Triumph Street Triple R: Owner Update Four

After two weeks back in the hands of its importer, my 2013 Triumph Street Triple R has emerged feeling healthier, but still wearing its aesthetic scars.

When last we spoke, the Stripler had presented a few issues as the kilometres began to mount. The seat was chewing into the subframe, the front brake line was rubbing on the guard, and the headlights were turning opaque, as if affected by UV light. These wounds remain; a source of constant annoyance, but one that in Triumph’s own words could recur if those parts were replaced anew.

Suffice to say, these parts remain. I’m not about to replace a whole lot of aluminium and plastic if the same issues are only going to reappear. The performance issues I spoke of last update were another point entirely, and ones much harder to live with day-to-day.

Without sending you back to the review, the story so far is that the bike was stalling at idle, reluctant to cold start, had an intermittent check engine light on the dash, and had no idea of which gear it was in owing to a faulty shift indicator switch.

After finally securing a mutually agreeable time to book the bastard in, the good people at Triumph set to work on pin-pointing the mechanical issues and began remedying the faults. Parts had to be ordered and adjustments made that meant time in labour was longer than that of most pregnancies. But as it was a warranty job, I came out of it pretty clean.

It turns out the ECU map installed to drive the Quick Shifter and Arrow Exhaust installed subsequently (both by Triumph) had not meshed well, and had caused an error the bike interpreted as a fault. Hence the check engine light. The glitch didn’t help the rough idle, nor the cold starts, but it was also found the throttle bodies had worked their way out of calibration and needed to be reset.

That done, the Stripler felt back to its former self... or I should say, better than its former self.

I’m not sure if anything more was done than what was mentioned. The technician said that three of the four recalls had been carried out, but as I was only aware of two, this prompted a line of questioning that went unanswered. I swear, this bike should be renamed the Mystery Machine.

The engine gremlins, however, appear to have been eradicated.

The engine idles normally and feels clean though the rev range. There’s no audible grumbling and no troughs as the revs climb. In fact it seems to spin up to redline quicker than it ever did. Fuel consumption has returned to normal also.

It’s a pain when your new toy has to go through something like this, and really makes you question how you’ve spent your dough. Let’s just hope that’s the last of them, and that I can live with the aesthetic blemishes.

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