As some of you will know I have a bit of a soft spot for the Triumph T300 series of bikes, I currently own three, two Trident Sprints and a Daytona 1200SE (Sadly dismantled at the moment).
These bikes marked Triumph’s rebirth in 1991, when business man John Bloor launched a range 750, 900, 1000 and 1200cc bikes. These bikes all used a four valve double overhead cam engine housed in a large diameter steel tube ‘back bone” chassis adopting the modular design concept, first suggested, although never implemented, by the brilliant design engineer Bert Hopwood for the BSA/Triumph factory in the late 60’s. This allowed a wide range of bikes to share a common pool of components maximising the benefit of design effort, while keeping manufacturing costs down. Coupled with the use of ‘off the shelf’ Japanese components allowed Triumph to produce a solid bike with a quality feel, a perfect image for the relaunch of the brand.
My current bike of choice is a 1994 ‘L’ reg example that I have owned for about three years now, it is mostly standard apart from a few upgrades I have made to it to improve braking and tyre choice. Specifically, I have used the four piston front brake calipers and wheels from a later 1998 Sprint, these bolt straight on to the bike with no engineering required (one of the benefits of the modular design concept). The larger wheels of the later bike allow the use of 180/55 section rear tyres to replace the original 160/60 tyres, giving a much more planted feel to the bike. While the four pot, Triumph branded, Nissin calipers deliver a huge improvement to the braking, especially when fitted with EBC HH compound pads. One word of warning though, always use the matching master cylinder for the calipers chosen, as although the original looks identical, it is in fact a different bore and doesn’t pump enough fluid required for the later calipers.
When you first sling a leg over on of these early bikes the first impression is of a large solid, slightly heavy bike that you ‘sit in’ rather than on, with a slight stretch over the vast tank (5.5 imp gallons), but, surprisingly the actual seat height is fairly moderate at 775mm. Full choke and thumbing the starter button wakes that gorgeous 885cc triple engine, in a very Kawasaki like way the revs soar and the choke requires immediate attention to bring them back down to earth. As you pull away the motor always seems a little ‘mechanical’ but as soon as you have a few revs on the tacho it produces that fabulous triple sound, coupled with a wave of flowing torque that pulls the bike toward the horizon with surprising speed. With just 100 bhp on tap the Sprint is never going to be a real sports bike, but with approx. 60 ft/lb of torque, it will just top 140 mph (on a closed circuit obviously). Honestly, the ride is best suited to open A roads and is plush and planted, requiring reasonable input from the rider to make it change direction in a hurry. However, this really isn’t what the T300’s are about, all of them including the 900 and 1200 Daytona’s which all share the same basic chassis make great GT bikes, I have personally covered over 500 miles in one day on mine with out it missing a beat.
One Response
There’s definatеly a great deal to learn about this subϳect.
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