Tom Mellor’s record-breaking 1969 Triumph Trident T150

By Alan Cathcart

It’s not every day you see a 1950 Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn sailing along the high desert highway. And you certainly don’t expect to see one with Canadian plates towing a trailer bearing a strangely-shaped motorcycle strapped beneath a cover, Bonneville-bound.

But it was this unlikely rig that brought Tom Mellor, his wife, Diane, and their 1969 Triumph Trident T150 to the Bonneville Salt Flats last summer, where the Canadian rider set four new World Speed records on the 40th anniversary of the Trident’s first appearance in the summer of 1968.

Salty stuff
Each September, the annual Bonneville Speed Trials feature an amazing array of eclectic machines. In a paddock dominated by Harley-Davidson, Triumph, Vincent and Suzuki-powered devices devoted to worshipping the great God of Speed, the Mellor Trident stood out at Bonneville 2008 as the loveliest-looking creation, with performance to live up to its sleek, streamlined
appearance.

Running in the 750MPS-PG class (750cc Modified Production pushrod, pump fuel [gas], partially streamlined — the front wheel must be visible for 180 degrees below the axle), Tom Mellor was clocked at 180.317mph over the flying mile on the Triumph, fitted with wind-cheating bodywork he’d created himself. The following day, having removed the main front fairing to qualify for the 750MP-PG class (750cc Modified Production pushrod, pump fuel, with no bodywork, but with the rear fairing left on since it counts as being the seat), Tom and his Triumph set two more two-way records of 159.905mph for the mile and 159.916mph for the kilo — proof positive of how effective that homemade streamlining had been. Not bad for a 40-year-old 750 streetbike Tom prepared himself with the help of two British-born mates — aka The Two Bobs — in the workshop attached to his Vancouver home.

Plane smart
The nature of Tom’s former trade gives a clue as to how he came about creating the World’s Fastest Trident — well, one with pushrods, anyway. The late, great Jack Wilson, proprietor of Big D Cycle in Dallas, Texas, and the creator of the twin-cylinder Triumph-engined Texas Ceegar with which Johnny Allen broke the Land Speed Record at Bonneville back in 1956 (which in due course gave rise to the iconic Bonneville model) broke lots of records with twin-engined Triumph pushrod triples, and even set marks with single-engined bikes fitted with turbos — but even he never achieved what Tom has done with his stock, unsupercharged, 750cc Trident T150.

“I was an aircraft maintenance engineer for Canadian Pacific Airlines for 23 years, and then I had two more years with Air Canada after they took them over,” he reveals. “But I didn’t like the way they did things, so I retired. But if you hang around aircraft long enough, you get to know what’s correct aerodynamically. So when people ask me how I made the Triumph go so fast, I tell them there are lots of modern superbikes out there that aren’t even as streamlined as the Sopwith Camel — it’s old technology they all use, for some reason. We aimed to do a little better with this old girl!”

Triple fan
Tom’s involvement with Triumph triples began 20 years ago, when he bought his first such bike from a friend who had just acquired a vintage Frazer Nash car and didn’t want the Trident anymore. After riding it for a while on the street, including a couple of touring vacations with Diane as passenger, Tom was tempted to go racing with it. He wound up a five-time British Columbia champion in 750 Vintage before he started venturing further to race with AHRMA in the U.S. “We do OK in AHRMA — I can keep up front,” says Tom modestly.

It was thanks to AHRMA that Tom’s first involvement with Bonneville came about in 2006, when he decided to race in the inaugural Bonneville VintageGP/AHRMA round at the then-new Miller track outside Salt Lake City, just 100 miles from Bonneville. “They said that for $75 you could do a run on the short course on the salt, so I came down. Well, you could only do 130mph there, but I ran through at 148mph, and the guy wouldn’t give me my ticket because he said I went too fast,” Tom recalls. “So I had to pay a bunch of money to get out onto the long course, but then I ended up with a 5-mile headwind and couldn’t go any faster. Still, the existing record was only 129mph, so last year I decided to get serious about breaking it. Remember, this was my production 750 road racer with the Slippery Sam bodywork, so we needed something more aerodynamic. My friend Shane Kenneally has six Bonneville records with Suzuki, Yamaha and H-D, and he had a mold for the bodywork which he loaned me. I had to cut it up quite a bit to make it less wide to fit the narrower Triumph, but that’s what we ran with in 2007.”

The Mellor Triumph first entered the record books in 2007 in the 750PG class — but not as fast as expected. “The weather was awful, so after I did 158mph one way, when I went to do my return run, there was lots of lightning and a big thunderstorm heading up, so they wouldn’t let me out on the track,” he says. “You have to make the reverse run the same day, so that meant I had to start over. The next day, the track was all wet and slushy, so the best speed I could do was 139mph, with lots of wheelspin. Still got the record, though. But we couldn’t wait around for the salt to dry out, because I had to convert the bike back to road racing spec with the Slippery Sam fairing to run at Miller that weekend. Did OK, too — I finished third in 750 Production!”
Tom says it took a day and a half to convert the Triumph from speed racer to road racer to combine competing at both venues: “I had to have friends bring the road race bodywork down separately, plus my forks and suspension, so for this year I decided just to focus on Bonneville, which was unfinished business.” So to address this most effectively, Tom bought another T150 Triumph frame and “cut-’n’-shut” the front end, raking out the head angle to 30 degrees, and adding an 11-inch extension to the swingarm, all for extra stability at high speed. “I also lowered the frame so that the upper rails run right down on top of the engine, which means the bar that I put across there to stiffen it up has to be unbolted to remove the engine,” he explains. “This brought it down another two inches, then I tightened up the aerodynamics on the bodywork by remaking the fairing and doing extra stuff like the front mudguard, which took me two days to make out of sheet aluminum. Looks nice, though.” Tom also made the 1.5 gallon fuel tank himself, covered by a silver foil shroud to keep the gas cool in the Utah sunshine. Believe it or not, Tom’s pushrod triple delivers 60mpg at 180mph, so that 1.5 gallons is good for five runs, including warming up and returning to the paddock after each one.

More mechanicals
“It started out life as a 1969 bike, but I don’t know what year you’d call the engine that’s in there now, because I get new original crankcases wherever I can,” Tom says. “It’s still a 750 rather than an 850, though, because that’s what I bought, and you race what you have.”

Tom has retained the original Trident forks and runs a rigid rear suspension, sheeted in the rear wire-spoked wheel with aluminum to reduce drag, and uses a rear disc brake matched by a Yamaha TZ250 twin-leading-shoe drum up front that’s had some work done on it. “I take the shoes out and put 1/2-inch aluminum discs in there,” Tom explains, leaving him with a dummy brake drum. “It’s better than having a disc brake hub on the front because only 25 percent of the spokes are exposed, and weight isn’t an issue.”

Indeed, the final step on the chassis was to add a 75-pound lump of lead just in front of the rear wheel, a common Bonneville tuning trick aimed at delivering extra traction. This bumped the Triumph’s weight up from 339 pounds in road racing form to around 450 pounds, complete with streamlining.

Before preparing the 750cc T150 3-cylinder engine for record breaking on the salt, Tom sourced a close-ratio 5-speed gearbox from the leading BSA/Triumph triple competition specialists in the U.K., P&M Motorcycles, which he matched to a standard chain primary drive. Tom runs a conventional racing clutch, after the lightened aluminum one he built got warped: “It’s all those road racing hole shots, I guess!”

Prior to his Bonneville run, Tom spent an entire week carefully lightening the crank (by 10 pounds) on a lathe, followed by shot peening and fitting a P&M high-volume oil pump. He uses Carrillo rods with Omega pistons, and valves with 6mm stems carrying R&D springs and titanium spring caps, operated via Johnson cams and lightweight 4130 steel pushrods. “You don’t want to go any bigger on valve sizes, because Triumph valves are plenty big enough,” he says. “I milled out the cylinder head, and got the intakes slightly more angled for extra downdraft, then I ported it myself and fitted 32mm Amal carbs, which aren’t even smoothbores and especially not Mikunis, so there’s extra performance we could have right there. I was going to go to 34s, but I didn’t have time to test them on the dyno.”

The reworked, ported cylinder head has a high, 14.3:1 compression, which means running 112 octane fuel (still OK for the pump gas rule) and 10mm spark plugs moved a little closer to the center of the piston. “I don’t run two spark plugs, because it doesn’t make any difference,” Tom states. “Now it revs to 9,300rpm, and two weeks ago when I checked it before leaving, it gave 82hp at the rear wheel at about 9,000rpm. In fact, that fastest run I did, I was doing 9,500 all the way down the long course, and we had it geared just right. The first sprocket we chose pulled 171mph at max rpm, then we dropped it two teeth and pulled 180. Dropped two more teeth, and would still only pull 180 — so we got the old girl going as fast as she’ll go.”

And the bike sounds great doing it, too, with a mellow howl from the 3-into-1 Rob North exhaust, with California resident (and former BSA/Triumph factory chassis guru) Rob North himself looking on with satisfaction. He just happened to be visiting the Speed Trials with some friends and came across the Mellor Triumph. “I really admire what Tom’s done with his bike,” North said. “It just shows what [BSA/Triumph chief engineer] Doug Hele and his guys could have done if they’d had better support from management back then.” Indeed so, but instead it took a 59-year-old retired aircraft maintenance engineer from far Western Canada to do it for them, with a bike that didn’t miss a beat during its entire week on the salt, even running flat out repeatedly over a 7-mile stretch.

What’s next?
So now that Tom and his Trident are inked in the record books, what next? “I want to build another Triumph to run in a different class — but I don’t want anything over 750cc, because then I can’t road race the engine, which I still want to keep on doing,” Tom says. “I also have my original T150 that’s now completely restored as a street bike, and since the production record is only 130mph or so, I’m pretty sure it’ll pull better than that — so that’s what I guess we’ll go for, with the support of my wife, Diane.” But Tom is looking further ahead, at more records with pushrod Triumph triple power. “Over the next year or so I want to build a lower bike, probably with a monocoque chassis out of aluminum, and to have it mounted straight off of the engine, so that the front end’s no higher than the motor to get it really aerodynamic,” Tom says. “It’ll need to be open at the front so the air can get in and move around the fins to cool the engine, but the frame will be all bolted around the motor, with a streamliner fairing all around that. I’ll also put an airbox in there to feed the carbs. I reckon we should be able to break 200mph with that.” So is Bonneville now Tom’s main agenda? “I love it. You can take all of your skills and put them in one package, your building skills and your development skills, and then go out there and see if you can break the record,” he says. “You go home, you spend the next year trying out all this stuff, and then come down and see if it works. It’s just a great challenge.”

So, just like a certain Indian rider from New Zealand, for Tom Mellor the lure of the salt is hard to kick. He’ll be back next year — with the latest version of the World’s Fastest Trident. MC

The world's fanciest tow vehicle?
If the 40-year-old Triumph and its svelte streamlined looks weren’t enough to make it the most photographed bike at Bonneville 2008, Tom and Diane Mellor’s choice of transportation, a 1950 Rolls Royce, clinched it. “I’ve had it for 28 years, and it’s been reliable transportation for us all that time,” Tom says. “It’s an original Canadian car. A guy from Victoria, B.C., bought it new, and then my Dad got it from him, and now I’m the third owner. I don’t baby it, and these cars are cheap to run if you look after them yourself — you just have to change the oil regularly. I haven’t had to do any major repairs to it yet. We don’t use it around town, just for hauling the Triumph and stuff. On average we do maybe 5,000 miles in it each year. But we’ve used it to drive all the way to Daytona more than once, that’s 4,000 miles each way! The Rolls cruises at 60mph with the trailer, and gets 20mpg — it’s more economical than a van, and quite a bit more comfortable!”