Triumph Bonneville T140D

This was one of those bikes I'd always liked the looks of so when one came up reasonably locally I got it.

Very nicely presented bike and the chap I got it from had done a great job keeping it. Bike was in excellent condition when I got it and the chap advised he'd recently done a running restore so looked fantastic. The Lester alloys and US style tank made it look very trick.

Unfortunately it came up at a time when I'd just had an operation on my knee which meant I was not really going to be able to start a bike like this too easily. When I got it, I had to get the previous keeper to start the bike for me so I could ride it home and just hoped I didn't have to restart it on the journey home.

I'm no expert on bikes from this era but it was about as nice a looking one as you'll see in general day-to-day use and I'd not seen another on the road as good as this one for a long time.

I'd never had one of the older style Brit bikes and despite it being some 5 years newer than some of GT380s it was so different and such and old school setup it was back to basics to work it all out. Of course nothing was metric so had to tool up on imperial stuff to do anything on the bike.

It was probably me, but starting was always a bit hit and miss. It could go weeks starting 1st or 2nd kick and then just plain refuse to start at all. You'd leave it and come out the next day and off it would go 1st kick. Never did understand that, perhaps it just didn’t fancy going out on those days!

Once up and running it ran really well. Bit lumpy at first as the engine got up to speed but then just plodded around nicely with that classic Brit twin sound.

During the time I had the bike it was relatively well behaved  and never broke down when out for a spin. 

But as with all classic machines you did need to tinker a bit to keep it running. Replaced all the internals on the carbs as well as the rubbers as it was running a bit lumpy at low revs. Swapped the UK internal setup for the US internals which had been on it. This cured the problem for the most part, but still seemed lumpy. Changed the grade of the plugs and that sorted it all out.

Not exactly a speed machine compared to some of my other bikes so never really thrashed it, but it was capable of breaking the 100mph barrier without problems and did handled well for a bike of that era.

Had the bike around 3 years before it was swapped in a deal for another bike.

Surprisingly over those years it was pretty oil tight with just the odd drop of oil here and there.

Felt a bit like 'Wallace & Gromit' when out and about!