This factory-supported triple flew in the face of Hinckley Triumph’s ‘no racing’ rule 30 years ago. Alan Cathcart was in the hot seat, having been in the thick of development
Like a lot of good ideas, the Saxon Triumph was dreamed up over a few drinks. It was the summer of 1993 and I was part of the TaylorMade racing team, downing glasses of Zipfer pils at Austria’s Österreichring circuit. They may not have been celebratory –we were drowning our sorrows after our Motodd Laverda had blown its engine in the race – but we did come up with an audacious plan to turn defeat into victory.
An air-cooled 1137cc triple Laverda engine was clearly no longer competitive in the series of races staged for this class of machine in Europe at that time – we needed a modern three-cylinder motor with better performance to drop into our too-good-to-dump Saxon frame.
That’s when the idea dawned... John Bloor had revived the Triumph marque three years previously – surely one of the Hinckley-built 900cc triples would be perfect for the job? Despite his ‘no racing’ policy for the born-again company, after one phone call to the man himself, Paul Taylor and I were seated in front of Mr Triumph at his Hinckley factory, making our pitch. Our effrontery was rewarded with factory support – an engine, a parts deal and help from Hinckley’s R&D engineers.
The water-cooled T300 12-valve dohc triple engine around which the first Saxon Triumph chassis was constructed exactly 30 years ago, was the factory’s own Super III development motor, complete with Cosworth crankcases stronger and 2.5kg lighter than those in the rest of the three-cylinder range. The Super III engine also had more radical cam profiles with increased valve lift, a higher compression ratio, and a revised cylinder head casting with a different combustion chamber shape, a new valve-seat angle and improved inlet porting. Mez Porting worked on the cylinder head to further improve the flow, before the engine was assembled at Jack Lilley Motorcycles.
The heavy gear-driven balance shaft was ditched to save weight and speed up engine response, and Triumph supplied a crankshaft with a revised balance factor to take account of this, as well as a new ignition system with an altered curve and 10,800rpm rev limiter. A smaller, billet-type aluminium clutch basket reduced engine width and contributed to a weight reduction of 19kg over the original engine. Carbon-fibre engine covers also helped, as did the slimmer clutch cover (which also gave extra lean angle) which weighed a meagre 0.15kg (the original metal component was 1.71kg). With a set of 39mm FCR
