Was The Fonz the coolest biker ever?

**Ixion** · 29th January 2007, 13:59

Originally Posted by SpankMe

But is he the coolest fictional biker character?

Nope. That's *gotta* be Judge Dredd.

**Crasherfromwayback** · 29th January 2007, 14:27

Orgi......?

**HenryDorsetCase** · 29th January 2007, 15:11

what specifically makes TR5's cool? (I am a sucker for any '60's Triumph twin) but know nothing about htem...

**Paul in NZ** · 29th January 2007, 16:35

Originally Posted by HenryDorsetCase

what specifically makes TR5's cool? (I am a sucker for any '60's Triumph twin) but know nothing about htem...

Subjective I suppose but triumph never really got into racing unles it was production bikes. When Triumph made the original Speed Twin and T100 it's hard now to imagine the impact they had on the bike world. Certainly it was every bit as much as Honda did with the CB750. Suddenly everything else was 'old'.

Triumph didn't make twins for the war effort (the military considered them too hard to maintain in the field) but the speedtwin engine gained an alloy head and block for service as an RAF generator unit. After the war some bright spark hauled the alloy top end off a generator, whacked in some hi comp pistons and big valves and started winning races. Following the trend Triumph made the famous (and rare) GP model (the only pure racer they made for sale to the public) which had good 'clubmans' results but could never match the Nortons handling and reliability or the continental multis.

However - they tuned back the engine and slotted into a special short wheelbase rigid chassis (used in the TRW side valve military twin) and we had the TR5. The bike was Triumph first trail bike and for a parts bin special it worked better than it should have - way better and it was one of THE great ISDT bikes.Due in no small part to luck and the Triumph the british team won the Trophy in 1947 (I think) and hence the name - Trophy! Infact I think they won the next 3 or 4 years as well.

Later the TR6 'Trophy' was born and started it's own legend in desert racing but the TR5 was the most successful 'factory' competition bike Triumph ever made and they were neat to look at too...

Thats one reason I love my bike - it's really the last echo of the glory days - the last 'real' TR - even if it was a dinosaur by 1970 there was an unbroken line and it's why I was pissed when the new Triumph tourer was called a Trophy... Pah!

**Motu** · 29th January 2007, 16:40

''TR5: 500cc 'Trophy' TR5 - Triumph's first trail bike - is introduced following success in International Six Day Test (ISDT - the bike was named after the official British racing team won the award). The engine was originally built by Triumph to power generators for the RAF in WW2: it has aluminum heads and barrels and is light, torquey and powerful. The team won the next four years' contests.''

First produced in 1948.Lot's of later Triumphs were called Trophy,but it actually meant something with the TR5.I don't think many came to NZ,and I have never seen an original one.

[edit] Gosh,beaten to the reply by Paul,how surprising.That picture is of the GP motor,even rarer than the T100 top end TR5.

**Oakie** · 29th January 2007, 18:33

Originally Posted by Ixion

Does noone remember Lawrence of Arabia, and his Brough ? Very cool indeed.

Arghh. Beat me to it.

**Chisanga** · 29th January 2007, 19:03

This guy seems quite cool

**pritch** · 29th January 2007, 19:32

There is the WW1 period movie "Lawrence of Arabia" this is not fiction, it reasonably closely represents the facts.

Lawrence wrote the book "Seven Pillars Of Wisdom" about this period.
Although presumably having a modest "private" income he had a lean time while writing the book after the war. He was serious about the book, it was to be his masterpiece, and it was to set the record straight.
(For those who don't know it was the events of this period and the gross betrayal of promises by the UK, the USA, and France, that set the scene for the current troubles in Iraq.)

It was a lean period for Lawrence.

Later the undernourished Lawrence tried to join the recently formed RAF but the recruiting sergeant told him they couldn't use beggars. Lawrence went to a phone box and phoned a contact in Whitehall then went back to the recruiting office. A short while later the phone rang and the sergeant received orders to recruit the beggar.

So then one of the most famous warriors in the Commonwealth was anonimously serving as a "Private" in the RAF. He did this under a false name, Smith or Shaw (he used both at various times).

In the book about his RAF experiences there is a graphic description of the squallor of the living conditions, but of more interest here, there is a wonderful description of a race between Lawrence on his Brough Superior and a Sopwith Camel aeroplane (or similar). Brilliant stuff! Some of the best motorcycle writing of all time.

Lawrence was killed in a collision between his Brough and the local butcher's delivery cart.

Lawrence would get my vote as the most ***** non-fictional motorcyclist of all time....
.

**Drew** · 29th January 2007, 19:39

The fonz was not the coolest biker ever, cos I FUCKIN AM!!!!!

**Maha** · 29th January 2007, 19:50

He seem to pose alot with it.....dont think he ever rode it, they may have wheeled into shot with him on it, so NO , there's no way he can be the coolest biker ever.....he was on a par with Jon and Ponch.....

**Meanie** · 29th January 2007, 19:55

Of course the fonz was the coolest, who else was there to aspire to at such an impressionable age

**pritch** · 29th January 2007, 20:14

T. E. Lawrence, The Mint

PART III

16: THE ROAD

The extravagance in which my surplus emotion expressed itself lay on the road. So long as roads were tarred blue and straight; not hedged; and empty and dry, so long I was rich. Nightly I'd run up from the hangar, upon the last stroke of work, spurring my tired feet to be nimble. The very movement refreshed them, after the day-long restraint of service. In five minutes my bed would be down, ready for the night: in four more I was in breeches and puttees, pulling on my gauntlets as I walked over to my bike, which lived in a garage-hut, opposite. Its tyres never wanted air, its engine had a habit of starting at second kick: a good habit, for only by frantic plunges upon the starting pedal could my puny weight force the engine over the seven atmospheres of its compression.

Boanerges' first glad roar at being alive again nightly jarred the huts of Cadet College into life. 'There he goes, the noisy bugger,' someone would say enviously in every flight. It is part of an airman's profession to be knowing with engines: and a thoroughbred engine is our undying satisfaction. The camp wore the virtue of my Brough like a flower in its cap. Tonight Tug and Dusty came to the step of our hut to see me off. 'Running down to Smoke, perhaps?' jeered Dusty; hitting at my regular game of London and back for tea on fine Wednesday afternoons.

Boa is a top-gear machine, as sweet in that as most single-cylinders in middle. I chug lordlily past the guard-room and through the speed limit at no more than sixteen. Round the bend, past the farm, and the way straightens. Now for it. The engine's final development is fifty-two horse-power. A miracle that all this docile strength waits behind one tiny lever for the pleasure of my hand.

Another bend: and I have the honour of one of England' straightest and fastest roads. The burble of my exhaust unwound like a long cord behind me. Soon my speed snapped it, and I heard only the cry of the wind which my battering head split and fended aside. The cry rose with my speed to a shriek: while the air's coldness streamed like two jets of iced water into my dissolving eyes. I screwed them to slits, and focused my sight two hundred yards ahead of me on the empty mosaic of the tar's gravelled undulations.

Like arrows the tiny flies pricked my cheeks: and sometimes a heavier body, some house-fly or beetle, would crash into face or lips like a spent bullet. A glance at the speedometer: seventy-eight. Boanerges is warming up. I pull the throttle right open, on the top of the slope, and we swoop flying across the dip, and up-down up-down the switchback beyond: the weighty machine launching itself like a projectile with a whirr of wheels into the air at the take-off of each rise, to land lurchingly with such a snatch of the driving chain as jerks my spine like a rictus.

Once we so fled across the evening light, with the yellow sun on my left, when a huge shadow roared just overhead. A Bristol Fighter, from Whitewash Villas, our neighbour aerodrome, was banking sharply round. I checked speed an instant to wave: and the slip-stream of my impetus snapped my arm and elbow astern, like a raised flail. The pilot pointed down the road towards Lincoln. I sat hard in the saddle, folded back my ears and went away after him, like a dog after a hare. Quickly we drew abreast, as the impulse of his dive to my level exhausted itself.

The next mile of road was rough. I braced my feet into the rests, thrust with my arms, and clenched my knees on the tank till its rubber grips goggled under my thighs. Over the first pot-hole Boanerges screamed in surprise, its mud-guard bottoming with a yawp upon the tyre. Through the plunges of the next ten seconds I clung on, wedging my gloved hand in the throttle lever so that no bump should close it and spoil our speed. Then the bicycle wrenched sideways into three long ruts: it swayed dizzily, wagging its tail for thirty awful yards. Out came the clutch, the engine raced freely: Boa checked and straightened his head with a shake, as a Brough should.

The bad ground was passed and on the new road our flight became birdlike. My head was blown out with air so that my ears had failed and we seemed to whirl soundlessly between the sun-gilt stubble fields. I dared, on a rise, to slow imperceptibly and glance sideways into the sky. There the Bif was, two hundred yards and more back. Play with the fellow? Why not? I slowed to ninety: signalled with my hand for him to overtake. Slowed ten more: sat up. Over he rattled. His passenger, a helmeted and goggled grin, hung out of the cock-pit to pass me the 'Up yer' Raf randy greeting.

They were hoping I was a flash in the pan, giving them best. Open went my throttle again. Boa crept level, fifty feet below: held them: sailed ahead into the clean and lonely country. An approaching car pulled nearly into its ditch at the sight of our race. The Bif was zooming among the trees and telegraph poles, with my scurrying spot only eighty yards ahead. I gained though, gained steadily: was perhaps five miles an hour the faster. Down went my left hand to give the engine two extra dollops of oil, for fear that something was running hot: but an overhead Jap twin, super-tuned like this one, would carry on to the moon and back, unfaltering.

We drew near the settlement. A long mile before the first houses I closed down and coasted to the cross-roads by the hospital. Bif caught up, banked, climbed and turned for home, waving to me as long as he was in sight. Fourteen miles from camp, we are, here: and fifteen minutes since I left Tug and Dusty at the hut door.

I let in the clutch again, and eased Boanerges down the hill along the tram-lines through the dirty streets and up-hill to the aloof cathedral, where it stood in frigid perfection above the cowering close. No message of mercy in Lincoln. Our God is a jealous God: and man's very best offering will fall disdainfully short of worthiness, in the sight of Saint Hugh and his angels.

Remigius, earthy old Remigius, looks with more charity on and Boanerges. I stabled the steel magnificence of strength and speed at his west door and went in: to find the organist practising something slow and rhythmical, like a multiplication table in notes on the organ. The fretted, unsatisfying and unsatisfied lace-work of choir screen and spandrels drank in the main sound. Its surplus spilled thoughtfully into my ears.

By then my belly had forgotten its lunch, my eyes smarted and streamed. Out again, to sluice my head under the White Hart's yard-pump. A cup of real chocolate and a muffin at the teashop: and Boa and I took the Newark road for the last hour of daylight. He ambles at forty-five and when roaring his utmost, surpasses the hundred. A skittish motor-bike with a touch of blood in it is better than all the riding animals on earth, because of its logical extension of our faculties, and the hint, the provocation, to excess conferred by its honeyed untiring smoothness. Because Boa loves me, he gives me five more miles of speed than a stranger would get from him.

At Nottingham I added sausages from my wholesaler to the bacon which I'd bought at Lincoln: bacon so nicely sliced that each rasher meant a penny. The solid pannier-bags behind the saddle took all this and at my next stop a (farm) took also a felt-hammocked box of fifteen eggs. Home by Sleaford, our squalid, purse-proud, local village. Its butcher had six penn'orth of dripping ready for me. For months have I been making my evening round a marketing, twice a week, riding a hundred miles for the joy of it and picking up the best food cheapest, over half the country side.

**Paul in NZ** · 29th January 2007, 20:25

Originally Posted by Motu

First produced in 1948.Lot's of later Triumphs were called Trophy,but it actually meant something with the TR5.I don't think many came to NZ,and I have never seen an original one..

I know of 2 - one is the 'generator' one and it sets my heart pumping. Wonderful thing...

**Ixion** · 29th January 2007, 21:07

Aye, Lawrence was my sort of biker, right enough.Boanerges, good name that for a Brough. The sons of Zebadee.

Interesting, declutching when thrown offline by the ruts.