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Retro Custom 67 T120 Project

69K views 129 replies 40 participants last post by  Cosmoline 
#1 · (Edited)
Very excited to have brought home this girl today from the back woods of Maine! Starts on the first kick, runs and drives fine, matching numbers, 11k miles, supposedly even has original tires and brakes. Quite a find! She'll be getting a full restoration and returning to her former glory very soon. Planning to do a fairly mild retro custom build while also restoring and preserving all the original parts should I ever want to go the concours route. Stay tuned for plenty of pics and progress reports. Now on to the photos!

Bought from this fine fellow (Coburn Benson) who used to own a Triumph dealership in the 60's & 70's in Haverhill, MA:


Here's a shot of his shop back in the day:


All loaded up and tucked in for the ride home:


Coburn included some extra parts he'd been hoarding as well and included a bunch of paperwork, documentation and manuals. Check out the red one, it seems to be a hand typed engine overhaul manual for the 650...


And some various shots of the 67...






Stay tuned as this project progresses!
 
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#95 ·
Thanks Dan. Finished up the seat pan and seat springs today.

My machinist came thru with the spring cups. Came out perfect...



Marking out the locations...



Because the top spring cups were going to sit right in the middle of the bend in the seat pan, I needed to create a flat surface to mount them to, so I cut up some angle iron and welded it to the seat pan...



Now that I had a flat surface I welded on the top spring cups...





Finished product mounted on bike...





Once I got the seat mounted up I was anxious to know how they would feel. Sitting on them compresses them about a half inch and there's at least another inch of travel left. The seat does not seem springy, in fact it's pretty stiff but hey, it's a hard tail after all and I didn't expect a miracle air ride. The verdict is that I'm happy with them.

That's all for now.
 
#98 ·
Thanks guys. Today I installed the tapered roller bearing kit in the neck and mounted the lowered front end. At this point I'm waiting for my wheels/tires to come back and I'll have it back in a roller so I can check the stance, mount everything, do the remaining fab work like the front fender, fender mounts, weld up various tab mounts etc. Once all that is done I'll disassemble everything, send it out for paint/powder coat, and start on the engine rebuild.







 
#100 ·
Mounted the headlight today...

Here's a shot of the springer style headlight mounting post and terminals underneath...



Below is a shot of the hole underneath the bottom tree where I'll mount the bracket...



Below is a shot of the bracket I bent up and mounted to the headlight- I just have it functional for now, I'll make it pretty later on...



And here's some shots of the headlight all mounted up. I think it came out pretty damned sweet...









IMHO, perfect size and not too blinged out. Tucks in between the forks nicely, it has plenty of clearance from lock to lock and there's no way anything will hit it even if the suspension bottoms out. Happy with it.

Later.
 
#102 ·
I'm a little worried about that as well. I did mount the headlight using a big rubber washer sandwiched between two metal washers - I don't know how much that will help though. The bracket is 1/8' metal and it seems like theres really no flex in it and when everything is bolted up the whole unit does seem really solid. When I do the final assembly, there will be no expense spared on loctite and lock washers. ;)

Not sure what you mean by a welded tab on the lower tree - are you saying to weld a tab to brace the bracket against the top of the lower tree or are you talking about a second tab to mount the headlight post to?

Also, does anyone know how HD mounted these headlights up to springer front ends as a point of reference?
 
#103 ·
I use this light alot! So I will pass on two things for you;

1) take the bulb out that it came with, and throw it away, It is rubbish. Replace it with a new one.

2) That mount will indeed vibrate like mad. Make your bracket as short as possible, and box the sides to eliminate all flex.

Hopefully this info will save you from re-doing stuff later, or getting caught in the dark without a head light.
Cheers, Dan.
 
#104 ·
1) take the bulb out that it came with, and throw it away, It is rubbish. Replace it with a new one.
Thanks for the advice. I need to convert it from 6v to 12v so I need to ditch the bulb anyway. Any advice on conversion? Also, I was thinking about going with an LED headlight - any thoughts there?
 
#110 ·
Thanks for that, I was considering converting over to H4 bulbs until I realized my no battery setup probably won't like the draw of a halogen. Hoping the 12v equivalent bulb is easier on the wattage.

I'm not the world's prettiest welder
You may not be too good looking, but at least the bike looks great:D

(sorry couldn't resist:))
Huh? I've been told I look like a young Steve McQueen. ;)

What a great find,hard to come by these days
It's all about patience (and a good Craigslist multi-city search engine) now.
 
#115 ·
Wheels came out great, couldn't wait to mount them up. Back to a roller for now. First time she's been out of the shop in a couple months. I like the stance...

Shots without rear fender...





Shots with rear fender...







Up next I'll be making the front fender and all the stays front and rear as well as finishing up the oil tank and mounting tabs.
 
#118 · (Edited)
I had some problems getting my front wheel centered between the forks but I got that figured out.

Now that the front wheel madness is over with, I decided to mock up the front fender which involved making some cutouts in the fender to allow clearance between the front fork dust sleeves.

I just eyeballed the position, made a center mark where the dust sleeve would hit, and measured 1.25" out from center in each direction leaving me about .25" clearance left to right. Then I figured how much distance was between the forks and subtracted a half inch from that. I just split that number in half and measured out from the center of the fender for my depth.

Once I had my marks on one side I transferred them to the other and using a bottle of about the right diameter drew an arc that hit all 3 points on each side. Then I just dremeled along the line and cleaned it up with a small sanding tube.

Below are some shots of the mock-up. It's not positioned exactly where I want it yet (neither is the back) but it's close enough to give an idea of what it'll look like.





 
#123 ·
Thanks S.G. - made some more progress on the oil tank today. Internal windage box and lines all set, just need to weld everything up.





Also figured out how I want to mount the tank up. Basically there will be 4 tabs on the frame downtube under the seat which I'm making to this spec:



And then there will be 4 threaded bungs welded to the side of the tank which line up with the tab holes - in between the two I have some bonded rubber bushings with 1/4" thread on each end to mate the bungs on the oil tank to the brackets...



Oh and my internal spring kickstand also came in. Nice clean look.
 
#124 ·
I did finish up the welding/brazing on the oil tank and pressure tested it successfully. I still need to weld on the bungs, hit it with some sanding sealer, and take some pics. Not much progress the last week or so due to a combination of incredibly nice weather and a new addition to the family...



 
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