Simon’s Triumph T160

Simon has owned this bike for many years, and the wiring was the last big job in a long, loving restoration process. Still on the original loom, it was just about working OK, but the electrics needed renewing and reorganising. Besides the electronic clocks Simon wanted to fit, it had an aftermarket proximity neutral switch by Triples Unlimited, dodgy switchgear, and a Tri Spark ignition.

The good thing about starting from scratch is you can integrate all these aftermarket pieces into a fresh, custom harness. And the electronic clocks meant we could do away with the drive cables, and instead run the tacho and speedo on digital inputs. These days you can get an analogue-to-digital converter for almost any speedo drive – just check the digital speedos website.

And while we were about it, it would be daft not to add a decent fuse box to look after everything. As it turned out there was masses of room on the bike to tuck everything in.

While the loom build was happening, our resident detailer Ben Purdy got busy on the fuel tank, which had been scuffed and scratched. In two and a half hours it looked gleaming and silky-smooth once more. The pictures can’t do it justice.

I gave the T160 a couple of laps of the marina to check everything was fine. It’s a lovely, soft, easygoing, torquey bike. And with a freshly-detailed fuel tank it looks gorgeous too.