On 2/8/2016 7:19 AM, Tim wrote:
On Monday, February 8, 2016 at 1:15:26 AM UTC-6, wrote:
On Sun, 7 Feb 2016 18:54:43 -0800 (PST), Tim
wrote:


Yes, I did. Saturday evening I was working on my vintage Triumph Daytona 500. I'm wanting to get it running and polished out to go on this years Distinguished Gentlemans Ride. May as well ride in style.

http://www.gentlemansride.com/gallery

That is when you know you are old I guess. I remember when the Daytona
was the new beginner ride.. Later most of them were cut up into
"choppers" so a stock one might be "vintage" now. I think the Triumph
chopper thing was fairly short lived but a lot fell to the hands of
customizers in the 70s. Same is true of the big brother Bonneville.

There's a lot of truth to that. Plus, they couldn't compete with the Japanese invasion of the 60's and 70's. because compared to the Japanese products, they were proven to be antiquated and inferior. Countless went to the scrap.

But there's plenty of parts available and they do have a certain cool factor to them besides- it's been sitting long enough so...


Yup. The Japanese invasion pretty much killed off BSA and Norton here
also. The original Indian Motorcycle Co. folded in 1953. They only
produced about 1,000 military motorcycles in WWII whereas Harley
Davidson produced over 90,000. Even Harley ran into some problems
later leading to their purchase by AMF in 1969 who ruined their quality
and reputation. Fortunately, a group of investors led by Willie
Davidson bought the company from AMF in 1981 and refocused on quality.
They also accused the Japanese makers of flooding the US market with
cheap products and claimed that domestic motorcycles and the jobs their
manufacture created was endangered. Ronald Reagan took action to
protect the domestic manufacturers by imposing a 45% tariff on imported
motorcycles over 700cc's.
( Screw the "global market" BS :-) )