Our first order of business was to completely tear the bike down. With our excitement over this project, it took only the better part of the afternoon to do. And as she lay dismembered, with innards spilled over our shop, what was immediately noticeable was the amount of bullshit that Triumph has managed to hide and behind the side covers on these bikes, such as the big, clunky airbox, a 4-inch thick and mile long electrical-taped pipeline of a wiring harness, and what seemed like hundreds of California emissions and safety components. We knew that we had to do away with this clutter and get her down to only the necessary elements.
We started with the frame. Having built many a classic Trump, we knew what the lines of this frame should look like. Especially of importance was the classic straight line of the backbone from neck to ass. We came up with a design for this modern Triumph that retained a healthy respect for the old ways. Then we went to see our friend Josh at Killer Chopper to work it out for production. A little while later, our first prototype frame was back and ready to rock.
We got right to work on fabrication-and there was a lot of it to do on this bike! We started with the necessary first step things, like top motor mounts, mounts for the oil cooler, oil and gas tank mounts, seat mounts, and even more unexciting mounts for all the various other components (voltage regulator, coil, horn, etc). Then we got into the cool and fun stuff. We made a battery box for her. We radiused a Mexican trailer fender and mounted her up. We cut up and redesigned an old oil bag to suit our purposes (this is where we hide a lot of the electrics; the new Triumphs don't have an oil tank - its is all in the engine). We also made the z-bars, taillight/license bracket (complete with repop Vincent "Stop" light), and a set of custom forward controls. We made the exhaust as well; basically, we chopped up the stock exhaust till we got it how we wanted it, welded it up, heat-coated it, and then wrapped it with thermo-tech header wrap. The air cleaners are UNI-pods that we cut down to fit just right.
Outside of the custom made or altered pieces, there's also a small mix of stock Triumph and Harley components on her. The frontend and wheel/front brake setup is from an 84-99 FX. We threw a set of Norton fork gators on the frontend purely for the look. The handlebar risers are stock Triumph, as well as the levers, hand controls, and front master cylinder. The rear wheel and brake caliper is stock Triumph, with a little wider rubber. But we used a Harley master cylinder on our controls (the Triumph setup was fine when it was hidden on the stock incarnation of the bike, but too clunky on this streamlined chop). The gas tank is an early Harley Sportster tank, complete with Triumph kneepads just for looks and to screw with people.