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My 2011 Triumph Tiger 800XC has 164,200 kilometers on it. That's 101,000 miles for you primitives. Sending it to Europe last year made the most sense since I could not sell it for much of anything in the US but it still had life left on it. The Europe trip last year was 20,000 miles. The bike lasted longer than I had hoped. Not that a Tiger cannot last a lot longer, but this one spent a lot of it's life riding in New England winter weather. There is all kinds of rust on this bike. Rust you won't see on many bikes of this vintage.
When I got to Ireland, the place I store my bike had charged it and started it. It fired right up. The throttle was stuck though. It could only turn a small amount. This has happened in the past after riding in the winter then not riding it for a while. In the past it just required a bit of WD-40 and time. Not this time. I tried warming the bike up to no avail. Finally I decided to remove the air filter housing to get at it. Triumph, in it's infinite wisdom decided to make getting to the air filter a 20 minute job. It should be a 5 minute job at most, especially on an adventure bike that is supposed to be ridden in dusty and muddy conditions, and sometimes in situations where it might get flooded in water crossing.
After extensive disassembly, the throttle loosened up fairly quickly once it was soaked in WD-40. Lots of rust under there.
After I initially warmed the bike up I decided to check the oil level. This is what I saw in the sight glass:
That oil looked like chocolate milk. That would normally mean water was in the oil, which would mean the antifreeze is getting into the engine. That is a highly undesirable condition. Typically that would be due to a head gasket, or in the case of a bike, it could be a water pump seal. The water pump in this bike is entirely inside the engine, attached to the oil pump and needs to be replaced as a unit. Not very expensive according to BikeBandit. $196 as shown here:
That's a great price, but I question the accuracy of these prices. That part number is on a lot of other Triumph models, which makes sense. BUT..... there is another part number listed for a bolt that is only on the Tigers. This bolt is $1,550. That is one special bolt! I had suspected the part is mis-labeled and the $1,550 is actually for the pump assembly. My bike isn't really worth $1,550!!! Oh, did I mention there are 3 of these bolts listed on this bike. So, maybe the $200 price is accurate for the pump, but I doubt it.
Anyway, back to the issue at hand. A local mechanic came over and looked at the oil. He smelled it. Tasted it. Yes, TASTED it. Determined that it was not likely antifreeze. If true, then where did the water come from? Was it really water in the oil? Hard to say, It is possible that it was just condensation from sitting for 10 months.
Another possibility is that I had never checked the oil with a bright LED light right after changing it. I had changed this oil before I stored it last year. On the recommendation of the mechanic, I changed the oil again. It looked like chocolate milk coming out, but looked great after changing it. For about 5 minutes. Then I rode it about 3 miles. It looked bad again, but not AS bad as before. I rode it a bunch more. It looked better.
I had researched this issue on a couple of sites that deal with the Triumph Tiger, most riders using the same oil as I do. I did not do a broad search on other sites, but there were a few posts from people with low mileage bikes that had similar issues. One had a photo. It looked exactly like mine. His problem went away with time. There was another rider who believed the problem was gaskets and o-rings inside the engine that were part of the water pump assembly. He spent a lot of time changing these, and all was fixed. But then, it could just be that he changed the oil so many times that it fixed things. Since the mechanic who deals with a lot of bikes in the local area recommended riding it and seeing what happened, I chose to do just that.
I have now put a couple or hundred miles on it. The oil looks pretty good. Unless I look at it with a bright white LED, then it looks a bit milky. Really, I think it is fine. The oil looks normal under normal light. I am feeling pretty comfortable to continue the trip.
Now the clutch is starting to make a lot of noise......... SIGH!!!
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