Martin Harris

(from Triumph sales literature)

See how big the bike looks - I think the Trading Standards people would take exception these days - this is quite a small motorcycle in reality!

I first owned the Terrier at the tender age of 16 and let a friend "take it off my hands" a couple of years later as I was beginning to build up a bit of a fleet. Some years later, after the poor little machine had undergone a partial restoration, followed by a succession of homes in sheds and garages, it ended up sitting forlornly in the middle of my friend's garden, lashed by wind and rain, ravaged by the frosts of winter and baked by summer suns. My pleas to let me rescue it were finally answered and I loaded it into my trailer on the eve of the great storm of '87. Here's what it looked like when it returned to me after so many years...

I then spent more years than I care to admit, collecting missing parts and looking for replacements - especially the cylinder head, which had been replaced with one from a Cub after it was lost in the depths of Rolls Royce's small aero engine plant, where it went to be vapor blasted during the bike's stay with my friend - and the cylinder barrel, which was already at +.060" and had suffered badly with internal rust. Amazingly, bearing in mind the comparative rarity of Terriers, one lunchtime I was talking to a friend at work about bikes, who told me that he thought his father had a Terrier engine somewhere in his garage! I bought what turned out to be a complete (stripped) T15 engine, including a new piston and re-bored barrel and a box of engine spares, which gave me the basis to start rebuilding the motor. Once I had a running engine (although I subsequently decided to rebuild it using the original crankcases), I started the hard work of rust and paint r

These are some of the bits after a little work...

...or at least - how they were before this happened!

I'd left all the parts on a table in my garage overnight, ready for spraying the next day when conditions looked promising for applying the finishing coats. I'd also had to rub down the gloss on the tank and a few other bits that I'd sprayed a couple of years before, in preparation for re-finishing them, as the paint manufacturer had stopped supplying cellulose and I couldn't get an exact match from another maker. I'd run out shortly before taking the right hand picture above, but fortunately, I think the new paint is a closer match to the original Amaranth Red. When I could bring myself to check the damage (several days later!) I found that the paint was chipped right through to the metal in several places on every part.

Anyway, after an awful lot more work (There are at least 36 separate parts to paint - plus the frame and seat pan), I was back to the situation before the disaster. The parts below were photographed "straight from the gun" and at least the extra practice helped me achieve a pleasing result.

The frame was eventually sent off for powder coating, due to adhesion problems which affected the stove enameling (unfortunately in black) that had been done for my friend whilst the bike was "in care". It seemed that the cellulose paint that I'd sprayed had pulled the stove enamel from the frame, right down to the metal wherever there were concave areas. I assume that this was due to contraction as the paint dried. As powder coating in an exact match was uneconomical, I top coated the new finish with cellulose, so that a perfect color match resulted but with the idea that any chips acquired in service shouldn't really show too much.

Then the real the fun started - putting the shiny new and restored parts together. The first major assembly task involved lacing up the wheel- spokes and tensioning them on my "patented" wheel building jig. This was surprisingly straightforward once I'd had the (oversized) spokes exchanged and realized that the spoke holes in the hubs were asymmetric from side to side. This meant that it was critical to start the first spoke from the correct side of the hub - and the only way I could tell was when it didn't look right once they were all in place (on both wheels!) It caused me a lot of head-scratching as checking the photos of the old wheels that I'd taken for reference didn't make the problem at all obvious.

Followed by a little "light" refreshment!

(sorry)

Along the way, I had to make and modify quite a few parts - below are a small selection of some that I fabricated and then nickel plated using a "home" plating kit.

STOP PRESS 31st March 2001

 

After moving it downstairs last week and doing the final assembly and checks, the moment of truth arrived at @ 17.00 BST when it burst into life on the fourth kick. It moved a couple of yards under it's own power (the only distance available). I've got a little fine tuning to do yet as it's running a bit rich and there are a couple of minor oil leaks - but that just proves it's a Triumph! I'm awaiting a decision from the DVLA about whether I can retain it's old registration before taking it for a spin for the first time in the best part of 30 years! Having the bike so close to being on the road reminds me of the (not totally successful, if you follow my meaning) wait for my sixteenth birthday, before my first road-ride on a motorbike...

Click on the picture above to see the finished project (it only took me 14 years!)

When I bought the bike - swapped for an old scooter and £15, in '71 - it was painted green all over (see the front hub on the "before" shot at the top of this page). Although I found original Amaranth Red under the green paint, it had been done to a good standard. Were any Terriers supplied or converted for military or civil defense work? It was delivered to a normal dealer in Hammersmith from the factory, according to Mike Estall, keeper of the VMCC's Terrier and Tiger Cub records, so this appears unlikely (here's a long-shot - how about for a patrol bike in nearby Richmond Park?). I tried to trace the history between delivery and the previous owner to me, but the local council had dumped all their old records some years previously. I don't suppose any pre-1971 owners of RLX 653 would be very likely to be browsing the internet, but you never know!

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