Making things all the more interesting when it comes to building a vintage Triumph is that every one has a back-story of how the builder ran into it unlike ordering up a new S&S engine from a catalogue. A Britt Different is no different as owner/builder Ross Calvagna of Jupiter, Florida, explained his saga. “I helped a friend move and when we were done, he offered me what was left of two Triumphs in his shed. I sold all but one engine and one partially cut up frame.” With a bit o’ pocket money in hand, Ross got to work. “I went ahead and rebuilt the engine then cut the frame down. I drew a few sketches ‘til I came up with something I liked, and then I went to a friend’s shop, New Wave Fabrication in Boynton Beach, Florida, where Frank Marara and I built a jig to hang the neck. We bent tube and tacked pieces on ‘til we came up with what was on the stretch. At that point I went to John Whaley of Boynton Beach, Florida, to finish the frame with some machined and hand-massaged parts. John worked with the late Jerry Graves and together they built some of the sweetest bikes in the industry.”
The final result of this collaboration is a clean, simple mainframe with a rather whimsical rigid rear end. Whimsical in that the S-shaped chainstays almost seem barely attached with a lot of airspace between the seat tube and the skinny 21” Black Bike rear wheel. Up front a 6”-under DNA Springer holds an even skinnier 21” wheel and halting the proceedings is courtesy of a small-diameter PM setup in front with a Jerry Graves’ sprocket brake aft. John Whaley heavily modified the Triumph tank until Ross said, “By the time we got through, John had made a new tank.” The slim and trim tank needed a fender to match so Ross modified a West Coast Choppers fender until it too was slim and trim along with some very cool fender stays. “When I was building the stays I thought, ‘I can make this as difficult as I want,’ but I didn’t feel any need for that,” said Ross. “I wanted the whole bike to be simple.”
By now you must have noticed the articulated stainless seat-shock mount and how it cleverly works around the seat tube. “It was an accident, a natural evolution. I had drawn a couple of ideas and as I was cutting templates, I actually make my templates functional, and I stumbled on what I ended up with,” said Ross. My first impression of the seat perched on there was that it was off a high-end mountain bike, but Ross straightened me out. “I did go to a bicycle store and traced some bike seats because I liked the way they looked, but this seat’s made of steel, not plastic like a bicycle seat,” he said. “Everybody asks me if it’s a bicycle seat.
After plugging in the motor, Ross had to make an exhaust and, as usual, he had to put his own take on them with an angled-forward sweep ending in an unusual choice of a shortened Yamaha R1 muffler directly under the engine. “There’s no exhaust collars on the head. I made it less than a 90-degree angle so it forces it into the head almost like an interference fit,” said Ross. “It works absolutely perfect, no leaking, nothing.”
Ross’s bike has moved on to another owner and that’s a good thing. Good for the lucky new owner and good for us that Ross has found another Triumph motor and hopefully we’ll see the end result in these pages too.
Up close: Black Bike Wheels
Laced wheels are one classic motorcycle part that the more they change, the more they stay the same. The three key ingredients, hub, spokes, and rim, have been with us from the time they replaced wooden spoke wheels and have secured their place in history and the future in spite of the high-tech billet and even carbon fiber wheels of today. The look is timeless. Keeping them relevant as a real world motorcycle wheel is the use of modern materials and construction that makes them able to take today’s hard miles and look great doing it.
Black Bike Wheels out of Northridge, California, has taken upon itself to try and be an industry trendsetter when it comes to laced wheels with a dizzying selection of laced wheels that makes picking what you want as hard as picking a billet wheel design. Black Bike says their “wheels have been designed to be the final word in light weight, strength, and beauty” and a perusal of their website sure gives you a stupefying choice rim sizes, materials (steel, aluminum, or stainless steel) along with powdercoating options that could actually give you a “unique” set of wheels in the truest sense of the word.
Wire spoke wheels are their specialty and that’s all they offer. They don’t carry a line of somebody else’s billet wheels, just their own wire spoked (chromed steel or Buchanan’s stainless spokes) wheels laced to CNC machined 1061 billet aluminum that’s hardened to T6 specifications. Toss on one of the endless color choices and you’re good to go with a classic wheel design that will never, ever look dated. Just classy.
For more info, visit www.blackbikewheels.com or call 818-341-2550.
Builder: Ross Calvagna
Man, you take one look at this tasty Triumph and see all the work that went into it and it’s esy to write it off as the work of another professional builder. Yes, that’s true in this case too, but don’t let that discourage you from digging into a project. Ross Calvagna of Jupiter, Florida, is a builder by trade, but that should be clarified a bit as he’s a builder of residential and commercial homes. Building custom bikes then is more of a hobby for him, just like you’d like for yourself, but he’s got some interesting things to say that may encourage you to get down and dirty building something for yourself. “As a kid, my father who was a Sicilian and a Marine so he was double-stubborn, was on me constantly. ‘Measure twice, get it right, don’t waste material’ and that’s the way I was brought up. It does make a difference, though, people like the work I do and I’ve been able to make a good living,” said Ross “I attribute all this to my dad for getting on me the way he did. It wasn’t fun at the time, but I learned my lesson and it was a good lesson to learn.”
Like any good builder, Ross knows when to call in the troops too and has gotten a nice circle of friends that he can rely on when he’s at an impasse like buddy John Whaley. “John is a very talented motorcycle builder and a low-key guy who has everything you could possibly need in his one-car garage, Besides helping me to do finishing work on the frame, he helped me mentally through it to be honest,” said Ross.
Next up for Ross is either the recently acquired Triumph motor looking for a frame or something with an old Indian motor.
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