Your Ride

It’s been a few years since Sandy, the owner and driving force behind Triumph’ant Motorcycles in Wales, last had a bike in Back Street Heroes. Pictures: Simon Everett Back in the ’90s and early 2000s, bikes he’d built featured quite regularly among these pages, but as his business, specialising in spares for Hinckley Triumphs, flourished…

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There are people out there, strange, twisted people, who believe that colours other than black are eminently suitable for the painting of custom motorcycles. They are, of course, quite, quite wrong…  Pictures: Simon Everett For Billy Perks, the owner and builder of this ’ere Ironhead Sportster, there could be only one colour for him to paint…

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While many folk think that the opposite ends of the motorcycling world are road racing and custom biking, and that there is absolutely zero crossover, they’re actually deceiving themselves in that opinion, writes Dave M… Aside from the fact that bikes like those ridden by Marc Marquez and Valentino Rossi are among the most extreme…

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The ’70s style may be hot among a lot of bike builders, but friends and colleagues Mike Gustafsson and Jörgen Hases from Sweden claim not to care about what’s fashionable: “We’re so uncool that we’ve built in this style for 15 years by now, and only lately have the younger guys started doing the same…”…

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My bike, Mr Hardy, was built to be a ‘Rescue Remedy’. I work in crisis and chaos in social services, and the impact takes its toll at times, but 2016 was the toughest to date – not just through dealing with others’ trauma; I had my own personal share of relentless bombshells and almost broke…

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Having access to a fully equipped workshop does help when you’re going to build a custom bike, as does having been in the game since God’s dog was a puppy, naturally. Pics: Simon Everett When Hank, head honcho at Trike Design/Hank’s Chop Shop in Caerphilly, ex-president of the National Chopper Club and a man who…

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In terms of building motorcycles that became known for their performance, Birmingham Small Arms, or BSA as they’re more commonly known, didn’t, or perhaps haven’t, done quite as well as their great rivals Triumph or Norton. Pics: Simon Everett Yes, I’m aware that the Gold Star, both in its 350cc and 500cc variants, 1938-1963, is…

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I think it was the ancient Greek tragedian Aeschylus who said ‘Wisdom comes only through suffering’. You’ve got to hand it to those old ancient Greeks – they might’ve had some very dubious ideas about the education, in every sense of the word, of young boys, but when it comes to sitting about in a…

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The idea for this bike came some 30 years ago when my good mate Reitse acquired a Triumph front frame loop and engine (which had been, apparently, overhauled). I’d built several Triumphs that’d been to his liking so the plan was that I’d build it for him. We were both in our 20s then, and…

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