On the road
France doesn’t like modified vehicles. A Triton is by definition a modified vehicle. Getting my future steed licenced for use on the road in France was going to be challenged. I hatched a cunning plan to get the bike registered in the UK with the frame and engine numbers corresponding to my collection of bits. I could then transfer this to a French Carte Grise without too much difficulty. The bike would still be considered a Norton but at least it would be partially acceptable to the authorities.
I already had the UK registration for the chassis that had a Triumph engine number. The plan was hence to go to the UK, build the bike and get it registered and roadworthy within a week. I bought all of the other parts that I believed I would need and had them delivered to the Manchester branch of my employer. Once all of these shiny new bits were assembled a friend and colleague, Patrice, and I set off in a big white van to get the job done.
The first stop was to pick up the chassis. We discovered a perfect machine carefully built and maintained by a father and son racing team. A fantastic start. The next stop was the engine. This was completely different. The engine and its parts were stored in sea containers in the sellers back garden. He had an impressive collection of bike parts but there was no care taken with any of it. We refused the offer of a cup of tea, for fear of catching something ghastly, and set off for our borrowed “workshop”.
Getting stuck in.
Anybody who tells you that you can build a café racer from scratch in a week is a liar. Perhaps if you have a team of professionals with unlimited access to tools and parts but for the common man it is simply not possible. In our corner of the warehouse we made a valiant attempt. The pile of parts was assembled into a bike. We were however stymied by certain small but essential details. The devil is in the detail and Lucifer was not on our side. At the end of our allotted time we had to admit that the bike would not be registered before we had to return to Paris and our jobs.
We loaded all of our tools and the bike into our van and set off back towards the Channel. After a quick trip back to the mainland we stopped of in our house in Ver à Val and dropped the bike off, storage in Paris being impossible.
And then life got in the way…