October 11, 2013
eBay is a good location for a spot of restoration research: the seller usually posts numerous detail photos of the motorcycle which can be utilized as excellent reference for assembly or ideas for component setup.
Here’s a cute yellow Cub that is in fairly complete trim. This has been listed with a nice selection of the needed views…
Nice dull gray cases; a patina of oily rag polish.
Bolt patterns, spacers; mounting brackets and cable routing. When parts come loose in a box this is essential information.
Also its good to see the little beating heart in slumbering pose.
The top end showing the arterial oil lines feeding the ready to go moving parts. You can nearly hear the ticking of the valves for this diminutive but doughty motor.
Amal: any British vintage bike owner worth their salt gets to know the needles, screws and orifices of the fuel and air blender. More mounting details are exposed. Gas hose routed from the fuel tank to the carb itself.
Oil feed comes from the small tank, a little peep of the oil hoses and exhaust.
Controls now; throttle, clutch lever and bracing to the nice wide bars. Lemondrop tank tarts up the deal.
Triple tree, headlight ears and handlebar mount clamps.
Front and rear for the laced hoops of the wheels. Knobbly rubber to offer grip over tarmac and gravel. One of my next tasks is relacing, so seeing the spoke pattern is handy.
As we’ve said before: the whole is greater than the parts.
Posted in Photography, Restoration, Triumph Cub |
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October 10, 2013
Two-Wheeled tiptoes… A perfectly balanced Triumph Tiger Cub in trials form; simple, purposeful, awaiting orders from a deft hand and a stance in sweet equilibrium. Inspirational for the project.
Posted in Restoration, Trials, Triumph Cub |
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October 9, 2013
By the late seventies, and with the success of Lee Majors in The Six Million Dollar Man, the networks were all jumping on the ‘ordinary superhero’ bandwagon. Some unassuming protagonist is dowsed in either a radioactive ‘elixir’ or rebuilt with means beyond his physical ken. Well NBC in ’76 came up with this gem. The titular character, one Sam Casey, had a handy condition that allowed him to be invisible (including his clothes!) For 15 minutes a day, with a wristwatch countdown controller. If he went over that though he was in danger of becoming permanently invisible. Tsk!
He was a good lookin’ denim wearin’ motorcycle ridin’ bloke, played by Ben Murphy, who got into a scrape or two… At least until the show was canceled nine episodes into its first season. I can just about remember it as a kid escaping into the few episodes that made it across the Pond.
The actor was Ben Murphy and the bike? Why a Triumph of course!
Posted in Film and TV, Superhero, Triumph Motorcycle |
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October 9, 2013
There are some people come and go with out so much as a blip on the public conscious; but their impact is felt way beyond their reach. One such character is Gram Parsons (born Cecil Ingram Connor III). Musician who influenced the “cross pollination” of two very different music genres: country and rock. He rolled in as the lead singer and guitarist of The Byrd’s in the late sixties just as the youth were learning to tune in and drop out. And, of course, motorcycles allowed the freedom of escape; Triumph being at the fore! Mick Jagger and Keith Richards saw his genius and used his melding of country rock to progress their music from their emergent sixties sound to a more mature tune of the seventies.
“Look at him here, he’s wearing a cape! And a Triumph motorcycle T-shirt, smoking pot through a mug, and wearing my mother’s promise ring.” Polly Parsons (daughter)
Photography by Andee Nathanson
Gram went a little too far in ’73 however overdosing on morphine and alcohol in a room at the Joshua Tree Motel CA at the young age of 26.
Posted in Clothing, Music, Triumph Motorcycle |
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October 8, 2013
’52 T100 given a light bobber treatment complete with an appropriate feline grimace for the original Tiger…
It’s for sale too. At $12,500 a hefty price but it is very well detailed to maintain a period appearance worthy of any street drag hound.
The pre unit engine from the mind of Edward Turner looks balanced and purposeful. Sweet in any frame be it a Triumph rigid or Norton featherbed. Here it’s a mechanics jewel.
Posted in Bobber, Triumph Motorcycle |
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October 8, 2013
Driving across the beautiful desert backdropped roads of the Southwest gives me the yearning to come back here and experience the countless miles, uncounted corners and lack of cars along the long stretches between towns.
Though NOT in the summer months!
Posted in Travel |
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October 7, 2013
White Bonneville parked in this historical mining town of southern Arizona
Posted in Travel, Triumph Bonneville |
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October 6, 2013
Eric Fellner’s production company, Working Title Films is currently one of the most successful in the industry. With movies such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Fargo in the nineties, to the more recent Rush it encompasses the lesser mainstream items and ones I’d prefer to see.
A well framed portrait of him with prized vehicles: a Ferrari 458 Italia and a late 50’s Triumph Bonneville. Smartly attired he seems for attracted to the moto!
Photography by Neil Bridge.
Posted in Film and TV, Photography, Triumph Bonneville |
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October 5, 2013
Granny Moses takes a Triumph for a cavort around a Beverly Mansion. Yup! It’s the adventures of Jed Clampett and his kin from their windfall of a bubbling crude from the ground on his swampland. Black gold.
“Y’all come back now, y’hear?”
Posted in Film and TV, Triumph Motorcycle |
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October 4, 2013
Different color than what is typically seen defining the lines of a motorcycle: jade. Frame, tank, fenders ‘n’ all. This is an elegantly fettled Bonneville with just the right level of detail to make one desire. A mint icing to a fruity cake. The worn brown leather single seat with the usual racy clip-ons and rear-sets set what looks like a comfortable streamlined pose for its rider.
The rural farmyard setting gentrifies it and the complementary redhead quickens its heartbeat.
Posted in cafe racer, Gals, Triumph Bonneville |
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October 3, 2013
French actor Jean Paul Belmondo was surely the Gallic McQueen. Starring in several New Wave films of the sixties such as the classic, and pivotal, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 Breathless, he managed to reinforce his ‘le cool’ demeanor by being seen riding ‘un moto’. Especially when it is ‘Une Triomph’!
Posted in Film and TV, Photography, Triumph Motorcycle |
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October 2, 2013
Whereas James Hunt drove with passion and emotional drive, his main contemporary on the Grand Prix circuit, Niki Lauda, was a clinical technician. He ensured all aspects of the race under his control was scrutinized to the n’th degree. The car setup, the track, his physical and mental fitness. His Teutonic attitude gave him three championship successes, which would have been four if it hadn’t been for that fateful season in 1976 and the fiery crash at the ‘Ring as well as our man Hunt snapping at his heels on the points table.
Here is Lauda on a muscular Kawasaki Z1. His need for speed extends to appropriate motorradd selection!
Posted in Kawasaki, Racing |
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October 1, 2013
Actor Richard Gere utilizes an old familiar ride in this nondescript forgettable film from twenty years ago. We saw him on a T140 and whites in An Officer & a Gentleman… Here he totes around as some character with bipolar disorder with a more classic 60’s Bonnie.
It least he got to tootle around some sunny Californian streets on a sweet moto.
Posted in Movie, Triumph Bonneville |
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September 29, 2013
A wee scoot up the shore to blow the cobwebs out of the system. Super sunny skies, scudding water surface and a fresh breath of air.
For late September it is what could be considered Perfect Weather.
Posted in Chicago, Photography, Triumph Bonneville |
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