Just Joined....thought I'd say hello

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Hi, I'm at the beginning of a new Café Racer build and found this site whilst trawling the net for inspiration.
The new bike is based on a 1981 GS550e, which I bought off Ebay some time ago. The original brief was to build a sprint bike for racing the 1/4 and1/8th mile tracks with the NSA [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] but on tearing the bike down I found some major issues....... the biggest of the lot was a large amount of filler in the frame tubes..........Yep, I'd been turner over real good! But not being a violent man, I figure what goes around, comes around and the little **** will get his eventually.
Anyway, after a while of contemplation, I bought my self a second hand frame and have begun the now long overdue build process.
This is where we are at just now............
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The plan is to add a full fairing and a Barry Sheene inspired heron Suzuki paint job
This is my first foray into Japanese metal for some time. A far cry from my usual comfort zone of British tin.
This is my daily rider at present...............
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She's a 1979 T140 Bonneville with Norman Hyde rear sets and M bars and straight through reverse cone megas (not strictly for road use, but well......irat: ) this picture was taken at the site of Triumph Engineering's Meriden factory, which was closed and demolished in 1983. It's now a housing estate built by John Bloor, the guy behind the new triumph brand.

Hi.
Looks like a nice build.
All good fun!

hi
not far from you just a few miles north in yam yam land
likein the seat unit on the gs
but great to see another brit bike on here
just at the start of another british build myself so on the look out ATM for bits and bobs if you know of any manx stuff

cheers miffa

Hi and welcome

Hi and welcome, the GS is looking good, I've got my eye on a 450 just up the road from me, bit smaller than my normal bikes (last one was a XJR1300) but I quite fancy something I can get the engine out of without a crane!

Good luck with the build, oh and love your T140, this is what mine looked like when I eventually sold it, mine also had stright throughs, no-one could ever say they didn't hear you coming!

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yeh hi, nice trumpet and what a cool place to build a café racer.. looks like the front room with the piano etc, least it'll be nice and warm in the coming months  

Thanks Russ, yeah the warmth is a great help, scrabling around on the floor of a freezing cold garage or worse still outside on the drive is never good.............however the wife has to be a very cool bird in order for it to happen.
Thing have moved on somewhat since those photos and I've neglected the build blog, so watch this space for some updates soon.

Breadline Racing wrote:

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She's a 1979 T140 Bonneville with Norman Hyde rear sets and M bars and straight through reverse cone megas (not strictly for road use, but well......irat: ) this picture was taken at the site of Triumph Engineering's Meriden factory, which was closed and demolished in 1983. It's now a housing estate built by John Bloor, the guy behind the new triumph brand.

It's a popular misconception that JS Bloor developed the Meriden Factory site, he didn't. Although not 100% sure I believe it was Bryants and Walker Homes but it wasn't Bloor. Welcome to the site btw

Well, in that case the Hinkley set up has even less to do with the Triumph name.
In my opinion, the new bikes being called the same names as the old bikes, really devalues the marque.