TRIUMPH 350 TWIN

Fond memories of a lightweight Triumph twin from the distant past encouraged Stuart Urquhart to borrow a pal’s 3TA. It looked great, started swiftly and... made a terrible racket from the top end. What’s the haps, chaps?

Fond memories of a lightweight Triumph twin from the distant past encouraged Stuart Urquhart to borrow a pal’s 3TA. It looked great, started swiftly and… made a terrible racket from the top end. What’s the haps, chaps?

Ihave always admired Triumph’s little 350 twins. They are a delight to ride and, much like their larger siblings, are endowed with a willing engine. In the early 1980s I had a lovely blue 1962 bathtub 3TA which my old man helped me to restore. It served me faithfully during camping weekends in and around the Trossachs and commuting to the Mackintosh Glasgow School of Art. The baby Trumpet and I barely made it through one summer before some lowlife snipped the padlock and pinched it. I was stunned and bereft, as you are in such a shocking situation, especially as the theft

occurred in broad daylight. No-one, not even the parking attendant, witnessed this heinous crime. Like many victims of bike theft, I never again clapped eyes on my lovely 3TA.

When my friend Ian sent me some pics of a Triumph 350 ‘special’ he had purchased on Gumtree, the memories of my brief affair with the 3TA came flooding back. So I couldn’t restrain myself from popping across the Tay to have a peek at Ian’s new wheels. The Triumph was sitting in Ian’s driveway and it looked very tidy, better than oily-rag condition. The dark grey, brooding paintwork and its twin, standard Triumph exhausts suited it – I was never a fan of the Siamese system fitted on my never-to-be-seen-again 3TA. Ian’s machine also looked more classic and larger in appearance than the faded memories I had of my own partially-enclosed bathtub model.

As we circled his Triumph, Ian revealed that it was a bitsa, consisting of a T100 rolling chassis with a 350 engine. Ian confessed that he’d taken along his ‘hard hat’ brother-in-law Steve as a buffer to talk him out of the purchase. But both men fell for the little Triumph’s charms and I likewise thought it represented a very shrewd buy.