The StockersModern technology is a wonderful thing. Where would we be without things like DVDs and the Internet? Sure we’d probably have all wasted less time but would we be the people we’ve become and have the friends we have? Here’s a case in point. Eddie Hesford and Leighton Gibbins, like so many people into bikes, both had copies of Choppertown, the documentary style film about Kutty Noteboom and the Sinners bike club, and they’d both watched the film far too many times for it to be considered healthy. Now, for those of you who haven’t seen Choppertown, it’s the story of a collection of friends (a group which includes renowned builder Cole Foster and top skateboarder Jason Jessee) in California who get together on weekends and evenings to help each other out building bikes, chewing the fat and sharing a few beers. Like all good things, the action for our two homebred heroes
moved to the pub where they began to have drunken ideas about creating
a British version of the Sinners club. This first step of course
was to get some suitable bikes to build while sharing beers and
laughs. As luck would have it, Leighton had just sold his Shovelhead
to free up garage space for a stock Triumph T100SS for which he
had plans and Eddie too had begun pulling a Triumph T100A bitsa
apart, his ideas for the pending rebuild owing more than a nod
to the look of the Sinners’ bikes. Eddie and Leighton became enmeshed in this new fangled technology
while looking for ideas and inspiration for the pair of bobbed
(or soon to be bobbed) Trumpets. On their meanderings on the cyber
highway, they came across a character called Steve Marshall and
his partner-in-crime John Webb, both of whom had already hardtailed
their old Triumphs, achieving just the style Eddie and Leighton
were looking to bring to own collection of miscellaneous parts. Soon the nuevos amigos were starting to hang around each others’ garages helping out, making suggestions (some useful, some not so…) and getting together to ride to shows and rallies, much in the spirit of their inspirations, the Sinners. But they couldn’t very well adopt that name, the Americans having got there first. The finely honed British sense of irony with which we can confuse the rest of the world was called into play and the gentlemen decided upon the name, ‘The Stockers’, ironic, obviously, because their bikes are anything but. The only fly in the ointment was that, on the World Wide Web, the name had already been taken on the web, so while in ‘real life’, the guys are the Stockers, in cyber space they’re Brit Stockers. Talking of which, they soon established their new ‘home’ at www.britstockers.com where Steve posted pictures of his 1966 3TA Daytona, the bike that had originally caught Eddie and Leighton’s attention, and which he simply describes as an ongoing project. (Actually, come to think of it, I seem to recall that all of the Stockers consider their bikes to be ongoing projects.) The Triumph originally has a 350cc engine, which has subsequently been replaced by a Daytona 500 with two left hand carbs, for no other reason than to be different. The Anthill Customs’ hardtail rear end has survived from a previous owner, but much of the rest of the bike has gradually evolved while in Steve’s hand, including the very neat taillight housing made from a Villiers piston and con rod. John’s Triumph 5TA is, similarly, a hardtail, this time with a bolt-on rear end from Brit Cycles, although he has tried his utmost to re-use as many standard parts as possible, sometimes stripping them down to their constituent parts and using only what really had to go on the bike. Both Eddie and Leighton had themselves already opted for rigid back ends, although, in this case, both conversions came from the same source. Through the internet, they encountered Briz at Custom Cycle Developments in the Fens, a young man who has fully embraced the usefulness of being able to ramble at length on the internet, although that’s not entirely surprising as he lives in Norfolk and has to make his own entertainment on those long East Anglian nights. Briz fabricated the hardtail conversions for the pair’s T100s and, in common with John and Steve’s bikes, both bikes feature a built-in stretch of four inches. While Eddie and Leighton were at Briz’s workshop in deepest, darkest west Norfolk they also got him to knock up a pair of round oil tanks while he was at it. Front ends on all four bikes have been liberated form various vintage Triumphs, the most notable being Eddie’s T100A which he converted to external springs, for the simple and single reason than it looks good. Fair enough. Being proud of their heritage, the quartet have scorned any such fripperies as apehangers in favour of a far more traditional – and café racer-inspired – choice of handlebars, albeit from different sources. Steve dived into this garage and made his own ‘bars, finishing them off with BMX grips; John’s one-inch flat ‘bars came from the States; Leighton spun his stock handlebars round to create something not dissimilar to a set of Ace ‘bars and Eddie took the easy way out and just stuck with the T100 items that had been in the pile of parts masquerading as the bike that he’d bought. Because all the guys want to ride (as opposed to sitting at the side of the road or in their garages all weekend), the engines have basically been left alone, with the minimum of tweaking to make sure they keep running. Steve, Eddie and Leighton have all swapped the stock ignition out for Boyer mk3 ones and Steve’s also thrown a Norman Hyde seven plate conversion on his clutch. John though has bucked the ‘unsullied engine’ trend and while he had his engine in bits in his shed he went for a +60 thou rebore, unleaded valve seats and a reground and balanced crank. While it makes no real difference to the performance of his bike, Leighton took a saw to his primary case of his T100SS and cut it open. Why? Because he could, and because none of the others had thought of it doing it first. Good man. There were various trains of thought when it came to paint and
finishing. Having made a vertical oil tank for the 5TA, John plumbed
it in with copper lines before visiting Barons Speed Shop to purchase
a rear mudguard. Having bolted that on, he cut the excess off to
use on the front and left it like that. The idea was that after
doing all that engine work, why slow the bike down by adding a
load of filler and paint? I bet he gets fed up with people asking
when he’s going to finish it, though. Eddie’s green bobber is, perhaps, the ‘flashiest’ of the four, sporting green and cream paint which, rather spiffingly, matches the exposed springs on the forks. Leighton, however, considers his T100 to be… yes, you’ve guessed!… a ‘work in progress’, which is a pretty fine excuse for running around in a coating of red oxide and petrol… Now with all four bikes sorted and on the road, The Stockers are out and about making their presence felt on the rally and show scene, as well as collecting one or two emphatic souls along the way (I believe there’s new Stockerette in the wings, and, bucking the Meriden trend, he rides a 1967 BSA A7 SS). They’re happy to chat to anyone about what they call their ‘old ratters’ and the number of people that stopped to ask about the bikes during the photoshoot suggests that The Stockers’ ‘membership’ could grow and grow. There’s even been – whisper – talk about Harley ownership, too. Hey, who knows – one day they might even get a film made about them…
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