There’s always a one that got away moment when you’re busy building custom motorcycles. Visitors frequently stop by the CRM garage offering everything from rusty collections of long-defunct motorcycles (always without titles) to busted engines that last ran during the Regan administration. Most times we take a hard pass on piles of junk that will only end up cluttering the workshop, but a couple of years back, we skipped when we should have bought. While visiting the Kempton Park Autojumble in England, a bloke approached me asking if I was, indeed “that crazy Yank from the Cafe Racer magazine and Tv series.” My identity conformed, he insisted I join him at his swap meet booth to discover an array of 1960s performance parts designed for air0cooled Triumph twins. Among the dusty\-but-well-preserved treasures was a Westlake four-valve engine head for a 650cc Bonneville. These soup-up accessories were considered ig-time biking exotica when first introduced in the late 1960s by England’s Rickman Brothers. The team of talented framemakers and racing tuners had developed eight-valve engine heads for Bonnies in hopes of improving the 50-ish horsepower and 115 MPH top speed of the popular machines.
In the years since, these parts have become rarer than six-foot GPO racers and what few turn up on sites like eBay.co.uk are usually picked up by vintage racers and serious collectors before very long.
Check out some of the original source materials on these heads, which were produced by several different manufacturers including Nourish and Rickman, and its astonishing the performance gains they afforded Triumph’s classic machines. Tall tales abound of Triumphs so modified reaching the 70 horsepower mark and speeds well in excess of 125 MPH which explains why the Nourish heads were beloved by drag racers, roadracers and just plain speed freaks looking for an edge in their next challenge burn-up.
We’re in the early stages of stripping down our original 1967 Triton 750 special which we plan to upgrade with several original 1960s parts; an eight-valve head would be an interesting experiment and one that would definitely breathe new life into a already fun-to-ride motorcycle. If you know of anyone with parts like these stowed away in their garage or classic Birtbike shop, please have them drop us a line via rockersrule@caferacermag.com. We’re willing to deal…