Riding A Modded Triumph Thruxton R

This weekend I met up with Will Collins who by the way is an excellent motorcycle photographer that you should check out on Instagram if you haven't already. You see he's about to sell his tricked out Thruxton R so when he dropped me a line to see if I wanted to take it for a little spin I thought it might be my last chance so I snapped his hand off. But first here's Will taking us through all the changes he's made to the bike. Yeah so Will's going to tell us about his Thruxton R which he's done plenty of modifications to I believe. Yeah little bits here and there try and make it kind of as I think Triumph should have maybe made it from factory. Internally absolutely bone stock because it's just too expensive to swap out cams and stuff like that but starting from the front AJ Cycles were kind enough to supply a blacked out headlight bracket. It kind of makes it all just disappear really and then with the previous owner had nicely fitted the LED indicators. So you got it second hand this bike? Yeah second hand 1600 miles on two previous owners no idea if they actually rode it or just pushed it to the to the local shop. Since owning it I've had it for a year just shy of 8 000 miles. So from the clock brackets coming down is this lovely sleek brushed metal Alley front mudguard. The stock one just looked kind of tacky and plastic and it's got these silver bits on the side. I just didn't like it covered up too much of the wheel. The bracket's nicer hidden which is really really cool and it kind of it opens it up a lot more and it gives it that kind of minimalistic look. Brakes wise all I fitted is Brembo race pads. Triumph were kind enough to supply braided lines still staying front end. For some reason Triumph want to keep it retro and have a little bit of play in the throttle. Ducati have the same housing and they've put there's two small rubber spacers in here and it completely eradicates any dead zone so it's instant throttle which is absolutely fantastic. Where did you get those from? Some in the states I honestly cannot remember. Yeah it completely transformed the throttle. Instant pickup that you don't have to kind of preload the throttle which is is kind of annoying on a bike that's brand new essentially. Moving back really really simple this is normally the other way around. I'm not entirely sure why lockable. Very very simple to just flick it around. It looked quite odd with it at the front again just a small aesthetic kind of thing. Coming down I know another quick one blacked out EFI fake carb cover thing. It's kind of it goes along with the theme of me trying to black out everything so keeping working back but staying high. Tail tidy from RNG. Coming forth we've got these. These were a very important upgrade. So two weeks in as I said I was in the Cafe Racer Cup I learned very quickly that this has ground clearance issues namely with the stock foot pegs so I was grounding out at almost every single corner. So I as soon as that was finished I started looking at different options different rear set options but because this is all kind of one unit there's not a lot to really go by and then I managed to find these eccentric adjusters jacked it up and back a little bit 25mm and so far both times at Mallory that have been not a single problem with ground clearance just my body position. Another very important mod I'd say alongside the the foot pegs when I first got this bike coming from Speed Triple it kind of it revs out a bit more this what six and a half thousand seven thousand red line I was I was hitting the limit constantly. A lot of research and kind of pinging back and forth and I've managed to get if you squeeze in there a company called um I can't remember what they're called but they supply from Canada uh next up quick shifter push type quick shifter um speaking to somebody who worked at Triumph and worked on the quick shift type system they've they've got the plug for the quick shifter already on the bike but because of the heat coming off the exhaust they didn't want to fit one and didn't want to give the option of the stock Triumph quick shifter. A connoisseur plug off of ebay the next up um quick shifter everything plugs straight in and it's absolutely fantastic transforms it um so that's just for up shifts yeah just for up shifts it's not blipping or anything like that so you still have to rev match and all that sort of stuff um but it's it's absolutely brilliant for track um you can still quite happily bimble around and one thing I found very quickly was if you're if you change without it from like third to fourth fourth to fifth fifth to sixth occasionally you'll get a massive massive backfire um and it sounds brilliant and I've scared quite a few children with it. When I got the bike originally it came with Vans and Heinz and then in a box of stock cans and it still had the cat on and the stock exhaust comes somewhere out here. I did not like them thanks to foxton boys on instagram uh they had cone engineering shorties um and I was looking about they're quite expensive but I loved how they came behind the line of the axle it's kind of a much shorter much more compact kind of look um looking around looking around I eventually found on a company called on a website called square deals these from a company called weslake they were considerably cheaper than cone engineering yeah I've got the weslake slash cuts on mine as well yeah and fantastically made absolutely brilliantly made um sound ridiculous once you fit the dcat the stock can sound better than a cat with a Vans and Heinz um and you've saved yourself a whole bunch of money and then if you do want to go louder get these trying to get I mean I can't really get anything a view on the dcat but for anyone who doesn't know it's in there yeah it's the the original cat is this big pig looking thing and it it weighs probably four or five times heavier than the dcat which is literally just kind of straight through pipe with all the fittings and stuff and I I've considered renaming it Moses the way that when filtering it literally just parts traffic it's absolutely fantastic the only other bike that I've had which has been on par was my vtr 1000 sp1 um with race cans on gpr race cans one last thing bg motorsport uh set up the suspension at bike shed festival at the cafe racer cup and it's it's hard on the road perfect for the track and I absolutely love it when I first got on it I wasn't too sure about it it seemed a bit wallowy um I'm guessing the was uh considerably lighter than myself but as soon as they set it all up it absolutely transformed the bike all right will's kindly agreed to let me just take his thruxton for a little spin oh that's lovely that sounds so good don't know if you can hear that little crackle on deceleration but it sounds awesome so we've got a x-pipe fitted under a shorty cone exhaust I hope you guys are getting decent audio I've only got one mic in my helmet but oh it sounds so good it's so good because it's so familiar to me um rev matching on the downshifts and stuff like I it just feels completely natural because it's so similar to the street twin in so many ways but it's just crisper and so much more power and quite a bit louder with that x-pipe as well it's just bloody awesome if I was living out of riding country lanes like this all the time hands down I would consider a thruxton hello mate is it okay so first to second use the clutch to be honest I forgot I had a quick shifter until I was in second anyway it's wicked just like bang through the third yeah all right what do you think of the brakes yeah exactly they're awful aren't they but they do come in eventually but you've just got to squeeze it's crazy it's all good all right I'll follow you it's not actually that uncomfortable as well I reviewed it um some time ago the thruxton I think I rode it around London I've got one from Metropolis before it shut down and rode it around town and uh yeah maybe an hour of riding in London didn't feel that comfy but actually even with these little rear sets yeah and the sort of clip-ons I mean these are quite high up for clip-ons it's it's comfy anyway Will was saying I should drop back a little bit because there's a good corner up here and then onto a straight uh where I can give it a bit of gas and go through the through the gears of the quick shifter this is the first time I've ever ridden a bike with a quick shifter so it's very novel and fun for me I wonder if you can get one for the street twin oh my goodness see the thing is back there I was even um just rolling off the throttle each time I use the quick shifter but all you got to do is keep it pinned and then knock through it Will was saying he thought the brakes could be better on this bike obviously to me coming off the street twin they feel amazing but yeah of all the mods that he's done it's the it's the x-pipe and exhaust that just make the difference to riding this bike it just sounds incredible that and the quick shifter it's so much fun there's been quite a lot of cafe racers um launched lately hasn't there I suppose you've got the z900rs cafe continental gt from royal enfield what else have we got the karasaki w800 did a little faired version but like hands down this still has to be the king of production cafe racers name a better one let me know in the comments but I don't think it exists I'm feeling for Will here he mustn't be enjoying this it's like a similar bike with half the power and none of the brakes yeah this is only a short blast but pretty awesome thanks to Will for letting me film and ride his bike as well as talking to us about the mods as I mentioned at the top of the video I'd really recommend checking out his awesome instagram feed and if you're interested in his bike I'm sure he wouldn't mind you dropping him a dm let me know what you think of the bike in the comments to me it's pretty much the ultimate Thruxton what else could be done to improve it and also if you're new here and you want to see more videos like this hit subscribe and I'll see you next time