Bill Turner has owned his T100SS from eight months shy of new. That’s more than half of his lifetime – and its condition does him credit.
Words: Steve Wilson Photographs: Gary Chapman
At first sight, it is very hard to believe that this very smart 500cc 1970 T100SS Tiger is over 50 years old – and that it has spent all but the first eight months of its road life with the same keeper, Bill Turner (no relation to Triumph twin designer Edward Turner).
Bill is a much less abrasive character than his namesake, and with characteristic modesty, attributes much of what turned out to be an excellent choice of a ‘keeper’ motorcycle, to his late wife Christina.
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“Chris was very taken with the Jacaranda finish,” said Bill. In the 1969/70 era of ‘Purple Haze’, the attractive shade was bang up to date, without being as garish as the BSA Group’s subsequent ‘Hi-Violet’ or ‘Plum Crazy’ paintwork. The colour was derived, incidentally, from jacaranda mimosifolia, a flowering tree native to South America, due to its spectacular violet-coloured blooms, widely planted elsewhere, from Bhutan to Australia; where in Queensland, it’s known to students as ‘Purple Panic’ since it flowers during the stressful pre-exam period. So now you know.
“The T100 had been first registered at the end of October 1970,” said Bill, “and I got it in June 1971.” The matching engine/frame numbers indicate it had been built in September 1969, the month Triumph’s new model year commenced. It was a Home and General Export model, and in Britain, 500cc twins had no longer been popular; hence perhaps the gap between production and registration. As we shall see, it had been a different story in the USA, which by then was taking over 80% of Meriden’s output.
A winding road
Bill lives in an Oxfordshire village, and had bought the Triumph in the city from Bill Faulkner’s in Walton Street. It was not his first two-wheeler. “I started at 17,” he laughed, “and I’ll soon have been riding for 70 years. I began with cyclemotors, including a Power Pak. Then I had a 197cc Excelsior – it was so small I was almost sitting on the tank! For National Service in the RAF I had a 350cc Douglas Mark IV. Next came a 1949 Royal Enfield 350cc Bullet, which was absolutely crap – Christina refused to go to dances on it, the battery used to spray acid on her legs.
“So I got a BSA 650 A10 – that’s the one I wish I’d kept.” (Amen to that.) “But then we had our first child, so with no more Chris on the pillion for the moment, I got a C95 Honda – you’ve got to hand it to the Japanese, I rode it to work for five years with absolutely no problems. But for something bigger, I then went for a 250cc Triumph Trophy, basically a rebadged BSA Starfire. That lasted about a year…we were riding home from a Swindon Town football match, with Chris back on the pillion, when I saw a Lambretta chasing up behind, so I throttled on, and the engine blew up…” Well, they were known for their grenade-like qualities. “Then I got the T100.”
As you can see, the single carb 500cc Triumph is in remarkable condition, not restored, just very well preserved. “For years I rode it daily to my work at the Clarendon physics labs in Oxford and back. On return at night during the winter, I religiously rinsed it off. I love riding it, I found the beauty of its handling is that the weight is so low down. And the seven-inch tls front brake is so good you have to be a bit careful with it.”
One of the few apparently non-original features on this 1970 Tiger are the megaphone silencers, as found on the 1971 to 1973 650s. Bill said that they were replacements, as the baffles on the originals had let go after 10 years. Bill had fabricated the steel hangers for the new pair, the original hangers having been pressed steel. But he also confirmed that the pair the bike had come with had been the megaphone type too.
A bit of research confirmed that midway through the 1971 model year, the home market 500 twins had adopted the extended cone silencers, reportedly for their relative quietness, in the face of tightening European noise legislation, in contrast with the straight-through ‘bottle’ silencers retained for the US. (The 1971 500 twins had been renamed that year as the tuned, twin-carb T100R Daytona with a claimed extra 3bhp, and the T100C Trophy 500, the latter for the UK in either twin- or single-carb form.)
Presumably the dealer had retro-fitted the new silencers to the 500 languishing in his showroom as the 1971 model year commenced; perhaps at the factory’s behest. Some feel that the heavier conical jobs flatten the T100’s mid-range, but I did not find that to be so.
Other work, apart from conscientious maintenance, has been minimal. “Two years ago,” said Bill, “the paint on the mudguards had begun to fade, so I had them repainted, but the original tank paint was okay.” Remarkable. At around the same time, Bill had fitted a final drive sprocket with one extra tooth. “It makes for smoother cruising,” he said, “the engine ‘races’ less and it’s an easier ride.
“I’m an active member of the British Riders Oxford Motorcycle Club, who meet at the Red Lion pub in Cassington. A few years back the top of the engine had begun to leak, so Bob Hunter, who’s the club’s administrator, kindly did a top end rebuild for me.” Both before and after some enthusiastic road-testing, the 1970 Triumph proved oil-tight now.
The T100SS’ 50,265 mileage averages out at around 1000 miles a year. As Bill, a calm, likeable individual explained, to give something back to our pastime: “I joined the RAC Training scheme as an instructor for young riders, and the T100 didn’t like being behind 50cc mopeds! So for four years, I got an MZ 250, and the Triumph was laid up for a bit.” It was back on the road when the 50,000 miles was clocked up, “in the Tiger’s 50th year,” Bill confirmed, “on a run to the Gloucester – Warrington railway near Cheltenham.
The T100SS story
The roadster Triumph unit 500 twins hit peak form from 1969 on, as a result of race developments successfully undertaken by Doug Hele and the experimental team at Meriden. (For an account of the 1966 and 1967 victories at Daytona, see the 1972 T100R test in TCM, October 2019.)
The principal benefits had arrived for the 1969 roadsters. The main engine improvements had included nitride camshafts, which successfully overcame the longstanding problem of their rapid wear. The timing side main’s former plain bush was replaced by a ball journal bearing. This fed oil, now no longer pre-heated, to the big ends, via a redesigned timing cover, whose bumps fore and aft were the outward sign of the strengthened engine. This arrangement eliminated the danger at high speeds of the bush turning and cutting off the oil supply to the big ends. The new bearing also positively located the end float of the crank.
A new cylinder barrel featured increased wall thickness, and its wider joint faces helped combat Triumph’s much-derided oil leaks. Late in the 1968 model year the con rods had also been strengthened, and the pushrod tubes changed (again). For 1969, the single carb SS had adopted the T100T’s valve spring cups. And the 12-volt electrics had benefited hugely from the new Lucas RM21 alternator with its fully encapsulated stator windings, immune to the primary chaincase’s oil, and more resistant to vibration. Always a durable engine, the unit 500 could now be thrashed with confidence.
The major innovation for 1970 was the revised engine breathing system, in line with the 650s, with holes drilled in the crankcase drive side outer letting pressurised oil mist into the primary chaincase. From there, via a breather adaptor and a long tube, it was led away to discharge beyond the rear wheel; another contribution to late Triumphs’ oil tightness.
For the cycle in 1970, the front forks’ width increased to take wider tyres, and they were fitted with clipless gaiters. Between them sat the excellent twin leading shoe brake, seven-inch for the T100SS and eight-inch for the T100T Daytona. The rear units’ springs were exposed and chromed, less practical, but the look most young riders wanted.
The frame had already been very effectively strengthened for 1967, with its front section from then on featuring a fully triangulated head lug with an integrated top rail and bracing tank rail, a steering head angle revised down to 62 degrees, and a stronger, thicker front downtube, with the whole providing a lower centre of gravity. At the rear, a strengthened swinging-arm was now firmly supported by brackets to the frame. These Triumphs now handled.
But with Meriden’s 650 twins now in their glory years, how to account for the 500’s continuing popularity in the 1960s? The answer was two-fold: competition and sports success, in the era when AMA rules limited ohv contestants to 500cc until 1968; and particularly in America, fashion, with endorsement by some pretty cool celebrities.
In off-road T100C form, the model won the US National Enduro Championship seven times; the TR6 650, around 40lb heavier than a 1970 Trophy 500 at 337lb dry, had become too big a bike for most enduros in the East, where Triumph sales in 1967 were nearly double those in the West. In flat track, (US) TT, and road-racing, 500 Triumphs had ruled.
And taking the lead from the great James Dean’s pre-unit 1955 500cc Trophy, 1960s’ stars favoured the smaller capacity Triumph twin; the low weight made it accessible to all. Skinny Bob Dylan rode a 1964 T100 S/R (Sports/Road) 500, endorsed the marque by wearing a Triumph T-shirt on the cover of his seminal ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ album, until 1966 when he suffered a life-changing crash on the bike.
Steve McQueen’s first Triumph was an early 1960s TR5 dirt bike. Some of the young crew of pop artist Andy Warhol’s Factory were filmed blasting around Manhattan on T100s. In San Francisco, the singer Janis Joplin, as she found fame, bought a T100; actress Ann Margaret also favoured the 500. And the Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen, in 1969 ran a 500cc Trophy as his first motorcycle. With friends like that, the light, stylish, quick-steering, powerful 500cc twin more than held its own until 1973. (And that’s not even mentioning Ted Simon’s round-the-world adventure on a T100P.)
On the road
Starting the 9.0:1 c.r. 500 proved easy enough, as Triumph twins usually are. The clutch and slightly notchy gearchange were both good, and after some shameful over-revving to keep it going along Bill’s long uphill deep gravel drive, we emerged to trickle through the newly 20mph village. In 1970, the T100s’ steering damper was deleted and at rest the front end had felt a bit floppy, but the bike’s low speed steering proved unaffected. Oxfordshire’s famously poor road surfaces, in combination with the sporting 500’s relatively stiff suspension, necessary for reliable high-speed handling, made for a rather harsh ride.
Once free of the village the T100SS’ gearing, despite Bill having raised it a bit, still felt ‘peaky’, and with quite a gap between third and fourth. But once we were bend-swinging, the willing engine’s power and the supple handling put that out of your mind. The front brake needed real caution and a light touch if it was not to grab, with the rear a good ‘easer’ at lower speeds.
There was a tension to the ride, though, and only partially because this was such a cherished machine. Both the engine and the clutch proved tireless while performing for the camera, and on a nearby straight, hanging on in third before changing up and giving it a big handful, I saw close to 80mph with more in hand before poor surface stopped play. Top speed for the single carb 500s had been around 100mph when they were new.
But I didn’t have quite enough faith to really put it into corners (my bad), until the final pass for the camera through a long, fast S-bend. The run in was slightly downhill and with the engine properly warmed up I found I was approaching way faster than I’d realised. I knew I mustn’t back off, and was asking the Triumph a question where the answer wasn’t a certainty. But giving it the extra body lean, the T100 responded faultlessly and we rocketed though the swervery, highly exhilarated. Just as well!
My final thought was that despite its virtues, the T100SS would not have been an ideal commuter, with the fussy gearing, and having to keep it on the boil. But Bill Turner, no doubt riding sympathetically, had managed it for years. These later single carb 500s, I concluded, had been great all-rounders, and with 38bhp@7000rpm, no slouches. And this one, with its conscientious keeper, had stood the test of time very well indeed.
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