British bikes, most of them have a history of one sort or another attached to them and mine has a rather loose Aussie and international connection. If any of you are interested here is the story of my Triumph 500 T100c.
Back in the 80s I restored a 98cc Brockhouse Corgi, the road-going civvy version of the Paratroopers motorcycle. After owning and running it for a couple of years I had the urge for a Triumph twin, an urge which had been with me since I saw one as a lad. I heard of a basket case up for grabs locally and decided to do a swap. On inspection, the bike had its original frame and engine numbers but was in a horrific state and bereft of its engine, this item consisted of two crankcase halves and a bucket of junk!
On inspection of the paperwork, the bike had originated in Edinburgh and was a street scrambler version with the twin exhaust pipes up one side. The whole machine from front to back was totally clapped out and any chromework had long since gone and been painted matt black. It had bald tyres, a chain you could wrap around your neck edgwise and a swingarm which was a sloppier fit than a sausage in the Dartford tunnel!
I could just picture the previous owner in my minds eye and if you are old enough you will remember him.. long dirty hair, black worn out motorcycle jacket with dangley leather strips which hung from the arms, dirty jeans and winkle picker shoes. I imagined him to have a roll- up stuck out the side of his mouth and pictured him without crash helmet, giving this oily, dirty old smoking heap a fistload of throttle as he roared up Princess Street with his hair flailing and a big grin on his face! Well, that was the vibes the bike gave me anyway.
I rebuilt the whole machine from front to back, took me a year, a load of money and everything was replaced barr the frame and the main engine components.. all the moving oily bits were scrap and some of the stuff in the bucket didn't even belong to a Triumph!
Thinking I was smarter than the Triumh designers, I balanced the engine thinking I was going to improve on the ubiquitous vibes but ended up with an engine which shook from front to back instead of up and down, needless to say, it failed dramatically six months later whilst warming the bike up in the garage when a flywheel retaining bolt sheared and smashed the guts of the engine.... good job I wasn't riding it at the time!
I scoured the bike mags for another engine and found one in Madrid in Spain. I couldn't go to Spain for an engine, that would be ridiculous and there was no way I was bunging off a load of hard earned to some bloke in a foriegn country for something I couldn't even verify existed. I phoned the chap up, he said he used to live in Australia, had bought a frame with and engine (reputedly ok) to build a racer, never got round to it and finally moved to Spain,where it now resided.
I had a potential customer in Madrid who, six months earlier had rather embarassingly for him, had to cancel an order for an Akula as he was strapped for cash This chap was so very apologetic at the time and struck me as being a very straightforward sort of person as I had had a few conversations with him. So six months down the road, I phoned him up and he agreed to check out the bike engine for me. I eventually paid a sum of money (not to be sneezed at) into his bank account and he paid the seller and collected my engine and frame assembly, this he took home and placed on his balcony of his flat in Madrid! His SWMBO was not overkeen as they were a bit pushed for room at the best of times.
He eventually arranged for a friend to stick it in the back of a van and bring it over to England on her next trip here. It ended up in the backyard of a bed and breafast hotel in Warwickshire and I drove down from Norfolk next day, met the lady driver, who spoke little English and offered to pay her for the delivery... she would not accept any money! When we got it all home, I phoned up a florist and arranged for a shipload of flowers to be sent to her and apparently, according to the Landlady, the woman was in floods of tears as she had never had flowers bought for her before!
On stripping the donor engine, it was found to be in superb condition but I decided to replace the barrels and pistons as they had a few scores. My engine was rebuilt from the donor engine, put back in the bike and has been running for the past eight years without any problems. At the end of the day I have to say it was worth the original swap as this bike has hauled me and SWMBO's bums all over Norfolk and we have loved it!
As footnote to the story, I phoned up the wife of my 'customer' in Madrid and found out when his birthday was. Months later and came the day, he woke up to find a large wooden box standing at the end of the bed... he finally had his submarine!
Thanks Pablo....wherever you are now!