Motorcycle Custom-Building Gone Wrong

One day in the fall of 1970 a “get-running” repair order dropped into the box in our shop. One of the mechanics picked it up and stepped out to the lot for the bike. What he rolled in was a pitiable wreck of a Triumph twin, sprayed sticky black, with loose 6-inch slugs in its fork tubes, struts replacing its rear shocks, and a board with Naugahyde stapled over a folded towel as a seat, retained by—you guessed it—gravity! Its immediate problems were electrical. Someone had “rewired” it in the style that was all too familiar—all wiring was black so every conductor had to be traced by hand, and no extra wire was provided to allow pulling out individual components for test.

Not everyone remembers slugs. The original chopper look was achieved by cutting off the steering head and then welding it back on at an increased rake angle, such that longer fork tubes kept the engine horizontal, close to the ground like the dragbikes that originally inspired the look. But cutting, adjusting, and welding require skills, so the multitude decided just to jam in longer tubes. This jacked up and tipped engines back, such that some at least had oil-scavenging problems—wet-sumping and smoking.

Still others didn’t want to ante up for either a cut steering-head or complete longer tubes. For them, there was the horror of slugs. You unscrew the two fork caps and screw the slugs in their place. This makes the fork tubes longer but at the cost of passing large bending loads through the weak screwed joint between slug and tube. Spacers were inserted to keep the fork springs at their task. Then by loosening the tube clamp bolts on the lower fork crown, the slug-extended tubes could be pulled through to raise the front of the bike. Not quite as easy as stepping into a pair of new bell-bottoms, but almost.

At some point in this bike’s life, someone (usually described by customers as “my buddy”) had sought to improve the electrical system in some way. Extra lights? A patent horn that said, “Ta-ta-ta-TAA”? As they say in DC, “Mistakes were made,” and the altered wiring caught fire and fried all the electrics, leaving melted black insulation dripping from what used to be wires. On the R.O. our service writer had written “R&R wire harness” (R&R is "remove and replace").

At this point someone stepped through from the showroom and said, "Hey, guys? That get-running junker on Jack's lift there? We sold that bike brand new this last spring! It sure has come a long way in six months."