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2006 Triumph Thruxton

Monday, 21 August 2006

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Part Time Racing by Mike Emery ~ Part Time Shooting by Mike Boehm

An e-mail from Triumph’s press guy, Jim Callahan, confirmed the fact that Triumph had indeed forgiven me for my cardinal sin of turning one of their nice shiny Daytona 650's into a very fashionable coffee table ornament.

Their offer this time? How about a ride in the newly formed AHRMA spec series, The Thruxton Cup? The nice fellow even offered me my choice on the venue, that choice, after losing the Daytona pick, was Mid-Ohio. I’d never been to the track before despite hearing all the stories, good and bad and I broke my own bag packing world record in my attempt to get out the door.

The AHRMA weekend’s are typically two day affairs with practice in the mornings and racing in the afternoon. Although my race day was Sunday, I popped my head in the garage door, Saturday, to eye up the bikes and to offer support for the Saturday shift of Roadracer X’s Chris Jonnum and fellow Brit freelancing scribe, Sir Robin Wibbly B’Stard.

The bikes certainly looked to be in the road race business with their GMD optimized frame and suspension set-ups’ replete with Öhlins dual piggy-back shocks out back and Race Tech massage forks up front - all courtesy of the factory’s next door neighbor, Kent Soignier, of GMD Computrack, Atlanta. The front cowl is a Sharkskinz piece with a stock seat and cowl sourced from Triumph’s own parts catalog.

The rearsets were built for the little Trumpet that could, by AXLJAK Racing, as were the stout looking frame sliders and steering damper mounts. Remarkably, The owner of AXLJAK, Jack Aksel took just a couple of days to produce these race kits for Triumph and they looked superbly made. The bike’s wheels were shipped to Buchanan’s for heavy duty spokes - safety first, you know. On their return Avon Tyres supplied them with some treaded race rubber, in the form of their AM 22/23 series tyre (tire). The chain and sprockets were replaced with a lighter 520 chain and Vortex sprockets. EBC also chipped in with a floating rotor to complete the chassis set-up.

The motor is stock for the series, with the only allowable mod's being a Factory carb kit and freer flowing exhausts. The head received a multi-angle valve job and had the air filter replaced with a freer flowing piece. The exhausts were retro style with reverse megaphones with a not too a mega-noisy sound, and they obviously looked the part. This particular set was supplied by South Bay Triumph who is a renowned source for go-fast Trumpet bits. A quick peek at their website shows them available in a ceramic black or chrome finish. They also supply big bore kits for most Triumphs too, including the Thruxton, but that would be cheating for this series.

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