How things change eh?

You know, I have an old bike in the shed that is oily and needs
repairing, always going out of tune, bits break on it, its slow powered,
doesn't stop so well and you wouldn't entirely trust it to get it where
you're going. If you stop certain people stop and talk about the old
days and you find yourself forced to look for spares in auto jumbles and
from some bloke you heard about in the pub.
Tomorrow I will be picking up a brand new state of the art motorbike
with great brakes, chrome bits and a stonking great engine.
Now here's the thing; ones built by a Japanese firm called Honda.
The other is made here in Britain by a firm called
Triumph....................
I'm grinning like a cheshire cat me.

 

The message <>

And quite rightly too.

I only ever had one Triumph (Trophy) and wished I hadn't.

 

/chastened
Bah. Enthusiasm; always got me in trouble.............

 

Thus spake mark () unto the assembled multitudes:

I'll assume the new one's the Triumph, so your grin will stay I am sure.
I still love riding my Trident 900 which is now early 16 years old, even
though I've been thinking of getting a Tiger 1050.

Enjoy!

 

The message <>

Can't think why I got one?
Can't think why I regretted it?

 

Oh, had LOADS of other SOBs, only one of which I *REALLY* hated, and
that was the Old Man's choice for me, against my better judgement,
because I wasn't 21...

(BSA Dandy, if anyone's curious. At the time, it was a SNB bike.)

 

I rather think I wouldn't mind one of the new Triumphs though.

Mine was a 650cc vibro-massage machine - after any sort of run
stretching into a couple of miles or more, my fingers would be
vibrating/buzzing/numb for quite a while.

Sold it, and bought a Clubman's Venom.

 

Probably only the valve stem seals. They are a favourite cause of smoke
on older engines..

 

Now, that was a nice bike.

I quite fancied the 900RS triumph they did a bit back. There was a shiney
one at the Ally Pally show, I remember sitting on it and thinking "yeah,
this fits nicely".

 

It is very lovely. I find the irony hugely amusing
Leaky old jap iron in the shed and a shiny new bike made in the land of
the falling rain to annoy the rice boys
Tee hee..

 

Glad to see that you are helping to pull the country out of recession
by spending loadsamoney buying british.

Enjoy.

 

....

You didn't!

I couldn't find a cheap enough Bantam, so I got a Dandy. £9 reduced from
£11 for a sale by the weekend.

And another for the front forks...

A Dandy cylinder-head still graces one corner of the She<<<garage.

 

LOL
Relive your youth
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1957-BSA-GREY_W0QQitemZ140318472974

-

 

I'm sure my mum had one of those back in the day.

I know she also had a James - don't know if it was a Comet or Cadet,
though.

 

That's an early one, and it seems to be missing some cowlybits round the
engine, IIRC.

The prototypes were tested amongst other places, at the Boy Scouts'
Jubilee Jamboree at Sutton Coldfield in 1956, where I saw one in
motion³¾. Prototypes were started with a lever rather than a kickstart,
as per some aggro-cultural plant.

³¾ If anyone else attended, they will appreciate that I use the words
'in motion' advisedly.

 

The bike I wanted was a very tidy secondhand Excelsior Talisman twin. £10.

 

Looks like the thing I had. Maybe they added those later.

And early production versions. Maybe they sold the proto-types to the
public? Seemed to work OK, just felt a bit cheated not having a proper
kick-start. But then again...

Yup. Two-speed pre-selector gear-box. Speeds - slow and very slow.
Indicated maximum of 25 m.p.h. IIRC

Therefore wasn't going that fast when a right-hander tightened and
dropped away shortly after looming up faster than a cyclist expected.

It was probably the braking on the way in that lightly cast the front
wheel aside and bent the forks. The man cutting his hedge there barely
paused, shears still poised, to check the result of yet another
falling-off.

The handling was never quite the same with replacement forks. And it
would run for about a quarter of a mile at a time. Damage to carb or
something else?

 

The message <p1iQyQKajr$>
from Peter <> contains these words:

/snip/

Mine, bought in August 1959, had a kickstart.

Not that - I was referring to the mud - with thousands of happy campers
and even more visitors, the dandy wasn't the best choice. Something like
a Trials Cotton might have been better.

My Dandy managed IIRC, an indicated 51 MPH. I was not impressed - a
colleague's NSU Quickly topped sixty...

Pass.

I couldn't wait to pay off the hire purchase and find something more
like a motorbike. I really *HATED* the thing, and I guess it knew it,
and that's why it never obliged me by being remotely reliable.

Anthropomorphism reigns!

The only scooterly machine I've ever respected is a Rumi.

 

It's always a problem when misty-eyed old gimmers wax all nostalgic
about their fucking C50 fucking stepthrough, isn't it?
I hope you like your Hinkley.