What started as a text from a neighbor about a free motorcycle in boxes turned into a four-year project on a vehicle I had never worked on before. This wasn't a normal restoration either. 1970s Triumphs are notoriously quirky bikes, and only having an old Triumph manual and a few boxes of parts made for a pretty big challenge.

The bike is a 1971 Triumph T100R. Over the course of the project I rebuilt the entire motorcycle from the ground up. The engine was completely torn down and rebuilt with oversized pistons, requiring the cylinders to be bored and honed to fit. The rebuild included new valves, bearings, seals, gaskets, and a 0.020" copper head gasket. I also built a new wiring harness, replacing the original Zener diode charging system with a modern voltage regulator and converting the ignition from points to a Tri-Spark electronic ignition.

All of the paint and bodywork was done by me. The bike was finished in a custom Jacaranda Purple metallic with a mirror-polished section on the tank. The wheels were rebuilt with new rims and spokes, requiring both wheels to be laced and trued from scratch.

A lot of the project was figuring things out as I went. Between machining work, electrical troubleshooting, engine rebuilding, wheel building, paint work, and tracking down missing or damaged parts, I learned a lot about how these bikes were designed and what it takes to bring one back from a pile of parts to a running motorcycle.