Triumph Pre Unit Drag Bike Progress Photos

Pretty excited about how this is coming along, and quickly, with my late night hours in the shop working on it. I made some tubular alloy gas tanks a week or two ago and here they are fresh from the polisher. I couldn't be more stoked on these! Also, the polished up 1970 Yamaha XS1 front brake hub all polished up, brake plate is getting worked on now. I got exci.ted and had to mock the bike up with tire and such to check it out. Sending out my rims and hubs to get laced up at Buchanan's tomorrow morning. I have my eye on the prize, I can't wait to be bombing the clutch on this bike on a drag strip in the springtime. Death or glory!

Rear Engine Triumph Pre Unit Drag Bike from the UK

Sumo from Vintage Chop in the UK emailed me a few photos of a wild Triumph drag bike setup. Sumo is building a dual-engined Panther himself, you can check out his build thread on ChopCult here.

"Thought this crazy Wal Phillips powered methanol burning Triumph drag would get you going. Don't really know much bout it other than it ran over here mainly at Santapod for a couple of years from '69 / '70 ish. Enjoy - fuel on the fire and all that..."

Thou Shalt Drag... Drag Triumph In The Works

I picked up a 1960 Triumph drag bike that was pretty beat and seemed to have been modified (badly) through the years. You could clearly see the awesome fab work, like the one off front frame, and the horrible fab work, like the booger welded tank mounts and OIF Triumph tank that was on it. Also, the amount of carbon in the pipes and head, and the poor condition of the cables, carburetors etc showed that it hadn't done much in many years besides get the clutch dumped a million times and burn the back tire up.

This evening I threw a stand-in motor in the frame (I tore the drag motor down and am in the process of getting ready to rebuild it) and the front end on it (NOS 70's Metal Profiles Ltd 32mm forks, weigh only 14lb!) to check clearance for the gas tanks and mounts I am going to start making tomorrow. Stay tuned for updates..

Tyler

Triumph Drag Bike Motor In Progress

I got some work done on the old pre unit Triumph drag bike this evening. I pulled it all apart and have the frame ready to sandblast. Got the motor on the bench and pulled the timing cover and found this, very cool drilled timing gears and BTH magneto advance. This got me excited so I pulled the top end off as well. High compression pistons, +.100, the rest of the bottom end will come apart this weekend. Looks like perhaps Harmons Collins cams, we shall see for sure when I split the cases.