Featured Triton

Pictures of an enlarged print so a bit blurry at this resolution. Nevertheless, a beautiful machine.

 

Thanks.

Hmmmmm ..... I'll have to have a scrabble through my prints to see if I got a RHS one enlarged - can't remember. It shouldn't take too much imagination to piicture it, though .... 'standard' pre-unit 650 with (I think) the Triumph 'box; (Unity?) rear sets and remote linkage.

There is long story attendant to the bike - but that's for another time!

I should make it clear that I didn't build it - wish I had THAT level of skill!! It was conceived, designed and built by a California friend who, eventually, allowed me to buy it. For more than one reason it has a very special meaning for me.

Unfortunately, at the moment it's not quite in the same condition and is in my "grudge" awaiting a thorough refresh - shame on me, I know.

 

Many, many thanks for all the lovely comments about the Triton. It IS, indeed, @Sandi T a very special bike - a unique product from a unique person!

I did actually have a write-up article about the bike published in an early edition of RealClassic but, regrettably, I'm one of those horribly disorganised people that should somewhere have a copy filed carefully away but ........ well, you can guess the rest.

I'll try to remember some of the rich detail that makes this beautiful machine so unique, so interesting - in my view - and maybe do a brief profile in the not too distant! In the meantime, for those that might be interested and don't know, that front brake is a 4LS from a 60s/70s Yamaha TZ350 race bike.

Standby one. ;-))

 

Yes, it does ride very well - not quite as good as it looks but only inasmuch as the seat is not exactly the epitome of contoured comfort!! But the sound and the handling are sublime - no baffles in those short meggas! That brake IS the business but .......

... that front brake was almost enough to pitch the owner/builder over the handlebars on the bike's first real outing! It was treated with much greater respect (or fear?) on its journey home .... and then it was immediately internally 'downgraded' from a 4LS to a 2LS as a far more practical expedient! It still looks absolutely bloody gorgeous though, doesn't it?

 

Thanks Iceman. My friend who built the bike had that brake kicking around in his workshop for decades, always with the intention of incorporating it into a "special" build. He reckoned he'd bought it very cheaply - along with some other bits - in the seventies when, according to him, they could be picked up for a song as people converted older race bikes to those new-fangled disc brake thingies! He used to say that he knew of more than one that was retrieved from a dumpster (skip) for scrap value! That was probably apocryphal but close to true.

You're right about the current values - there's one on ebay at the moment for £1,499. I've actually got, somewhere in my 'spares stash' a Norton 2LS and, whilst not anything like as impressive as the Yam. brake, it will, I think, look a lot more 'period appropriate' when I do eventually get round to getting the Triton registered and road legal. Any recoup from selling the brake will only fractionally offset the price I paid for the Triton but , for me, the Triton's a priceless object!

Thanks again.