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You can pull up a stool, brew a café and chat about your favorite motorcycles and events surrounding our store.
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 TRIUMPH SCRAMBLER EVO
words: Alan Cathcart & pics: Tom Riles
Bill Himmelsbach blue-tacked a road test of the Triumph Scrambler on his Pennsylvania workshop wall two years ago, dreaming up ways to improve the factory bike. This is the end result and Alan Cathcart reckons it’s the machine that Triumph should’ve built a few years back.
“I rode a Scrambler for a month, and figured after that it was a job half done,” Bill commented, “It had the potential to be a nice bike, but it’d be more fun if it had a little more power and less weight – plus it needed some of the parts upgraded. So I tacked your article on the wall, and started working through it!”
SPECS--->
- ENGINE: 904cc twin-cylinder
four-stroke,air-cooled
- MAXIMUM POWER: 65.6bhp @ 7200rpm
- MAXIMUM TORQUE: 57.41ft-lb at 4800rpm
- GEARBOX: Five-speed
- SUSPENSION: Front: 41mm Kayaba telescopic forks, non-adjustable. Rear: Tubular steel swingarm with 2 x Penske fully-adjustable shocks
- BRAKES: Front: Single 310mm EBC disc,
two-piston Nissin caliper. Rear: Single 255mm EBC disc, two-piston caliper
- TIRES: Front: 100/90-19 Pirelli Scorpion on
3in wire-laced Takasago Excel alloy rim Rear:130/80-17 Pirelli Scorpion on 4.50
in wire-laced Takasago Excel alloy rim
- SEAT HEIGHT: 825mm
- WHEELBASE: 1500mm
- DRY WEIGHT: 184kg/406lb
- FUEL CAPACITY: N/A
- ESR MPG: N/A
- PRICE: Stock Scrambler plus $5000 approx
- CONTACT: www.eurosports.net
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Once fettled, Bill and wife Beryl trucked the EVO-Scrambler 1000 miles to meet me in rural Wisconsin this summer. Spending a day riding Bill’s ‘evolution’ Scrambler, in company with our mutual friend Jeff Craig’s 1958 TR6 Trophy, made for a nice diversion, as well as underlining what a funky bike lies beneath the stock Scrambler model.
Triumph’s Scrambler, introduced at the Paris Show back in 2005 as a modern tribute to the go-anywhere TR6C street enduro, offers practicality, but low-performance. For me, the Scrambler effectively represented Triumph’s take on an urban transportation tool, a sort-of maxi-scooter, styled in the manner of a classic-era motorcycle.
“Triumph makes great bikes, but the Scrambler just hasn’t hit the spot,” says Bill, “and I think that’s unfortunate, because there’s a great motorcycle hiding inside there.”
How do you like your scrambler egged?
So this is the result. It’s available from EuroSports (www.eurosports.net) as a menu, so that depending on what you’re looking for, you can pick and choose what you want.
OK – so how, exactly? First up, Himmelsbach fitted EuroSports’ big bore kit to bump capacity up to 904cc from the stock 865cc via a pair of 2mm-over JE pistons delivering a point higher compression at 10.4:1, and producing a 92 x 68mm engine format by honing out the stock Nikasil barrels and re-plating them.
He also machined down the flywheel 2lb and lightened the alternator rotor on a lathe, to offer a zestier pickup and save weight, then did a light port job on the cylinder head to produce matching intakes, plus junked the throttle position sensors from the 38mm Keihin carbs.
But the most significant bolt-on part was a stacked reverse-cone twin-pipe exhaust with stainless steel heat shields from Thunderbike Triumph. |
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