We love old cars and restoring old motorcycles at our import car maintenance shop. They are a piece of history. And we couldn’t be any more excited when we stumbled across this video the other day featuring a Model H Triumph motorcycle from 1917 that has been fully and beautifully restored. The bike was actually developed by the British to replace horse ridden messengers to carry communications across the battlefield during World War I.
Interestingly enough, all of the previous models of motorized bikes before the Model H were just that—bikes. They still had pedals like a bicycle in addition to the engine, and for a while you had to pedal to get your engine started. And though the Model H was still belt driven like the older models, this was the first time they actually took the pedals off and relied fully on the engine for power. The engine was a fairly simple four-stroke that in the absence of pedals made it effectively the first motorcycle.
Restored History Shows How ‘Trusty’ the Model H Could Be
The bike was used throughout WWI to exchange messages, and was tough and reliable enough to earn the moniker “The Trusty” after its dependable performance in the harshest of wartime conditions. So it’s no surprise that with some work and a lot of elbow grease the bike shown in the video was able to be restored to the point that the engine can still be fired up. Who knows how many World War I artifacts you could say that about? Restoring history is why we love working on European models and excel at vintage car repair at our auto repair shop.
