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O TRIBSA
Impulsively yours
Supermarkets reap the benefits of shoppers’ impulse buying, they go in for a loaf of bread and come out with a week’s shopping. But going into a bike shop for a small part and coming out with a bike is taking it to extremes says Keith Fryer.
It's a tried and tested practice, taking the engine from one manufacturer and placing it in the frame from another. There've been some interesting combinations, but the better-known ones that spring to mind are Norvin, Triton and TriBSA. And let's include Noriel as well, as I saw one just the other week in a dealer's showroom. If you're new to this game and wonder why anyone would combine different frames and engines, it was done to combine the best features from different models to make a motorcycle that would handle and brake as well as it would go.
The Triton was the best-known example, with the fast and tuneable Triumph twin cylinder engine housed in the taut, good handling Norton frame and forks. By the late 60s the factories were sorting out their respective weaknesses and the practical need for that combination of parts slowly faded, but for other, more intangible reasons, it still continues. You can even buy replica Norton Featherbed frames if you wish, made from modern high quality tubing to build your own current day Triton.
But this tale is about one of the other worthy combinations of engine and frame, the TriBSA; in this case a twin carburettor, alloy head Triumph 650cc T110 engine in a 1954 BSA A10 swinging arm frame. If Norton offered the best in roadholding at the time and Triumph didn't, BSA would sit somewhere in the middle, perhaps a little closer to Norton than Triumph. So if you have a decent A10 frame to hand instead of a Featherbed, worry not. Much of the time you'd not be aware of the difference, except perhaps for comfort if compared to Norton's Wideline version.
And as for roadholding, the BSA is reliable enough, perfectly able to match most of what you'd ask of it; but it's in the final 10/10ths of a hard and fast situation that the Norton would show its race bred edge.
Clive Etherington's TriBSA is a good looking motorcycle with an interesting history and it was only by chance that it features here – I'd originally asked Clive about his Vincent Rapide, which he's owned for over 40 years. There's some worthwhile modifications on that one too, but Clive hit some carb troubles shortly before we planned to meet, so he offered the TriBSA in the Vincent's place.
Would it do? Yes please; TriBSAs aren't as common – in the numerical sense – as Vincents and Tritons are these days, so it'd be a pleasure to take a close look at one of the lesser known hybrids.
For his own part, Clive started his riding career at eleven years old, just after WWII. He remembered: “Lots of old bikes hanging around then, many just laying in people’s back gardens. When we were on our summer holidays, my mate used come out on an old side valve bike his dad had and we'd pool our pocket money to buy the petrol so we could ride it around the fields in Littlehampton, which is where we lived at the time.” That area is covered with industrial estates nowadays, but back then Clive and his mate had a queue of local lads all lining up for a ride on that old bike.
A big change came at fifteen, when he joined the Merchant Navy. “My first trip took me right around the world and when I came home I bought my first motorbike, I'd have been sixteen and it was a 250cc James with the Villiers engine, followed by an Enfield Crusader Sports. Clive recalled one of his crewmates, “who had a Triumph Speed Twin that he kept onboard ship, he lent it out and sometimes I'd ride it back home from Southampton.”
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