Oh dear. The owner of this Triumph 955i took it on a test ride from a dealer, and accidentally put diesel in it. He made a genuine mistake (through over excitement!) and admitted it straight away on his return. Anyway, he bought the bike and had it delivered directly to us, because the dealer he was buying it off was a bit peeved.
So this is quite a major operation – petrol tank off, and pump out. We drained the pump and changed the filter in the tank, then took the injector rail out, took the injectors off and drained them. All the pipes were drained down and the plugs were changed too, because they’d tried to start the bike and diesel was everywhere (it had run for a while on the petrol that was in the system). We got it running OK, but the owner asked us to have a good look around the bike to make sure all was well.
It wasn’t – we had to change one of the front brake calipers because the pad retaining pin threads were stripped and the rear caliper was seized, so we rebuilt that. We stuck it it on the Dyno and ran it up, and it made 130bhp! We rode it, and it runs a treat – the only minor flaw is cold starting; the Sagem ECU is not the best, and it needs a couple of churns to crack up.
Triumph’s won’t run well on diesel, obviously, and sorting it out is quite a major job.
