Author Topic: Triumph factory visit  (Read 3474 times)

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Offline richtea

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Triumph factory visit
« on: July 17, 2019, 11:10:36 pm »
Not strictly a ride-out, I shared a car, but it would make a fab rideout.
No cameras or phones allowed inside, except by leaning out over the storage area, so the photos are limited in quality.

The tour took 2.25 hours - much longer than expected (my advice: tea, cake and wee BEFORE you go round!).
The chap taking us round was a proper expert on the marque and the factory - not just a bored part-timer. He was also a rider, of course.

The tour runs through the whole factory, bar R&D. The major different sections of the factory are, roughly in order:
- crank manufacture (all measured by laser to silly accuracy like 1-2 microns)
- crankcase machining
- cam, swinging arm and shaft drive machining (the Triumph shaft drive is quite a little work of art)
- paint shop (all painted by hand in-house - no robots)
- engine assembly line (basically every engine is blueprinted because cranks and cases are machined to match each other - if I understood it correctly)
- bike assembly
- QA room, to pull out random bike off line and disassemble it, which they were doing whilst we were there
- test (6,000 revs in top gear, then they leave the engine to run to burn any remaining petrol off)
- storage (including a stack of Moto 2 engines about to be shipped out to Spain)

Other nuggets:
- engines are good for 200k miles
- employees get their bikes at 75% list, but only one bike per year (oh sufferance!)
- employees can get their bike painted any colour, inc wheels
- bikes are assembled in the UK except for Brazil & India, where by law they must be be assembled by local workforce. So Triumph have local assembly plants in those places. Those ones go in boxed kits - v neat.
- the destination stickers on the bikes were impressive, DE, CZ, Russia, Aus, etc.
- they had several T1/T2 (test) bikes lying around, that were going to be scrapped. Noooooooo
- it's impressively clean, all swarf, etc collected at source rather than dumping on floor
- they'll hit their 1 millionth bike this year - 980k and counting

If they created a sports tourer from that shaft drive engine, and upped the power a bit, I'd probably be up for buying British.

Thoroughly recommended.
Cost: £18
https://www.triumphmotorcycles.co.uk/visitor-experience/factory-tour

The factory. It's big:



Ooooh - A lovely Swiss Motorsports. A man of taste:



At the entrance - a double-take. Had to re-read it:



The cafe had wall-to-wall engines through the (modern) ages:



No cameras or phones allowed inside, except for leaning out over the storage area.
The group below are just finishing their tour. The bikes next to them have just come back from the Welsh-based off road school:



Wrapped bikes (and other spares) sitting very high up (15-20m?). Not for vertigo sufferers:

Offline Phmode

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Re: Triumph factory visit
« Reply #1 on: July 18, 2019, 09:01:05 am »
Nice report. Mate's son got a placement there in R&D after uni and the bike offer was well used.

He was working on a then, new engine design but we could get absolutely nothing out of him.

He was well impressed with the place.

Coully

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Re: Triumph factory visit
« Reply #2 on: July 18, 2019, 09:35:15 am »
Cool, one for the future to do then.

I was down at motogp in 2014 and wasn't far from the factory where i was staying but everything i read was that they didn't / hadn't started tours then.

Offline richtea

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Re: Triumph factory visit
« Reply #3 on: July 18, 2019, 09:41:04 am »
I forgot to mention that it also has a small museum/exhibition section on two floors - but having taken quite a long time on the tour, we had to sprint (ha - see what I did there) for home. But that area is free, and since it's only 45 mins away for me, I'll trog over another day.

Offline raesewell

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Re: Triumph factory visit
« Reply #4 on: July 18, 2019, 09:51:01 am »
I went with Melanie last year, we didn't do the factory tour but we did do the cafe and museum bits. Worth a visit.

gibbo

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Re: Triumph factory visit
« Reply #5 on: July 19, 2019, 10:17:09 am »
Nice write up with piccies Rich. Could you pop over to the Norton factory and report back please.  :)

Offline raesewell

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Re: Triumph factory visit
« Reply #6 on: July 19, 2019, 10:20:21 am »
I looked into a visit to the Norton factory recently, the tours have been suspended while they extend the factory. When it is open the tours are only on Fridays.

Offline richtea

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Re: Triumph factory visit
« Reply #7 on: July 19, 2019, 10:45:26 am »
I'll go with you Rae!

Offline raesewell

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Re: Triumph factory visit
« Reply #8 on: July 19, 2019, 11:06:41 am »
One other thing is only Friday and start at 3.00 pm which I found a bit restrictive for travelling etc. Not out of the question but restrictive.

Coully

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Re: Triumph factory visit
« Reply #9 on: July 19, 2019, 12:59:36 pm »
I know I could look this up,  but where are Norton based ?

Offline raesewell

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Re: Triumph factory visit
« Reply #10 on: July 19, 2019, 01:16:15 pm »
Donnington

Offline richtea

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Offline raesewell

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Re: Triumph factory visit
« Reply #12 on: July 19, 2019, 01:20:02 pm »
One too many "n"s  ::)

Offline DouglasM

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Re: Triumph factory visit
« Reply #13 on: July 28, 2019, 07:00:46 pm »
Nice write up and Pics