BUYER BEWARE

How many times have we read your words of wisdom, and yet we ignore them? Matching frame and engine numbers don’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but you must have two numbers to be legal. I bought this Triumph – a W-reg 1981 model T140E – from an acquaintance who had only owned it for a year and it spent most of that time under a cover in the garden.

The T140’s previous owner wanted a 1960s lookalike with A10 silencers and no jet change in the carbs; ‘She is a bit rich but goes OK’ was the pitch. That was true until you got to 50mph, and shares in Castrol would have been a good idea. The engine number was OK and HPI checked OK. There was no visible frame number – God bless Hammerite – so ££s changed hands. I also received the correct tank and side panels with a custom paint job.

When the tax ran out four months later I SORNed the machine. Over the next two and a half years I found all of the 30-plus years of bodges and ‘fixes’ which were put right, and returned to mostly correct NOS components (good old LP Williams). I began to see why it had not been touched by the previous owner in his short tenure! It went straight through the MoT, where it appears that the engineer looked on older certificates and used the engine number. Marvellous!

The T140’s appearance changed but it was still running badly. That turned out to be an ignition problem, which I just got sorted and… the cylinder head went bang! During two years of searching for a decent replacement head, I used a Yamaha Fazer (which you can also see in the photo) as a stand-in. Finally a chap in Wales revealed that he had a cylinder head which had been sitting in a shed since 1983 and I grabbed it. After machining and refitting the head, I went to a comparatively new MoT station, a chap I’ve known for a good number of years who was keen and correct. I was impressed by his attention to detail with the Yam but this led to my downfall with the T140. ‘Where’s the frame number, Derek?’ ‘What frame number?’ He looked back at the previous MoT data and agreed that as all was well he would pass it on the engine number, but it would be helpful to confirm the frame number for the future. Off came the paint but no VIN appeared. The local TOMCC offered suggestions and loads of horror stories about the late 1970s and early 80s Triumph / BSA lackadaisical attitude to numbers. It might even have been a cracked frame replaced with an un-numbered one. Without any frame number, I had to contact the DVLA.

Their first response suggested that I may need a Q-plate as the machine had been modified. Argh! The bike’s earlier registration number suddenly ceased to exist: thank goodness it was winter and the Trumpet was off the road anyway. After filling in a form, the DVLA sent a new set of papers and a new VIN. They suggested that if the TOMCC would certify the machine as being unmodified and of the marque then I would get an age-related plate.

Thanks to Warren of the East Lancashire TOMCC the bike was certified, the new DVLA VIN was stamped by the garage and the application for a new registration completed. The DVLA were very helpful; the process was not as slow as I expected, and communications with them have been very clear all the way through.

The upshot is that I now have a completely road legal machine with a ‘new’ 1981 X-registration. The boss is looking forward to getting on the back of the Triumph, especially as the Yam does not help pillion passengers with the old hips and knees on a long run.

Thanks to the RC Crew for an excellent magazine. The engineering tips are really helpful to us amateurs, and it’s good to see that workhorse machines are now being recognised alongside the better-known bikes like the Bonneville. Hopefully the same will happen with Japanese machines – they are not all plastic rockets. Derek Baines, member 12,454

Oh, the pain. That reminds me: one of my bikes has been issued with a V5C that shows the wrong frame number because it’s almost impossible to get a clear view of the VIN without taking half the machine apart and – in a similar situation – a keen MoT man input the wrong digits into the DVLA computer one year. I really must sort that out. Maybe next year. Maybe the year after… Rowena