It used to be that when a guy chopped a Triumph it was for no other reason than the dude just didn't have the money to buy a Harley. Those days are now long gone and people of all shapes and sizes are passing up perfectly good Big Twins and Sportys for Trumps and Beezers. Our man Matt Meguess from Carroltown, Pennsylvania decided that he wanted to get his hands on part of the '60s British Invasion in the form of a '68 Triumph Bonneville. Matt looked around on the internet and checked with friends for almost a year until he found the right one.
Once his hands were actually on the bike, he and his boys from Jax Cycle tore down the stock 650cc Bonny, cleaned up the motor, and popped in some 40 over pistons. The transmission is the stock OE unit that came with the motor with a brass kicker pedal added instead of the stock Triumph shin scraper.While the engine and all the other mechanical stuff was out of the frame, Matt welded on a hardtail, then rattle-can painted the frame, Mustang tank, and fender a lovely shade of shit brown. When the poo-poo paint was dry, Matt bolted up a vintage narrow springer with a spool-hubbed 21-inch wheel wrapped with a Cheng Shin Speedmaster knock-off. Out back, an H-D 16-inch rim was mated to a Triumph drum hub that also had a Cheng Shin offering mated to it.
When it was time for the re-worked motor to go back in, Matt added a hex oil tank/battery box and slapped some "68" decals on each side to commemorate the bike's born-on date. The bike uses a Jammer axle mounted taillight and a headlight that was stolen off of a friend of Matt's long abandoned motorcycle project.In the control department, 12-inch chrome z-bars were bolted to a set of 8-inch swapmeet-found risers. A Flanders dual-pull throttle handles the Amal Monoblock carburetors that are topped off with twin velocity stacks.
For an exhaust, Matt found some vintage flat track dual-side exit slash-cut pipes that had the perfect amount of chrome and rust on them to match the rest of the bike. With all the hardware tested and tuned, the crowning touch to the Sewer Pickle was the hand-tooled leather seat and right-hand saddlebag made by Danny Mort.Matt can be seen running through the Sewer Pickle's gears all over PA's Hershey highways, spreading the gospel that ratty British bikes are way more cool than your factory-bred, belt-driven, iPod playing HOG mobile. SC