1952 Triumph Thunderbird

Depending on what floats your boat, you will eventually make the pilgrimage to your 'Mecca'. If you are a surfer, then you will take on the waves at Teahupoo. If you're an Elvis fan, then you will shuffle your blue suede shoes to Gracelands. And if you are a motorhead, then you will take your speed machine to the Bonneville salt flats, like many did a few weeks ago. One of those people was Alp Sungurtekin, who took his purpose built bike, a 1952 Pre-Unit 650cc Triumph Thunderbird. The bike is named 'Kursed' - because of all the things that went wrong with it. He really had to race the clock to have it finished on time. Actually, he was still working on it up until the final hours of leaving for the legendary salty race strip. This is how Alp describes his time at Speedweek and the pursuit of his own personal land speed record. 

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1968 Triumph Drag Bike

One of the best named motorcycle blogs on the information super autobahn is Eat The Rich — after the classic film and Motörhead song. The blog is run by classic parts dealer Peter Stansfield from the U.K who is always buying and selling custom parts for many different types of bikes. Last year he came across this drag bike frame for sale on ebay and knew he had to purchase it. "I bought the frame for £170 and the rear slick for £10" he says. "I bought it from the guy who originally built it in 1968, he raced it first with an iron 6T motor then later put a Hillman Imp engine in it. It was last used in 1974 when he built a new bike."

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2010 Triumph Scrambler

If there was ever a remake of 'The Great Escape' (God forbid), I think we've found the perfect bike for that famous fence jump. Built by a brand spanking new motorcycle shop in Costa Mesa California called RTL Moto. They specialize in vintage European bikes and describe their work as "Mad Max-style customisation", which sounds pretty damn good to us. This is their inaugural project and we are honored they sent Pipeburn the very first shots. The Triumph belongs to a customer named Jeremy and his brief was pretty straight forward. "He plans on doing a lot of travel next year and he asked us to build him a vintage-looking bike that he could ride off-road" says Chris Lisk from RTL Moto.

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Interview: Photographer Todd McLellan

We recently spotted Todd's photographs on the always pleasing Motart blog. Tod has just shot a 'Classic Motorcycle' series that features some of the sweetest bikes money can buy. We loved his subject matter and photos so much that we wanted to find out a little more about Todd McLellan. 

Could you introduce yourself to our readers? Who are you? What do you do? Where do you live?

My name is Todd McLellan, I was born in the western Canadian province of Saskatchewan. I now live in Toronto where I am a full time Photographer. I photograph a lot in the advertising field and have concentrated on transportation the first part of my career. I am very much into the design of the objects I shoot and I think that what gets me going when photographing something. When the light hits the object it can do wonderful things.

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Interview: Matt Machine

At the recent Deus V-Twin Festival I had the pleasure of chewing the fat with renowned Australian bike builder Matt Machine. Not only is he a friggin talented bike builder who has built some of the most outstanding bikes in the Southern Hemisphere, but he is also an established architect. Is there anything he can't build? I wanted to find out more about this humble recluse and luckily he was up for answering a couple of questions:

Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background? 

I'm an architect that has always wanted to be a carpenter, or a builder, or a boiler maker, or something else other than that so I could use my hands and make things. I live in the bush in south New South Wales with my wife and our dog and our cows and our landscape and our weather.

Does living on a farm help your creative process?

It almost is my creative process...you cant help but be inspired by the need to be real with whatever you do, to be direct with your decisions, and committed...thats living in the bush.

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1969 Triumph Bobber

Kevin was a sure bet at his company's "bring your bobber to work" day

Me, I'm a fussy bastard. Can't do anything without mapping it out to the nth degree with contingency plans and failsafes and such nonsense. Which is great if you have an issue that you saw coming, but of course the real issues are always the ones you DON'T see coming; the ones you can't possibly plan for. These kinds curveballs really do my head in. Not so for one Mister Kevin White from Washington state in America's Pacific North West Spencer, Iowa. Nuh-uh. See, he's the kind of guy that seems to be able to roll with the punches and push on through to the other side where he'll pull up on a killer custom with a smile from ear-to-ear even though his build jumped from one track to another like a electrocuted DJ at a Drum 'n' Bass festival. Meanwhile I would have been kicking back in a nice padded workshop with some of those special overalls that let the nice doctors tie your hands behind your back so you can't reach your Snap-Ons.

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Triumph Racer - 'Stiffy'

There's nothing more intriguing in a bike build story than a mystery, and this here little Triumph has it in spades. See, no one knows exactly what this bike was in a previous life but the smart money is on a rigid dirt tracker. The motor and frame were acquired with a large stockpile of old British dirt trackers and parts that Big D Cycles bought last year; "this bike came out of Les Edwards stash" says Jerrett Martin from Big D. "Les was a famous tuner and builder of dirt track bikes out of California. He owned the Triumph/Suzuki Shop Cycle Imports. A lot of famous riders got their start riding Edwards' bikes; Gene Romero, Mark Brelsford, Dave Hansen and many others. Dave Hansen rode an Edwards' bike to Triumph's last TT race victory at the Houston Astrodome in 1974 (pictured below). In that race, Hansen beat king Kenny Roberts, who was on a Yamaha." When Les retired he moved his large collection of motorcycle goodies to south Texas. When he passed away, Big D Cycles bought all the race bikes, motors, frames, and spares that were in an old metal barn on his property.

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Hyde Harrier

We've got a lot of cool things hanging around here at the Chateau D'Fumé D'Flambé. Beautiful women of many flavours, piles of cash, and heaps of bikes. Hundreds and hundreds of beautiful motorbikes. Rare Ducatis, V4 Hondas, Antique BSAs... and Triumphs. Lots and lots and lots of good old Rule Britannia Triumphs. God, they are everywhere. I even found on the roof the other day. Oh the hilarity!

You'll be glad to know then, that there's now a kit that'll let you turn your bog standard spare Bonnies into balls-out retro seventies road racers. Genius, yeah? Also, you'll now have a valid excuse next time someone laughs and points at your gold medallions and thick, luscious chest hair.

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Triumph T100 Scrambler Video

This classic styled Triumph T100 Scrambler, commonly known as Jack Pine is no newcomer to the limelight. It was numero uno in BikeEXIF's Greatest Hits of 2010 — a combination of most hits and most comments. Now Hammarhead Industries have released this short video of their scrambler in action. So if you thought this Triumph was all show and no go, then you don't know Jack.

[Found on Return of the Cafe Racers]