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Horrid White Red Triumph 
In 1986, I bought a T100 – the traditional 500cc Triumph that has been around since the year dot minus twenty. I’d always found the style of the old British twins attractive and virtually everybody I knew had had a Brit so that it almost seemed like some sort of rite of passage that I had to undergo – "you’re not a real biker ‘till you’ve had a Brit.." This is, of course, crap
Anyway, a guy I knew had a T100 that had been rebuilt to Daytona specification. It had been re-wired, re-painted, re-pistoned, and there was a stack of receipts to go with it. Only 500 quid. Bargain!
Over that summer, I went everywhere on it…well, I went everywhere on it when it would start. And before the gearbox seized up (the result of a single broken split pin, would you believe?). And before the petrol tank split. And before I noticed the rising oil consumption and the plume of blue smoke from the left hand pipe. I must have done less than a thousand miles. Yes. I had in fact bought the proverbial pup. Now, a pup is a bad thing to have been lumbered with at the best of times, but a British pup is the worst thing on earth. Think British Bulldog. Think ugly.
It got worse - whilst fixing the gearbox, I discovered the drain plugs had been drilled. Oh good grief – a race track refugee! Things began to become absurd. I was berated by an irate Cortina owner after the kick start snapped and traced a graceful arc through the air before bouncing off his windscreen. Sweeping magnificently out of a bend one sunny afternoon, I went to change up, only to be thwarted by the fact that the gear lever was lying in the middle of the road fifty yards behind. The young lady on the back took nearly five minutes to walk back to fetch it, so hard was she laughing.
I decided that the engine had to come out and it went to one of those Triumph-owning friends I was telling you about for a rebuild. After all, not only did he have a Triumph, He Are An Engineer. I know, he told me so. It turned out that the engine had been ‘tuned’ in a half-arsed fashion: for example, lightened tappet nuts on the rockers. Well, three of them anyway. There was no sign of the gudgeon pin circlips in the left had high comp piston, so the pin had worked across and ‘scores on the bores, George Dawes’, which just for good measure were on the second oversize. The clutch didn’t and the gear box had a fair assortment of blue things in it, instead of the nice dull silver ones you might expect to find. After that, even when it was running again, I lost enthusiasm but never got round to doing anything sensible, like getting shot of it. For all its faults, I still had an attachment to it, which must be the only reason they got away with building bikes like this for so long. It lurked about in the back of various garages, getting steadily less rideable and saleable whilst I got on with being a bike rider rather than a bike owner, riding bikes without the ‘character’ of the Triumph. Like CBR600s. You know the sort of thing – soulless sewing machines that will do 20,000 miles without much more than an oil change.
About three years ago I decided to resurrect it and rebuild the bike completely. The ‘Daytona’ spec that it had been built to in 1986 had been very basic on closer inspection – a twin carb head and a twin leading show brake, but that was about it. It became obvious where this Triumph had come from – not Meriden but some shed where it had been cobbled together out of bits and pieces. 1950s T100 forks, front wheel built onto a T120 hub, 1969 bottom end in a 66 5TA frame… need I go on?
The first thing was the frame. The T100 Daytona frame is virtually the same as all other T100/5TA frames, other than the braced swing arm pivot. This was the key to the rebuild; without a genuine frame, I would only really be doing a re-bodge. After some months of fruitlessly poking around heaps of rusty scrap at auto-jumbles, a chap in Milton Keynes rang up in response to an ad I’d put in the papers. He had a T100R frame dating from the same month and year as the engine, all I had to do was to fetch it. The missing seat loop came from an auto-jumble and with these cleaned down, refinished and bolted together, I could start in earnest. The front wheel had been built with an 18" rim rather than the correct 19" which had put the whole geometry of the bike out – I suppose the builder just happened to have the 18"rim lying about. The old swing arm went straight in. With the rolling chassis together and the engine back in, things were looking up.
The next thing was to rewire the bike. It had been "professionally rewired " in 1985, I had the receipt to prove it. Whoever paid that bill must have been even more stupid than me – I could have done better with my eyes shut. It had been converted to 12v and electronic ignition and amongst other changes the coils had been positioned under the seat. I decided to put the coils back under the tank in the correct place but retain some of the other modifications. Rather than butcher a new loom, I decided to have a proper wiring job done. Enter Dr Moxom, who now works at Oak Ridge lab in Tennessee where they invented the atom bomb. I supplied the Doctor with sundry wires, connectors, insulating sheathing, endless cups of tea and gallons of beer that evening and was rewarded with the simplest, neatest wiring job ever.
At this point, I moved house to one without a garage and so the bike went into my brother’s garage a few miles away. This meant that I couldn’t just pop into the garage to tinker; progress slowed right down and was further slowed by the paint shop which took six months. When I had bought it, the bike had sported an attractive white livery but over the intervening years it had cracked, flaked and dulled. I had all the metal work refinished in an overall metallic mid-red. It had taken a time of geological proportions but looked spectacular and it spurred me on to get things moving again. I thought we were almost ready to go.
I should have known better. The last thing to replace before starting it for the first time in three years was the clutch cable. Simple? Not on your life. The clutch actuation mechanism was the biggest bodge I’d found yet, all of it utterly worn out and not one part salvageable, not even the outer casing. I replaced the lot. That new clutch cable cost about £90 in all.
And then came the moment of truth. She started first kick.
The rejoicing was short-lived, however. It had become an oily engine, but now there was also a knocking from the top end so I decided to strip it back to the crankcase to see what was what and to get it oil tight. The pistons looked good (as well they might, they could barely have been run in) but the rocker gear was much worse than I had expected considering how few miles it had done since the last time it had been apart. I did what was becoming all too familiar with this rebuild – threw away the old bits and went back to the shop to buy new ones. With the barrels skimmed and repainted, the engine went back together and we are nearly up to date.
The one major job remaining concerns the forks. I had hoped that the 50’s articles in place would do until I could find some of the correct pattern, but as with everything else, they are almost beyond saving and actually leak whilst the bike is standing still. I suppose I could rebuild them but having got everything else almost right it seems a waste so I am at another choke point until I can find some replacements.
Hopefully everything will be finished by spring. A rash desire to make up for the years of inactivity lead to a decision to do the annual trip to the Spa 24 hour on the Triumph. If I make it, I’ll let you know.
The trip to Spa on the Triumph didn’t happen in 1998, in fact I ended up travelling to a rain-soaked Spa by car as not only did the Triumph remain unfinished, my two ‘reliable’ modern bikes were also out of commission. Progress on the Triumph was delayed (again) by a seized cam follower which meant having to do a second engine strip and by the elusive fork replacements. In the last few weeks however, the engine has been finished and some new forks have finally turned up. So … at the risk of speaking out of turn - maybe, just maybe, in 1999…..
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© 1998 Andrew Wegg