'3' cyl. engine

[Rucastle]

At 12:33 AM 17/03/97 -0800, you wrote:
>If I remembers correctly, the Trident is a four cylinder engine with one
>cylinder lopped off.  Vibrates like crazy, sounds puke sick and then
>screams when it comes on the cam about 2500 - 3000 rpm.

I probably should be taking up band width with this answer. But here goes.
The Trident & Rocket 3 were both designed from the ground up as '3'
cylinder engines.  The crank is a 120o design.  There was probs with crank
balance on 1969 engines, this was later fixed. The factory spent (pounds
sterling) 80.000 on a German made crank grinder.  

>Check the timing on your firing. If my feeble memory is still working
>should be  normal four cylinder firing with one cylinder not there.  If
>that be the case, almost any four cylinder stuff should work - just don't
>hook up the missing cylinder.

See above. 

>On electricals, unless someone has cleaned it up, you will have two wires
>going everywhere - one carrying + and the ground return back to the
>battery.  Save yourself a lot of midnight grief - ground everything to the
>frame and lose the lucas wiring scheme.  Get a good battery.  I cheated on
>mine and used a capacitor battery eliminator, but I had carbs and magneto. 
>If the battery is big enuff
>(check out gel cells) electrically, you may be able to coast thru hi demand
>periods before cycling it too low.  

Capacitor is used only for starting, not needed with Mag.


>Another small thing.  The center cylinder run's hotter than the outer two. 
>On carbs, it was always jetted at least two sizes larger to compensate. 
>When you inject, you'll need to figure out how to get the center cyl richer
>or it will burn up - I really hosed up when I switched to Mikunis and
>didn't.

Most centre cyl overheating was due to inacurate ignition timing.  It was a
nightmare,
3 cylinders, 3 point sets, 3 coils.