Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and while this perfect Pre-Unit Triumph is remarkable now, it didn't start out that way. In fact, the eBay seller told (now owner) Mike Davis, that it was an awesome sight to behold and almost perfect-he forgot to add "wreck" to the almost perfect part. Unfortunately the bike had been shipped to Mike in sunny Southern California from the Rocky Mountains after Mike "won" the bike on the popular auction site. This meant any recourse against the crack pot preacher seller would be tough due to the distance. Mike assured the vicar that if he didn't give him his money back, he'd come get it, but luckily a deal was made and Mike "got" to keep the bike.
He mothballed it for three years in disgust, before getting a wild hair up his posterior and decided he wanted to build a full '60s style show bike with it. For those that don't know, Mike has been collecting rare Triumph and H-D parts for many years now with lots of them being new old stock. Of course one can't set out to build a bike like this haphazardly and have it turn out like it should, so some late night mind wandering and talking shop with those that are also in-the-know was in order. Mike went to talk with a good friend of his, Mark Drews, who knows a thing or two about '60s show bikes. Mark's best advice knowing that Mike had a good eye to begin with was that it'll come to him-and after a while it did.
Picking out select NOS and rare parts from his stash, Mike began mocking up the Pre-Unit. He had been sitting on a super rare finned timing cover for some time now and knew it along with the right frontend parts had to go on this bike. There's a set of scarce de-raked racing triple trees, Webco fork covers, Stelling & Hellings bars, and the narrowest WM0 Akront rim shod in a long unavailable 2.75x21 Speedmaster that all makeup a proper '60s show bike frontend.
Mike took the motor to his friend Meatball at Hell On Wheels to go through and freshen it up. Of course Mike had some parts he wanted Meatball to use like a polished dual carb '59 Bonneville head with two chrome Amal 930s, an old nickel-plated barrel, NOS MCM rocker caps, and the finned timing cover amongst other things.
For the tank and paint, Mike naturally went over to his friend John Edwards place to discuss what the bike needed. John came up with an old Wassell tank that had been dished back in the day and began stripping it, redoing the bodywork, and painting it gloss black with color panels in each dish with a white pinstripe border. The tank is very clean and subtle in contrast to many of the period metalflake and candy jobs John does and works perfectly on the Triumph. Just behind the tank is a pleated solo seat from Mooneyes and behind that is a NOS chrome ribbed fender mounted to a custom sissy bar by Chica.
Mike admits that he got a little anxious and skipped chrome and polish on a few things here and there because he was finally excited about the bike and wanted to get it on the road where it belonged! He'll revisit those unpolished areas later. All in all, in a world of ratty Triumphs with pipe wrap and overly stretched hardtail sections, it's very refreshing to see that someone actually knows what a clean Triumph can look like!