Triumphrat

road dog · 08-12-2007, 01:04 PM

Went to see the latest OCC build yesterday... only because it was about 10 miles from my house. (Silver State Helicopter Pilot Training School between my hometown and New Braunfels, TX located at the New Braunfels Municipal Airport.) And the fact my son-in-law asked me to ride over with him, plus it was free. They were filming for an upcoming 2-part episode titled "A Chopper for a Chopper". The theme was that they were trading their latest chopper (motorcycle), custom built for Silver State Helicopter, for one of Silver State's choppers (helicopter). The helicopter is valued at 1.7 million dollars so that's a total farce IMO. Plus the motorcycle will be auction off for charity so it makes no sense. Pretty sure the Discovery channel paid for everything.

Well it was close to 100 degs F in the Silver State hangar, and several hundred people stood in line inside for close to two hours for an autograph of the Tuttle boys. They appeared for 10 to 15 mins and then burned off in a private Lear jet. Those poor idiots were left standing in line and didn't even know the Tuttles had already split. My son-in-law and I walked by the bike and and had a look while the people waiting in line were basically trapped. All-in-all, it was the most unorganized event (of any kind) I've ever been to.

Sorry, I have no picture of the bike to post. I just wasn't interested enough to pack a tiny digital camera with me. But it was something I could never ride (so I won't be bidding

). I don't think my arms would even be long enough to reach the grips. I searched the internet for something about it... anything. This is the only blurb on it I could find... click

whoa · 08-12-2007, 01:26 PM

good times...

road dog · 08-12-2007, 02:42 PM

Yea... my point exactly whoa.

:

DuckMan001 · 08-12-2007, 07:36 PM

Saw a segment on the "visit" on the news this morning. Looked pretty lame. Glad I didn't waste the gas and rubber to run up there.

tshadow6 · 08-12-2007, 08:27 PM

Discovery would be doing all of us a favor if they canceled American Chopper and did a show about REAL bikes. A show featuring the restoration or at least bringing a neglected bike back to life would be perfect. How many of the OCC bikes have ever been ridden more than 10 miles (or 20 Kilometers for my metric system friends)?

road dog · 08-12-2007, 09:30 PM

Well put tshadow. I couldn't agree with you more. You explained it perfectly.

DuckMan, I was disappointed I went, and it was only a 15 min ride from here.

sweatmachine · 08-12-2007, 10:42 PM

there used to be this show on cable (don't remember which channel) called "A Bike is Reborn" where this English bloke resurrected a bike from the rust pile to a showroom condition road-worthy bike...and he rode them!

I think there were only 3 episodes, one w/ a flathead harley, one with a late 60s bonnie, and another where he built a VW trike.

It was a cool show.

TB-T100 · 08-13-2007, 05:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sweatmachine

there used to be this show on cable (don't remember which channel) called "A Bike is Reborn" where this English bloke resurrected a bike from the rust pile to a showroom condition road-worthy bike...and he rode them!

I think there were only 3 episodes, one w/ a flathead harley, one with a late 60s bonnie, and another where he built a VW trike.

It was a cool show.

Yup, that is right. It was part of a series of programs. The Bonnie he rebuilt was a 1970 T120R. In the series ha also builds an MG, a racingcar (Westfield 1800), an Helicopter (not to be confused with Choppers a'la OCC), a Jaguar is reborn, and a 4X4 is born (out of a Land Rover). Good series. Can be bought from Amazon ( http://www.amazon.com/Bike-Born/dp/B...6994246&sr=8-1)
Much better entertainment that steroide-pumped lunatics fussing about colour-matching.

Odysseus · 08-13-2007, 05:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sweatmachine

there used to be this show on cable (don't remember which channel) called "A Bike is Reborn" where this English bloke resurrected a bike from the rust pile to a showroom condition road-worthy bike...and he rode them!

I think there were only 3 episodes, one w/ a flathead harley, one with a late 60s bonnie, and another where he built a VW trike.

It was a cool show.

I was watching it on DVD last night. It is made by Discovery Home and Leisure and is called A Bike is Born. For real bike-building it's more interesting than OCC, but as Sweat said, the builder, Mark Evans, only did three bikes.

It's a bit frustrating because for each bike the show boils down six weeks of stripping down and rebuilding into two shows with a total running time of 90 minutes. They could have easily expanded it to twice that length and it would have been every bit as fascinating. The other shame was that they never continued the series - I was hoping that he'd get around to restoring a Norton Commando. But having said that, he did a great job on the Triumph, a 1970 T120R, although he hand-painted the frame rather than powder coating it, which was a bit weird.

blkhrt81 · 08-13-2007, 06:16 AM

About the best bike show I've seen was "Petrolheads" also from the UK and on Discovery. As far as I can tell they did about six episodes, each one had a segment where the host tried some type of cometition eg: trials, sidecar racing, etc, though in one he did a track day. They had a road test of a vintage bike and a article on somebody in the service/ supply side of biking. Great series just a pity they didn't replace those drama queens at OCC with it.