Triumph Street Tracker
Steve Welte, one of our regular readers, saw quite a few street tracker posts on The Kneeslider and thought we might like to see what he put together
According to Steve, this bike isn't about how much money you can spend, it is all about what you can do with the parts you have or can easily source. He did all of the work from engine building to fabrication and painting, starting when he found a 1972 engine in a box and a 1971 frame and not much else. It needed lots of help. Steve sourced a much abused Yamaha XS650 front end and used one of the 5 Harley 16" rear wheels he had. The swing arm required a 1 3/4" stretch and 2" widening. The rear caliper is from a Yamaha R6, grabbing a Harley Davidson 10" rotor. Foot pegs are from a Harley Sportster. Steve likes the dual seat because it does get passengers, however the majority of the race bikes of the 50's and 60's (it's inspiration) didn't use fiberglass seats. The 2 1/2 gal fuel tank was also heavily modified, removing the center rib and the center mount and centering the fuel cap. The dual petcocks became a crossover tube and a single Pingel fuel valve was added. It's pretty hard to see all the many changes unless you are really familiar with these machines. Steve says he's since collected the basics for several more Triumph based bikes, I wonder what he'll do next.
From what I can see, this bike looks like a fun ride and from the photos Steve sent, the quality of work appears to be top notch. Nice job!
Triumph Street Tracker
More closeup photos below:
Triumph Street Tracker
Triumph Street Tracker
Triumph Street Tracker
{ 9 comments… add yours below ... }
nice and clean … great job !
For a bike made from such a wide range of parts, this is a very clean build. I personally like how it seems to be completely different, yet look totally natural. Very good job!
Looks good. We should all check out this one as well:
-todd
todd, check The Kneeslider’s spotlight selections on the top right of this page
I know it’s not the purpose of this blog, but maybe Sir Kneeslider could open a page where we could see all the interesting reader’s bikes. We have seen recently a XT600 street tracker in the recent comments about the custom sportster, I think Todd builds some bikes, I remember about Rohorn talking about a sportsbike made of a HD, now this one here … I’m sure a lot of us have nice rides that would deserve to be seen … ? (I do have a cool one, too, at least I think
)
Nice – and it’s got a proper front brake so you can ride it enthusiastically too – not like another Triumph-powered special that graced this site recently!
Kudos to Steve Welke!
And here I am with a running 72 Bonnie, 5-speed and box stock . . . hmm. I especially like that big front disk.
Everything looks marginal untill you get (from front to back) to the seat area, where it looks like it got to the point where they decided to finish it up as quickly as possable. It’s a bland job of building a flat tracker. sometimes you got to call it as you see it. You see alot of attention to detail which is to be aplauded, it just looks too mismatched as if something else was originally in mind.
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