Gary’s Triumph 5TA special

Gary is a very experienced race mechanic, and this bike is beautifully put together.

It’s a 5TA – the one with a bathtub fairing – but he’s built it more like a Bonnie because why wouldn’t you?

The bike belonged to Gary’s Dad, and has been in the family 45 years. It got stripped down some time in the 1980s, and finally it’s ready to rock once more.

He’d gone for the original six volt setup, including a new Sparx stator and flywheel, and kept the distributor behind the right cylinder. I recommend a 12 volt conversion every time, but Gary had bought all the bits, and six volts can work fine if the wiring is good.

We had a bit of trouble persuading the Sparx stator to produce a charge. Connected to a Rex’s Speedshop 6V regulator rectifier as per the instructions it was truly feeble. Trying a different reg rec from Goffy Electrical made no difference.

The stator tested OK, with no path to earth from the coils. And we had to assume the flywheel had decent magnets in it. In the end I measured the no-load voltage between each of the three wires, picked the two with the highest value, and hooked them up as a single-phase setup. That worked OK.

Later, I mentioned this to Goffy. He remarked drily that Sparx stators are the only ones he sees problems with.

The fuel tank on this bike has a curious story. The original had rotted out, so Gary found a decent one about 200 miles away and drove down to pick it up.

The seller didn’t know about bikes, but had a few tanks and frames. He’d recently bought his house and was digging the garden when he found a bunch of Triumph chassis parts buried in an underground chamber. How long this tank had been there is anyone’s guess.

As usual with 1960s Triumphs, several old blokes walking past the workshop went weak at the knees when they saw it. These things still have the power to move people.