1959 Triumph 'Twenty One'
Wheel restoration
While the crankshaft was away being reground, I decided to attack the wheels to see what could be salvaged and having soaked the spoke/nipple junctions a few times I decided to have a go at loosening the nipples from the spokes. True, I could have just chopped the spokes out as they and the nipples are scrap anyway. Surprisingly, when you look how rusty they were, they all came out ok and I only had to resort to blowlamp heat on a couple on the front wheel, which was the first one I tackled
Quite a sorry mess really but the brake drum surface is good and the bearings still had grease in them. I will carefully inspect those to see if they are still serviceable, there really is no point in replacing them as new ones, although cheap enough, will not be of that quality.
Stripped of all old paint and a couple of applications of Jenolite has produced quite a good result - it now needs priming and a few coats of satin black paint.
Next up was the alloy front brake plate with its pivot seized solid but I had left that in the parts washer for a week to see if it might free up. I put the brake arm in the soft jaws of the vice and it moved easily - another good result of being patient. There are a few gouge marks in the face of the plate but they will dress out with progressively finer grades of emery. Unfortunately cast alloy suffers from dark patches where dirt has capilliaried its way along the grain boundaries. These are almost impossible to eliminate completely but I'll do my best with it.
The gouge marks are gradually disappearing but you can see the mottled effect on the surface, some of which will come out.
The inside of the brake plate will clean up OK
The front hub cleaned up well and the satin-coat is close to the original, I re-plated the spindle just to improve things a bit.
The front rim is a bit different from normal and is a 'Two by Two' arrangement and because of the straight spokes, is a bit easier to lace as you can fit the spokes one at a time from inside the hub.
the finished wheel!
The rear one was done in the same way - time consuming but well worth the effort involved, although this one is more conventional.
The 'cotton reel' hub de-rusted, etch -primed and painted in satin black, ready for re-assembly
Triumph Engine rebuild