The Scopes boys share a brotherly love of Triumph 500s
The Scopes brothers defied their father’s wishes by getting into motorcycles – but as he’s a classic bike specialist himself, it’s probably in the genes anyway
Ididn’t really want them riding bikes,” says Pete Scopes, standing in the middle of his sons’ British bike collection. “I didn’t encourage them at all – I mean, there’s so many cars driven by idiots now; it’s too dangerous... but it didn’t do any good.”
Looking at the Scopes boys’ collection, it strikes me that maybe this is reverse psychology. Kids are contrary – tell them not to do something and what do they do? What Pete’s efforts not to encourage his sons has done is to produce two boys who have a core passion for British motorcycles – and particularly the products of the Triumph Engineering Company. But it doesn’t end there, because they also have an ‘old-fashioned’ way about them: polite, respectful and hardworking; in fact all the things older people say you don’t find in the younger generation these days...
Pete runs ‘Britsteel Classics’ in Dover, so the boys have always been exposed to the bellow of pushrod parallel twins and occasional childhood rides, sat on the petrol tank. Pete does admit to having taken the boys to classic races and bought them an elderly 50cc BSA Ranger kid’s bike when they were just five and seven (see above), but it’s very clear they were not spoiled.
“When they came with me to the workshop, I’d dig out my carbs box and give them each an Amal carburettor to strip, clean and reassemble – and after they’d finished, I’d check they’d done it right. They were scratching round looking for things to do and I felt they should do something constructive – learn a skill, maybe they could become Amal tuning experts...
“Besides, it kept them occupied. I remember walking into the workshop one day to find Vince busy polishing my Bonnie tank; it was a nice thought – I’d done the paint myself and was really pleased with it. Only trouble was, he was using wire wool and my lovely paint job as now all white dust! Fortunately he hadn’t gone through the lacquer and I managed to save it. Then, another time, I’d left my sprint Triumph in the kitchen and I came downstairs to find he’d decided to explore by poking his arm up inside the megaphone. His hands were black, so were his pyjamas, with black handprints on the walls and cupboards and the table legs. I couldn’t believe it!”
So maybe bikes were already rooted in the boys’ genes – but even so, trying to teach kids how to do a job is always a difficult task. Their attention span is brief when they’re watching somebody
else, and Pete seems to have seems to have adopted a perfect approach, creating a sort of accidental cultivation as the boys grew up. “Mind you, “grins Vince, “He was awful with our Airfix models...” “Yes,” chips in Lewis, “You used to come in and say: ‘I’ll show you how to do that bit,’ and before we knew it you’d finished the whole model! But on the other hand, I remember when I needed to strip the front end on my first Triumph, dad just got out his bike and went off for a ride, leaving me to figure out how to get the forks apart on my own! Of course, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing – but I found a manual on the shelf, looked it up and had them safely all dismantled by the time he came back.” Vince adds: “The thing is, we always knew we had back-up; if we got stuck with anything we knew dad was available to help. But he thought it was better to leave us to learn for ourselves – and that, really, is the best way.” So where are we now? Well, older brother Vince (aged 27) has the 500 Triumph he’s riding in the photos and a project 1968 Bonneville he bought about 18 months ago; “Don’t get me wrong,” he says, “I’ve had to work up to that. I started about seven years ago, I bought back a 350cc BSA B40 that dad had built and sold originally. What I really wanted was a Triumph - but I couldn’t afford one. Then I saw one advertised in Motorcycle News, down in Hampshire for £900. It was only a 3TA, but after looking for ages online, at local shows, Kempton Park autojumble and the rest, it was the only affordable Triumph twin I’d seen. I rang the number; the lady selling said she used to ride it regularly, but a horse riding injury had put her off the road. I just told her: ‘I’ll have it!’ – I was lucky, MCN isn’t the obvious place to look for classic bikes, so nobody else had spotted it.
“I started helping out at Road Star Cycles in Dover in exchange for the parts I needed to convert the 3TA into a 500 and make it how I wanted it. One of the inspirations was a photo we found online of a 500 that we both really liked – it had a proper original ’60s look to it; funnily enough it turned out to be your old bike, Rick!”
Vince continued: “I built my 500 as a café racer first, but it was my only transport and it seemed a bit silly riding a café racer to work every day – especially through the winter – so I decided to go for the scrambler style instead. In the course of building it, I ended up with enough left over to put together another bike, so I built that up and sold it, spending the money on an A10 café racer. Although that was complete, there was a lot more wrong with it than I expected – but then I had a bit of luck, I found a genuine Gold Star frame lying in a garden...
“I’d got a lift with some mates to see a bloke who was selling a load of stuff. He said: “What? That A10 frame? Hundred and fifty quid.” I gave him the money and started scraping off the rust over the frame number to see what it was off. The number started ‘CB32…’! ‘Oh **** !’ he said – he’d never thought to look at what it was! I bought a B31 engine and started piecing together bits to build a Goldie replica. But then I met someone who wanted to do a deal on the A10 and the Goldie bits for his ’68 Bonnie project – and that was what I really wanted all along.”
I know that route to getting the bike you want. This kind of wheeling and dealing is exactly how I got my bikes, too – it’s a ladder that all those of us with tastes beyond our budget have to climb. Building projects and selling them to pay for more valuable projects works – and you learn a lot along the way. The only thing is, it takes time – so it pays to start young.
But it’s not the only way to crack the nut. Lewis, who’s now 24, started slightly younger than his brother and has adopted a different (yet equally familiar to me) approach. He bought his bikes by saving up and spending nearly every penny he earns on them – even to the extent of living in the attic of his workshop for a couple of years to cut his cost of living and be able to spend as much as possible of his free time building his bikes. “We used to worry about him and send him texts in the winter to make sure he was OK,” says Pete. “He wasn’t really interested in going out or anything young people usually do; he was just obsessed with his bikes. He’s a bit more of a tear-arse than Vince and has turned into a bit of a tuning freak. He’s actually got pretty good at it and I’m proud of the knowledge they’ve built up between them – a lot of it they worked out for themselves. Of course, they’re typical brothers – always nicking bits off each other! When Vince turned his café racer into a scrambler, he soon found half the bits on Lew’s bike!”
Lewis has another B40 in trials style, also originally built and sold by Pete and then bought back again. “I’ve still got that one. My first 500 Triumph was a bike that dad bought – it was complete and running, but it was a bit of a rat bike really.” Lew recalls, “I bought it off him and rebuilt it from bits and pieces to make it into a café racer. After getting that on the road, I found another one – a 350 anyway – for £2500. It wasn’t a bad price, because the wheels had already been rebuilt onto alloy rims so that saved me about £400. “Same as Vince, I converted it to 500cc, and again since it was my everyday transport and I already had the café racer, I built it up as a scrambler style so I had the choice. Since then I’ve picked up a 1979 T140 project. I think the oil-in-frame bikes are underrated; they have a good chassis and a strong motor that’s easy to tune. The worst thing is they’re a bit ugly as standard – those big cigar silencers were the first thing to go! I’m planning to build it up in ’60s style – a bit like dad’s oil-in-frame T120.”
So what do the brothers think is the particular appeal of the 500cc Triumph? “I just think they’re great bikes,” says Vince. “And they make a very good Triumph to start on, because they’re cheaper than a 650 but have good performance, so you don’t feel you’re starting out on something boring.”
“They’re pretty easy to work on as well,” says Lewis. “You can get parts easily – although we do get fed up with the poor fit of a lot of bits – we’ve had small ends, shells and primary chains that just ended up in the bin. It’s not worth buying cheap stuff online. ”
Neither Lewis nor Vince have much interest in social media; they say most people their age are ‘idiots’ with whom they don’t share anything in common. Walk through town on a Saturday night and no doubt that’s borne out... but I wonder if things are beginning to change. I keep meeting young people who say the same thing – wouldn’t it be great if classic bikes can bring them all together?