A Girl’s Triumph Motorcycle Addiction
Road Tales by Kelly Ashton
PEOPLE get obsessed with all different things—drugs, alcohol, gambling, food and even sex—but I know a girl who’s addicted to a motorbike. I first met Jane a few years back. She knocked on my door on a wintery Sunday night and said something like, “Hi, I live a few doors up the road and I’ve bought a Trumpy—it’s unreal; come and have a look.”
So I strolled up the road with her, and under torchlight, had a squizz at the rattiest, worst and dirtiest Triumph motorcycle that ever turned a wheel. It was a bloody shocker—you’d swear the previous owner performed annual oil changes by flinging sludge at the bike from a distance of five metres. Every single part was either bent, cracked, broken, or simply not there.
“Umm, it’s, err, nice,” I lied.
“The bloke I got it from reckons it runs,” she declared with wide-eyed innocence. “I’m gunna do it up so it’s beautiful and then I’m gunna ride it everywhere.”
The poor girl had no idea what she’d let herself in for, but I had to admire her enthusiasm. “Let’s roll ’er down to my place tomorrow in the light of day and see what’s what.”
On Monday afternoon, Jane was banished to a far corner of the back yard with a gallon of kerosene, a high pressure hose, a selection of brushes; even a paint scraper, as the indescribable crud coating the Trumpy was inches thick in places.
A few hours later, something resembling a Triumph motorcycle emerged. About the condition of the ‘before’ photo.
A closer look brought some promise. The crankcases were a matched pair, the engine number was an untampered-with virgin (that’s a rare occurrence on unit-construction Trumpies these days). The engine number even matched that of the frame. The frame carried the original factory compliance sticker, plus the extra number on the steering head which denoted it an ex-cop bike. The forks, wheels and tanks all came from the same ex-police 1970 Triumph Trophy.
Things were looking up, and it even looked like it would almost start. Some fresh oil was chucked in, points, plugs and carb were cleaned and Jane kicked ’er in the guts. Joy of joys! The bastard fired up first kick and settled down into a nice idle. And the lights worked. Jeez, things were lookin’ even better now, and Jane’s enthusiasm was starting to rub off on me. The tyres were quickly pumped up and Jane sneaked her new bike out for a ride.
The test ride was a hoot.
Picture this: It’s a dark Monday night. I’m on my bike, a nearly-new FXR Harley-Davidson Super Glide. Jane’s on her very old Triumph Trophy. She’s got no rego, no back brake (the brake was connected but the pedal could be pushed so far it scraped on the ground with still no shoe-to-drum contact) and then there were ocky straps, wire and gaffer tape holding various parts in place. But the bike sounded nice, and over the sound of her motor, I could hear little whoops of joys that said she was pleased with her purchase.
And that’s when the cop car pulls in behind us. No need to panic, I thought—I’m not doing anything illegal—she is!
I turn right at a roundabout to take us further into the deserted wastelands of Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and looked back to see if the cop car followed us. Hmm, no cop car—but no Jane either. That’s because the cop car was stuck behind Jane’s Trump in the middle of one of those pissy little roundabouts. The Trump’s front brake had seized on solid, and that bike wasn’t going anywhere.
I chucked a U-ey and was heading back to say, “I’ve never seen this girl before in my life, officer,” when the cops get the shits with waiting and drives over the roundabout and into the night. They should’ve been at least curious…
Much cursing and shoving freed the brake, but then the cable snapped. Serious contemplation followed. Should I really let this strange girl ride a dangerous deathtrap home, or because of my vast experience riding dangerous deathtraps, be a gentleman and offer to ride it back for her, she riding the much safer Harley? Ummm… No!
So Jane rode the now totally brakeless, rattling, flapping motorbike home and I just gotta say, I was impressed! This Jane was no make-up-wearing, can’t-drive-a-manual-car girl. No sirree!
On safe arrival, she proclaimed, “It’s beautiful—the best bike I’ve ever ridden.”
“Yeah, right-oh,” I sighed. “Reckon it might need a bit of work, though.”
With the bike partially dismantled, we’d discovered why the brake seized on. The cheapshit-Chinese bonded lining had fallen off one of the brake shoes and was hanging loose inside the hub.
That could’ve turned nasty, and the whole bike looked as shonky as the front brake, so the options were placed in front of her: firstly, she could lash it up, register it and ride it into the ground as a rat-bike; secondly, do some serious repair work and get the sucker half-reliable; the third, and best option, was to faithfully restore it to showroom condition.
She made that decision to restore it instantly and I warned her there and then, she was in for a long and arduous task full of equal parts joy and despair.
By Tuesday night, the bike was in the largest number of tiny pieces possible. A bit of good news was slipped into what was mostly a sordid tale of horror. In the mass of spares that came with it was a brand new set of fork stanchions, plus a new alternator stator and wiring harness. There was even an ex-cop Murphy sidecar too, but the rest of this Trump was completely worn-out.
Internally the donk wasn’t too bad, if you don’t count a bent conrod, a semi-seized piston and the flogged-out condition of every bearing housing.
Every single alloy casting on the entire bike was either cracked, dented or mangled. The rocker boxes, both crankcase halves, timing cover, inner and outer gearbox covers, the cylinder head, primary case, and even the front brake plate, were all laboriously welded up and filed back.
Then came time to haunt the swap-meets where some absolute bargains were seized upon. The correct ’70 mudguards were proving to be a problem, but a bit of detective work brought some to light. A mate from the racetrack, Dave Dickie, donated the front one. He’d bought a brand new Trophy in 1970 and promptly ran into the back of a car. The dent, though bad enough for him to buy a new guard, was but a mere scratch to a restorer a quarter-of-a-century later.
Now, anyone who’s run unit-construction Trumpies knows the back guards are prone to cracking, but Jane’s bike was the worst I’d seen. When added together, the length of the 17 cracks in the guard totalled 27 inches which, coincidentally, was the exact number of holes that should be in a 1970 Triumph Trophy mudguard. We had many more stray holes. Sections of the guard had literally fallen out. Finding a replacement proved elusive until a chance comment by Peter Dunster, another classic racing mate who lived in Canberra: “Yeah,” he said, “I’ve got a ’70 Trophy guard on my old BSA Rocket III—a slab of tins and it’s yours.”
As luck would have it, the next weekend was the 1993 Ozbike Thunder Drags in Canberra, so Pete received two visitors bearing beer and mudguard-removing spanners. The Rocket III was in the deepest, darkest recess of a long shed, hemmed in by other bikes, lawnmowers and other assorted crap. We had to do the sheepdog trick across the top of the junk. “That’s the one!” Jane and I yelled in unison as we peered into the dim torch beam.
“I’ll drag it out in a few weeks and send it up to Sydney,” Pete offered, but we couldn’t hear him over the din of twirling spanners.
For the rest of the Thunder Drags weekend, Jane was inseparable from what Bull-Bar came to christen ‘the sacred mudguard’. And when the Ozbike entourage headed back to Sydney, the pillion on one of the bikes clutched a Trumpy mudguard which made for interesting aerodynamics up around the ton.
Whatever parts the swap-meets couldn’t supply second-hand, was purchased new from one of Sydney’s three main Pommy bike shops. A few bits were obtained from George Heggie at Punchbowl (no longer there, RIP George Heggie); more from Ryans of Parramatta (no longer there, RIP Barry Ryan); and an unbelievable amount from Jim Eades at Ashfield (no longer there, RIP Jim Eades).
While Jane became an expert on identifying motorcycle parts (more to the point, deducing whether a certain part was from a 1970 Trophy or some other thing not worth worrying about), she also became well versed in the joys of filing, sanding, scraping, drilling and tapping as she valiantly tried to salvage all the original fasteners on the bike. There’d be no Allen bolts or stainless steel Nylocs for her Trump. Most of the original fasteners were reclaimed, some even to the point of welding up the burred flats. The reason? “The bike’s bolts had the markings ‘GSF’ stamped into the heads when it left the factory, so I wanted my bike to be the same.”
Fair enough.
Throughout the 15 months the rebuild took, Jane only had one real disappointment, but it was a huge one. She was adamant that no plastic body-filler would be used on any of the tinware. I suggested we take the headlight shell, headlight brackets and petrol tank to a sports car restorer around the corner. This bloke did immaculate, ground up restorations on Rolls Royces, Jaguars and Ferraris, I explained, so he’s gotta be good.
I was wrong.
After nine months, the parts, which were supplied to him in shiny, bare metal, were ready to pick up. The tank, which only needed two small dents removed and a leak fixed up, now had 17 leaks and no longer fitted the frame it came off. The headlight shell, rather than having one small dent removed from one side, had another small dent placed perfectly opposite to match. The fatigue split in one headlight mount was repaired satisfactorily, while the small dent in the other mount was successfully removed. The price? One thousand, seven hundred and sixty seven dollars. But that was done at the cheap rate, because the apprentice did it. It’s funny, but when you’re charging $45 per hour for apprentice’s rates, instead of the $90 per hour for master craftsmen rate, it doesn’t get any cheaper when the apprentice takes five and a half times more hours than the tradesman would!
Somewhere in between “you’re joking, aren’t you” and “go fuck yourself” I managed to tell this cretin we didn’t come here to get a cheap job, we wanted a perfect job and his apprentice was just practicing on Jane’s parts and ruining them. I also told him he’d just bought himself about $250 worth of Triumph tinware for $1767. We wanted him to do the work, not the useless apprentice. On the fourth attempt, he managed to get the last of the leaks out of the tank, rearrange the tank mounts and fix the headlight shell. Then, he grudgingly accepted a much more realistic payment.
With more things getting straighter, and a painted frame sitting on the high bench, things were changing and getting a lot better to look at.
Other things were changing in the workshop, too: the relationship between Jane, the student, and me, the teacher, was getting closer. It was a case of: “Here, chickie, here’s how you hold the hacksaw; that’s it, put your left hand there like this, and your right elbow should be bent to this angle, and, oh, yeah, that’s right, brace with your thighs, and ahhh, yeah, baby, long, straight, forceful strokes, but ease pressure while you’re pulling back, that’s it, baby, that’s it, yes, Yes, YE-E-E-E-S!
It must’ve been so freakin’ obvious.
The final assembly was a breeze, and when the Trump finally hit the road, it looked damned close to what it did when it left the factory 24 years earlier.
Jane’s obsession with having the perfect Triumph paid off. The Trophy scored trophies: Best British at Highway 61 MC’s 1994 Bankstown Show, then Best British at The Finks MC’s 1994 Northern Beaches Show, before rounding the year out with Best Stock British at the Bikers Australia Fire Museum Show.
And there was nothing—no rain or hail or freezing weather—could keep her off her bike, or wipe the satisfied grin off her face while she was riding it. She rode that Trophy every day to work at both her jobs, and zapped all over Southern, Northern and Central Western New South Wales. Even T-boning a dopey bitch in a car after it turned right in front of her didn’t faze her for long. Hurt her shoulder real bad, and trashed the front-end of the Trophy but that was soon fixed—well before the shoulder got better.
There was one time I remember when Jane showed her true colours. It was a drizzly, crap Sunday afternoon and she was getting ready to go to her second job, a four-hour shift as a home care nurse. It was about four klikks away, so normally it would be a neat little ride there, and four hours later, a neat little ride back but not so much in the rain.
I was busy working on the road race outfit with four mates present offering their various skills gained through decades of motorcycling when Janey made the mistake of asking to use the ute to get to work, save dirtying up the just-polished Trumpy.
“Sure, baby, of course you can!” I told her.
Well! Didn’t sweet Jane cop a ribbing from the four long-time bikers in my garage that day.
“Fair weather bikie chick,” said one.
“Awww, widdle bit of wetty water, Snookums,” mocked another, along with many other jibes and japes.
Jane disappeared for about five minutes, then strode to her gleaming Trophy fully kitted out with wet-weather gear, before stabbing the kick started and warming the engine.
The fellas were mortified.
“Aww, come on, we were just funnin’ you,” said one.
“Please, let me drive you there in my car,” pleaded another. They all felt so terrible as they watched her splash off into the murk.
“Why drive cars when you can ride bikes,” was her parting shot at the now silent and shamed smart-arses. “I should be okay to squeeze past all those cars parked in the driveway,” was thrown in for added effect.
Twenty years after I first met Jane and her rotting Trophy, we’ve got two motorbike-mad kids and are 10 years into a marriage with no hope of parole.
Road Tales by Kelly Ashton
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