About five years ago my wife's aunt gave me this old '68 TR25w that she had sitting in a shed a stones throw from the Atlantic ocean. The aluminum on it was covered in white corrosion, the wheels where rusted through the chrome, but the motor was still free, the frame was clean, and the tank was more than saveable with only a few small pinholes. Anyway, this was five years ago and I still haven't done anything with it aside from strip it down and take the top end off the motor to inspect it. At his point I'm not sure what I want to do with it, so I'm hesitant to throw any money or time into until I've got a set plan. I keep seeing these old photos of Gary Nixon's 250 Triumph flat track bike, and it just looks like a wicked little bike, and I'm tempted to do a low budget replica. Of course that bike had a Sonicweld frame and basically was nothing at all like my 250, but you could theoretically build a similar styled or influenced bike with what pieces I've got. Sort of a 250 Triumph street tracker. I realize a TR25 isn' t the most desirable project bike, but fuck, it was free, and in the long run I'd rather see it back on the road being ridden, instead of rotting away in the sea salt air of the Jersey coast. This occurred to me just now; two years late Hurricane Sandy would have wiped that shed and the bike the fuck out, so i guess I now see it as a full fledged mission to ride it.
Gary Nixon's '68 250 flat tracker:
January 2011 when I got it home:
As it sits now:
Need to have the seats reground but the valves themselves are in nice shape. The bore has bit of scoring, nothing major, but I'd probably go .020 over with it and a new piston and rings.
Frame was sandblasted when I first got the bike and hit with some semi gloss black spray bomb, and the tank was also sandblasted, and the holes where soldered up. It still needs to be lined, but I got the one small dent it had filled and it's in primer currently. I'm hesitant to go any further without having an end goal in mind so any ideas or suggestions with the direction to take would cool!
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