Two years with a Rickman 650 Triumph reminded me of nothing more than my first wife. It was a right bitch. Liked nothing more than to show me up in public. Just as I was going completely berserk, a brief moment of exhilaration would cause me to gasp with shock and hold back. Then it'd be back to public breakdowns, screaming sessions and general mayhem. Moments of intense passion stopped me taking a large hammer to it. The wife ended up costing me every penny I had. The Rickman was bought as a consolation prize on the back of a £3000 bank loan. Yes, it is dangerously stupid to get involved with a new mistress on the bounce.
Especially one with an insane heart. The Rickman chassis was designed to take any unit Triumph motor. Mine was a worked over '68 Bonnie. Worked over by a lunatic with a death-wish. The compression ratio was so high I could stand on the kickstart. The cams were so wild it'd spit flames out of the massive Amals. The open megaphones were so loud that window panes tried to jump out of their frames and even the deaf would scream abuse at me.
Starting involved flooding the carbs until there was a puddle of fuel on top of the crankcases, leaping a yard up in the air and giving the lever a full bodied lunge. So committed had to be the kick that if it backfired I was either launched through the garage roof or suffered such leg pain that the surrounding environment was blue with curses for hours afterwards.
When the engine finally deemed to start, after anywhere between five and ten kicks, the booming noise was accompanied by such an excess of vibration that the bike would shuffle across the garage floor on the stand and I could feel the fuel and oil gurgling away in their tanks.
Both the clutch and the throttle were so heavy that even a Moto Guzzi Le Mans owner would be writing away for a Bullworker. Both were vicious. The clutch take-up would hurtle the bike forward or stall it dead. The throttle springs brought the revs back to 1000rpm in an instant if I tried a right-hand turn signal as an alternative to the weekly replacement of the indicator control box.
These traits were combined with one of the nastiest riding positions I'd ever come across. It recalled some of the sexual games the first wife insisted I should play; you can guess who ended up in the submissive role! With low clip-ons, a skimpy seat and a body stretching reach over the long petrol tank, town riding was akin to being tortured on the rack, sexually abused by a donkey whilst having one's head stuck inside a 1000 watt bass speaker.
Moments of relief were found by opening up the throttle in second and third. Come 5000 revs the vertical twin engine put out an extreme amount of power that pushed the rock steady machine forward like a steam-roller falling over the edge of a cliff. Whilst acceleration was suitably inspiring, submerging the vicious vibes under the thrilling way the road was eaten up, trying to maintain a constant velocity was an entirely different bag of horrors. Down to the vicious vibes the vile power unit was putting out.
That's the trouble with Triumph twins. They were originally designed as a mild 500 when their OHV pushrods were acceptable and the puny two bearing crankshaft was able to withstand the minimal engineering forces. Over the years they became both bigger and higher tuned without any fundamental rethink to their design. More cubic capacity and power added up to an increase in vibration and decrease in longevity. Where a well put together Tiger 100 was a neat bit of tackle, a racing spec Bonnie was hard pushed to do a 1000 miles without something failing or at the very least falling off.
The Rickman trellis was hefty high grade steel with bright nickel plating. It was so strong that it only needed a bit of mild modification to take the CB750 engine in later guises. It was easily good enough to take any excess that the Triumph engine could put out. A stock Bonnie might be good for 120 to 125mph, mine might manage 130mph in theory but in practice the primary vibes were so intense that I rarely tried to break through the ton. The engine and frame didn't seem well matched, any tendency the motor had to buzzing amplified by the large diameter, thin walled tubes.
Vibration had always been a problem with big British twins. Norton cobbled together their Isolastic mounts, Royal Enfield dynamically balanced their cranks and Triumph relied on rubber mounting everything that didn't need to be welded to the frame (except the engine whose bulk was used to reinforce the swinging arm mounts). The Japanese didn't do much better, they either built the chassis so heftily that it weighed as much as a four or fitted huge engine balancers that robbed the machine of most its power and lost the marvellous direct connection between throttle and back wheel in which the hoary old Triumph, for all its sins, revelled.
There were a series of coastal back roads in the Fenlands where the Rickman really showed its mettle. The flatness of the area meant I could see way ahead, ride on both sides of the road to set the bike up on the racing line when necessary. The roads were a bit bumpy which gave the stiff Rickman forks a hard time but didn't stop me banking over until my boots were buffeted by the tarmac, nor cause the Rickman to veer off the desired line.
It wasn't quite as quick steering as a stock Bonnie but made up for that with much better stability. If the riding position made no sense, if debilitating road shocks aged my body and if pot-holes threatened to break my arms, I just knew that I could ride it straight over logs and heel it so far over that I threatened to go horizontal. This on thin old-tech Dunlop tyres that lasted for more than 10,000 miles.
The only time stability was really upset was when the half fairing fell off on to the front wheel. Rickman made lots of GRP products, their quite curvaceous half fairing being reasonably stiff, although the screen used to buzz about a bit. The vibes had got to the fairing's bracket, causing it to slam down on the minimal front mudguard. At the time, I was doing 35mph through town. The bike went into a massive wobble around the screaming front wheel. I had a rude meeting with the tarmac as the Rickman flew through a collection of startled peds. Luckily, their soft bodies absorbed its sudden self-destruct tendencies.
The fairing was wrecked, though, with large cracks. The headlamp and front guard were also broken. Neither were much cop but dealt with the niceties of the law. I took the opportunity to fit some clamps and bars, as well as a big chrome headlight. That made the bike more tolerable in town, where my back no longer ached is if I'd spent the day carrying around 50 kilo bags of cement.
A major hassle during town riding was the front brake. Rickman were, I believe, the first company to fit discs at both the front and rear on a 'production' roadster. Both were Lockheeds, that also made an appearance on other British bikes, which at least meant I could still buy pads and seals. The biggest problem with the single front disc was that when used below 30mph it'd lock on as solidly as a Dobberman on a thief's balls! The rear brake was just as touchy, sending the back tyre into an ear busting screech. Throw in some wet roads and it was broken leg time. The thin tyres had no answer to the locked up wheels, other than to try to fling the Rickman down the road.
With a 31'' seat height and low centre of gravity it was relatively easy to get a boot down before the bike got away from me. I only messed up completely the once. The bike flipped up but then slid over on the other side, catching my ankle in its descent. I was howling with the pain as it was actually broken. The peds looked at me as if I was insane; there was no blood nor amputated limbs littering the pavement, so they thought it was a lot of ado about nothing. I eventually ended up in a wailing ambulance shot full of pain-killers.
When the Rickman Triumph and I were reunited, the bike showed no signs of its demise save for some grazing on the GRP petrol tank. I hobbled around for a couple of months until I could regain its seat. I took that time to polish up the engine and chassis. Rickman made their chassis to quite a high quality. Although it'd tarnish quickly over the winter, a bit of polishing would soon restore its patina, not bad going for a bike that was 18 years old! Even the spokes laced into chunky alloy rims resisted the urge to go brown with rust. I did have to replace the Girling shocks whose springs had corroded to the point where I thought they were going to break up.
Many more engine parts than chassis bits went west in the 14000 miles I extracted from the reluctant motor. The crankshaft, for instance, wasn't good for more than 6000 miles, at which point just about every internal component, save the four speed gearbox, was just as worn out. The engine had some lumpy racing cams that proved impossible to replace when great chunks of their lobes went missing. Standard Bonnie items were still available, so it seemed like a good idea to detune the beast a little. The lightened pushrods and polished rockers I retained. The huge valves had cut back guides that barely lasted 2000 miles, but there wasn't enough meat left in the head to replace them with stock stuff.
The primary chain boasted a belt conversion, whose great expense appeared justified in the lack of attention it needed compared with the standard chain drive. The clutch had heavy springs that shot across the garage when I removed their retaining nuts. Despite the vicious clutch action the plates lasted nearly 10,000 miles.
The drive chain, despite the swinging arm being mounted on eccentric adjusters, lasted for less than 5000 miles, whilst spraying loadsa oil over passengers and the back end (as did the rear wheel with water due to the total lack of mudguarding). I think the short chain life was caused by the half a foot between swinging arm mount and final drive sprocket. The latter needed the usual tedious chaincase disassembly to replace.
As well as the engine rebuilds there were the weekly, sometimes daily, maintenance chores. Points, valves and carbs all needed attention, along with a tediously extensive list of bolts that needed spanner work. The carbs had a peculiar tendency towards falling off. They usually hung on by the hose or throttle cable but I had one roll down the road, ending up flattened by a following truck. The Rickman Triumph is the kind of bike that makes membership of the AA or RAC compulsory.
All relationships have to come to an end. The good ones from death, the bad ones from separation. The Rickman was sold, funnily enough, when I decided to get married again. Yes, I never learn (only joking, dear). The Rickman has one massive drawback with regards marital relationships and the courting process. It's only fitted with a solo seat. That was the excuse I needed to off-load the troublesome terror at a massive loss. The beast had served its purpose, kept me amused for a couple of years until I recovered from the trauma of the divorce. But it's not a motorcycling experience I ever want to repeat again!
Phillip Smith