INCOMING!
RC readers write, rant and rattle on... Summat to say? Send your comments, hints, tips, tales of woe and derring-don’t to: RCHQ@RealClassic.net
TRIPLE INSPIRATION
I was inspired by the article in RC171 about Triumph Tridents and the longevity of the owners’ relationships with these bikes. I am the current owner of a very late model T150V which was made in October 1974, just a month before production switched to the T160V. Most of our bikes have names and for some reason my wife named this one ‘The Beast’.
Little did I know when, somewhat to my surprise, I won the eBay auction for a used T150V in August 2007 that I was basically taking on a legacy. What attracted me to the Trident was that it was obviously a bike for riding rather than polishing. It was affordable and only had two previous owners at that point. The then-current owner had owned the bike for approximately 10 years.
It didn’t occur to me to ask about the mileage of the bike. After all, a classic bike is only as good as its last rebuild. Right? Only once I was handed the thick sheaf of documents that came with the bike did I find out that the original owner, one Martin Jones, had purchased the bike from Copes of Birmingham in February 1975. He then used the Trident for the next 20 years as his sole transport, eventually replacing it with one of the new Hinckley triples.
Over such a long period of time, the T150 inevitably went through a number of iterations. An Avon
