Triumph Rocket 3 Review

Overall Rating

Sirs

Re Triumph Rocket 3 - running speed problems.

I live in the UK in London area.
I have now owned my Rocket III since I bought it new in May 2004 .
I have put on about 20,000 miles since new and primarily while touring France and Spain in the earlier years.
Within about one year from owner ship I had Cat converter manifold modification to the exhaust note by a Triumph dealer. A summer screen, backrest and heated grips were also added to make long distance touring more tolerable and more fun. The longest distance travelled in one session was 700 miles from Confolens in France to Alicante in Spain. The bike was faultless.

As stated initially the bike appeared problem free. It ran well and performed wonderfully . A very comfortable cruiser on country lanes and toll roads alike.
It was serviced and on occasion it had new tunes from Hinckley added. Soon after these tunes were added the bike played up with the engine dying while running. this could prove disconcerting at times. Particularly when entering roundabouts . One learned to start it up as soon as it died and live with it.

On a long journey it could die as many as 20 times or as few as 2.
Then triumph announced a recall to sort this problem out . Incidentally they didn't inform my service outlet . I found this out on the net.
Further visits to prevent the engine dying, lead eventually to the problem reversing so to speak . And the bike developed a tendency to accelerate of its own free will.
This fault could not be predicted . One might travel for days without incident or it could happen 10 times in a short journey of 10 miles.

The solution I find while travelling along and without stopping, is to turn the engine off with the key while the bike is slipped into neutral with the clutch and then once cancelled start it up again and hope for the best.

It works more often than not to reduce the tick over speed from racing, and thereby giving a few more minutes or hopefully hours of trouble free riding.

No amount of returning the bike to the dealerships to be sorted out has served to permanently fix this problem.

With the exception of a trip to the Dordogne region of France in Aug 2008 while encountering the tick over problem I have ceased to ride the bike as much over the past year and now hardly at all due to increased unreliability regarding tick over revs and running speeds.

I cannot see why this is not soluble, if the bike runs perfectly well one day and yet not the next regardless of other factors remaining the same.

Any advice would be gratefully received.

Alan