The World of Autojumbles at your FIngertips

bike test: Jaeson triumphs with the next level

Looking at the race grid in the 1960s shows there were four-strokes out there and doing well but rather than hauling a bike off the production line and hotting it up a bit the other makers of race four- strokes went down the exclusive, virtually hand built ‘use for one race then rebuild route’ with multi cylinders and overhead cams.

It is the nature of writers to stick their necks out and come up with opinions and that’s what’s going to happen here, I’d be more surprised to learn that Triumph couldn’t produce a 500cc ohc race engine than to be told it could. Don’t forget, the British industry had a lot of talent in its infrastructure.

That Triumph didn’t go down the ultra special one-off route has more to do with management dictate than lack of ability. Triumph’s long-time boss, the almost dictatorial Edward Turner, decreed early on in his management of the company that where other makers would “…waste valuable resources on building special racing machines, Triumph would not. However where races for true production machines existed, Triumph would contest.” There is quite good value in this attitude where your production range is seen to be doing well on the track. In the important North American market the two distributors – Johnson Motors in the west and TriCor in the east – made sure that the new unit construction model was entered in as many competitions as possible.

The factory sat up and took notice when Don Burnett on a T100 finished second to Roger Reiman’s Harley-Davidson in the 1962 Daytona 200 mile race. The general feeling was that a production based machine could win, something that proved correct in 1966 when Buddy Elmore took the flag at the Florida circuit. Then, to prove a point, Triumph did it again in 1967 with Gary Nixon.

In order to be accurate, the bikes were more production based than ‘production’ for these races but not ultra special as race rules in the USA prevented exotic specials competing. But it was possible, according to the catalogues and brochures of the time, for a privateer to buy all the parts necessary to put an equally competitive machine together – possible, just not easy and not having a factory behind you was a bit of a disadvantage.

In the UK

All this success wasn’t lost on the UK riders either. They’d always known that Triumph could win production races but now it seemed that the bikes could do well at the top end of racing. A small but enthusiastic team led by Les Williams under the guidance of Doug Hele set about making sure that its top man – Percy Tait – got a bike that would match his abilities

The Caunce machine

A visit to Beezumph 19 – over at Anglesey for 2010 – always turns up some fine machinery, more than a magazine could run in a year in fact. As I was wandering around looking for a cuppa I literally bumped into Les Williams. “Come and look at what’s over here,” he enthused and dragged me over to a gazebo where parked up were a couple of Triumph race bikes. At first I thought the one in our pics was a genuine Tait machine but Les quickly put me right. “No, it’s sort of what we’d have liked to do had we carried on and it was built by Jaeson Caunce and it goes quick.” Of Les Williams many traits, understatement is just one, if he says it goes quick then he’s meaning ‘really fast’. Les introduced me to the builder/rider and they both pointed out aspects of the bike that I should be aware of.

This isn’t a true replica in the sense of being nit-pickingly accurate to the nth degree. To be honest, race bikes are not ideal subjects for such work as they were constantly developed during a season and the bike that starts at the beginning of the year will likely be a lot different from the one at the end of the year. Anyway, with the need to actually race the bike there’s a bit of development gone on, too much to detail in this short piece but suffice to say there’s 45bhp at the dyno – maybe more now as this piece was prepared a few months ago.

It was clear from the start that Les Williams felt this bike to be a next development of the Tait Triumph and one built without recourse to special parts such as those the factory could make. That’s not to say it is devoid of special parts as it’s got a lot of modern stuff on there such as carburettors and ignition – both areas that have moved on a long way in 40 years.

One of the special parts are Jaeson’s footrests. As he rides a number of other machines often during the same meeting he decided to make each of his bikes have the same foot controls as a way to lessen the chance of errors during gear changing and braking. These errors could easily cause enough damage to blow a motor apart.

Watching Jaeson out on the track, even though Beezumph is more ‘track session’ than ‘race’ the bike goes well and is a good match for many bigger machines. Look out for Jaeson in action at circuits and as a regular at Thundersprint in May.