I'm working on the front suspension of my TR-250. As I put it back
together, I'm replacing the lock washers and nyloc nuts with new ones. It
has been a small challenge to find nyloc nuts in reasonable quantities at a
reasonable price. I can buy them one-by-one from TRF at fairly exorbitant
prices, or buy far more than I need for a single job from a fastener
supplier. For some reason TRF's front-end rebush kits don't include cotter
pins, lock washers or nylocs. I can't complain about TRF's nuts and bolts
prices. Selling this stuff in single pieces requires a fair amount of labor
relative to the unit cost of the parts. Cotter pins and lock washers are,
of course, much easier to come by, but should be replaced at the same time,
so it makes sense to buy them at the same time.
It occurred to me today that there might be some demand for bundled sets of
lock washers, cotter pins and nyloc nuts to complement the rebush kits the
major parts suppliers sell. I think I could put together sets for a decent
price. For example, TRF's price for 3/8" Grade 5 nyloc nuts are $0.55 each.
The TR-250's front end needs 24 of this nut and much smaller numbers of
several other sizes. I bought a box of 100 3/8" nylocs today for $9.54 and
bought more of another size than I really needed to boost my purchase up
above their minimum order size. If I made a bulk order or shopped around a
bit I could probably drive the unit price down even further.
I have a TR-250 but I suspect other Triumph front ends use similar numbers
of cotter pins, lock washers and nyloc nuts.
Please "raise your hand" if you'd be interested in this sort of thing.
Private replies please (or CC me if you want to mail the list so I can keep
track of requests more easily). Let me know what model(s) you're interested
in. If you have other non-Triumph iron with similar needs or have other
subassemblies for which this is a problem, let me know that as well.
I'm nuts... ;-)
Skip Montanaro | Mojam: "Uniting the World of Music" http://www.mojam.com/
skip@mojam.com | Musi-Cal: http://www.musi-cal.com/
518-372-5583
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