Among classic British bikes, Meriden’s venerable unit twins have perhaps the greatest range of parts still available at a reasonable price. That goes a long way towards explaining why the later T120s, T140s and TR7s make such straightforward restoration projects.
However, Triumph’s rarer models have a nasty habit of using parts made from pure unobtanium, and the West-coast inspired factory custom TSX has its share of these impossible-to-buy bits. Back in the early 1980s, the Meriden factory sourced the rear suspension from Paioli, featuring a neat black top shroud made in plastic. Very thin and fragile plastic…
Fast forward 35-plus years, and these delicate items have often gone the way of all flesh. Thus many remaining TSX machines now run with exposed rear springs, as seen here. Simply shocking!
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US TSX owner Chase Herbst took on the challenge to remanufacture these shock shrouds in much more robust aluminium and, in splendid old-bike fashion, found a small number of TSX owners to share the tooling costs.
The run is now complete, and these are the powder-coated replacements, destined to last quite some time.
Anyone fancy remanufacturing those raised whitewall tyres, now?
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Words: Morgan Rue
Photos: Morgan Rue / RC RChive
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