The East Coast Replica
THE GUYS at East Coast Custom are regularly seen supporting the various custom bike shows and the drag races around the country. This means they are almost constantly travelling to the venues, setting up displays, etc. Then one day, Greg Shepherd (Managing Director and company founder) said, “Hey, instead of lugging this S&S Shovel engine everywhere, why don’t we build a motorcycle to showcase the products we wholesale?”
And so began the story of The East Coast Replica—the ultimate company bike.
They started with a ’53 replica frame. “You can buy a brand new replica frame like this reproduced down to the last detail,” said Neil Bolam (East Coast Custom’s National Marketing and Racing Manager). “The steering neck, the axle plate, etc, are all castings like the original. If you were to sandblast a genuine frame from 1953, put it on the bench next to this one, I would defy you to pick which is which. It’s that good.”
Pre-unit Triumphs are a bit thin on the ground these days, let alone one that pushes out 90 horsepower and pulls just over 90 mph over the 1/8 mile at the drags.
The Donnyville Triumph
words & pics by Keith Cole
THIS MODIFIED Triumph is the result of 20 years of back shed tinkering by a man who loves racing and doing things that other people say you can’t do. Donny Coveney is self-taught bike mechanic who fell in love with Triumphs when he was a 15-year-old teenager. He bought a ’67 T-bird while working at Morgan & Wackers in Brisbane. “I didn’t actually buy it from them,” said Donny, “but from the guy who did their heads. It had been a delivery bike with a sidecar on it. Since then I’ve had about 85 bikes but I’ve mainly stuck with the early Triumphs.”
Donny started road racing in the early ’80s with a 650 that would rev to 10 grand and pull about 140 mph. After a few blow-ups he went to a pre-unit 880 that ran Sonny Routt cases and cylinders
“I built the engine after I saw an article in a magazine about DT Howard in Pennsylvania in the good old US of A, said Donny. “He was known for his nitro burning Triumphs.”
The head was built by the famous Don West who has done, and still does, some of the heads on the fastest bikes in the world. He set up the two-stage Hillbourn injection on it, among other modifications, and got it ready to race.
“The first time I showed up to race it at the old Amaroo track in Sydney I was told the injection wasn’t legal for the era (Classic Race Pre-’63) of the bike. Luckily I had anticipated this problem and had all the right paperwork from Hilborn and Routt to prove the injection system had been around since 1945. They let me run and I stared at the back of a pack of 40 bikes because I didn’t have a grid position, but then I overtook 36 of them on the first lap but only run forth.”