The latest issue of Cafe Racer magazine feature a pair of classic British custom rides that share a common origin despite being designed and constructed 5,000 miles apart. Both the Matchless twin hailing from So Cal’s Classic British Spares’ Malcolm Ede and the quick, purely ’60s hybrid Triton from England’s Robert Taylor were cobbled together from spare parts found lying around their respective workshops. This pair of remarkably similar stories have captured the attention of several CRM regulars, all of whom operate garages and workshops that tend to overflow with spare bits. Though I have a difficult time convincing both my family and random folks who encounter the overcrowded shelves and random piles of greasy bike parts in my own shed, this is not a planned series of events. Instead, when building or repairing motorcycles, extra components tend to just accumulate organically.
Case in point: I recently needed a new rear brake master cylinder for the Fat featherbed modern Triton in the CRM garage and ordered a used part online. As often is the case, the brake reservoir turned up with a fluid cup, brake line and mounting hardware all attached free of charge. As this sort of extra parts cache happens time and again over a series of year, garages slowly take on the appearance of places owned by out-of-control hoarders.
“I never once set out to own six different sets of Triumph Bonneville forks or a dozen pairs of handlebars that are now far too low or angled the wrong way for me to ever use in anger, but nevertheless, there they are,” jokes CRM’s longtime contributor Paul D. Stanstead, who’s small suburban workshop could easily win him a place on “Hoarders: Buried Alive.”
Like many of us, Paul avoids tossing unused bits into the shop dumpster, fearing he’ll throw away something that he’ll only end up needed at a later date. “I stopped that nonsense after finding myself re-purchasing hardware and things I swear I cleared out during one of my occasional purges,” he laughs. Fortunately, the upside to all this inadvertent collecting of unwanted items has its upside, as illustrated by issue’s #99’s two main photo features: after enough time and the proper alignment by the Used Parst Gods, one may just end up with enough components to actually construct a complete motorcycle. These so-called bitsa bikes can end up revealing just what sort fo custom rides a person actually prefers as they come together not from any carefully arranged plan or design, but just from the items left over when all is said and done.
