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Triumph TR 6 discussion forum:Great $500.00 Bike |
| Great $500.00 Bike |
| Jerry said 2002-10-19 09:21 |
| In 1979, I had a motorcycle accident, which put me in the hospital for a month. After two more months of convalescence at home, I was finally able to walk again. About a week later, I found a 1972 Triumph 650 for sale for $500.00 The odometer claimed about 21,500 miles. Judging by the amount of wear on the bike, and the claim that the owner made about commuting from Covina, CA to Santa Barbara several times a week, it was very possible that it was actually 121,500 miles. From late 1979 to mid 1981, I used this bike as my main transportation. To and from work 6 days a week, many trips to the beach and the desert. I have a friend who lives in 29 Palms, CA, and to get to his home, I had to ride over several miles of dirt road. The Triumph was an excellent bike for this type of riding. It was very agile, had plenty of power, and was "non-pristine" enough that if it got a little dirty, or if I were to have dumped it (I never did!), it would not have been heartbreaking. One memory I have of riding out to visit my friend was a day when a friend and I were riding together up CA State Route 62 toward 29 Palms. If you are not familiar with SR 62, there is a stiff crosswind. It is a stiff enough crosswind that I thought it would be a good location for wind turbines, and indeed now there are a large number of wind farms all through that area. Anyway, as my friend and I were riding north on SR 62, I looked in my mirror and saw he was leaning about 5º to 7º into the wind. It was quite a sight! He claimed I was doing the same thing. This was not a trouble free bike by any stretch of the imagination. For example, it leaked oil. When I needed to go somewhere wearing nice clothes, I had to wear something over my good clothes to prevent the oil from damaging my clothes. I also had the alternator quit, the lights went out when I was riding across Joshua Tree National Monument about midnight one night, and when I was in Big Sur, I broke a push rod. This led to my meeting Frank Conley, a man who raced Greeves motorcycles during the ´60s, and who was restoring vintage British bikes by the early ´80s. By late summer ´81, I felt I wanted a different bike. I had started refurbishing the Triumph, but it was going slow, and I was getting impatient to ride again. I saw a good deal on a new ´81 Goldwing, so I bought that. I handed the parts of the Triumph over to a friend to put back together. After a couple months I asked him how he was coming with it, and found out he had "lost" it. At the time, I wasn´t too worried about it, since I had the ´wing, but I was puzzled. How does someone "lose" a whole motorcycle? Unfortunatly, this was 20 years ago, and my friend has since passed away, so I guess I will never really know. Wish I had this bike now. Of the half dozen or so bikes I´ve had, the Triumph was probably the most fun. Also, it got the best mileage, running between 60 and 70 mpg. Jerry |
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