FROM THE FRONT
Like many folk, I am fascinated by other peoples’ sheds, and find endless interest and indeed entertainment whenever I’m lucky enough to see them. And remember that I get to see the whole picture when contributors send in stories with images of their workshops – before the constraints of magazine page design focus our attention on the subject of the photo, usually a motorcycle or a part of a motorcycle. I’m also privileged in that I see the pictures which don’t get used in the magazine, for whatever reason. Some of those are fascinating – but possibly only to me, and not to you gentle reader, which is why they don’t appear.
Graham Ham’s entirely excellent Shed Quest series was always a firm favourite of mine, not least because I always enjoy Graham’s way of riding and writing, but also because of the glimpses into other bike enthusiasts’ private places. It was seriously reassuring to be reminded that I am not alone in collecting endless old bits and junk just in case there might be a use for it some day or other in some unspecified and certainly undefined future. And in fact lots of the bits are useful. When I say ‘lots’ you should understand that ‘lots’ is an indefinable term…
Possibly the stand-out voyeuristic experience of this issue was rooting through the pics for Gordon Geskell’s Triumph 6T build. Not only is the guy quite plainly a seriously capable metal manipulator, but he is obviously also a parts collector extraordinaire – just take a look at his Triumph crankshaft collection! It puts my own feeble stock of AMC twin cranks entirely in the shade.
In the first part of his series, Gordon talks briefly about a large Midlands spares warehouse, one he visited back in the 1970s when many establishments were throwing out their stocks of obsolete parts of obsolete British motorcycles. This entirely resonated with me – I think I visited the same place, but only have a dim memory of it. I do however have a perfectly clear memory of a visit – several visits – to another big old warehouse near Derby in the mid-70s.
Sadly, although I remember who I was with, what I was after, and what we spent an entire afternoon digging through, at the time I lacked both space and money, otherwise I would have come away with mountains of bits. Just … because.
My friend and I wandered slowly through an unintentional museum of what-if. I picked up a huge double-stacked silencer – one of a small mountain of the things, some rusting bare metal, others in matt black and others in chrome. We passed it back and forth between us, eventually making the trek to the counter to ask what it was. The man in the brown coat smiled. ‘ T180,’ he said. ‘ Thunderbird 3.’ He went to a drawer and pulled out a handful of plastic strips, strips familiar to anyone who knew his modern Triumphs. ‘Here you go,’ he said, and handed us a half dozen each. They were side panel name plates for T160-sized panels. ‘ THUNDERBIRD III’ they announced. I still have a couple. Somewhere. There’s a lot to be said for being a compulsive hoarder.
Ride safely