On the Road: 1953 Triumph TR5

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Piecing together a basket case motorcycle isn’t the easiest way to build up a machine. But for Kaetyn St. Hilaire it opened up a world of opportunities. Early in 2021, the Calgarian bought a 1953 Triumph TR5 project out of Ontario and shipped it to his hometown.

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Many of the important pieces that make up the motorcycle, including frame, engine, gearbox and cast alloy primary covers, were in the boxes. Other parts, such as the fork and front wheel, while Triumph components, were from a later model. Missing from the pile was a gas tank, and for that particular Triumph model, an original TR5 tank is a rare and sought after piece.

“My initial plan for the TR5 was to build it as a mild custom,” St. Hilaire explains, and continues, “just something I could have some fun riding around, nothing really fancy.”

After searching for months, he found and bought a time capsule TR5 tank out of California’s Bay Area. It was used on a period race bike and has an era-appropriate custom paint job. St. Hilaire was given photographs of the machine the tank once graced.

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“When I got the tank here, I felt as protective of it as a parent of a newborn baby,” he laughs. “I’m not quite as worried about it now, but I’m almost scared to use it because it’s so rare, and it has such a great paint job.”

Which got St. Hilaire to thinking, “(T)hat TR5 tank is so classic and good looking, I wondered if I could produce another just like it.”

And St. Hilaire has been slowly building up his skills to be able to tackle such a project. When he was a youngster, his dad Lionel would visit friends involved in the aviation world.

“My dad knew guys who had hangars with small sheet metal shops, and I’d always tag along and see an English wheel in the background,” St. Hilaire, who just turned 30, says. “My dad always talked about the English wheel, and the shapes one could make in sheet metal with the tool.”

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Fast forward several years, and St. Hilaire senior built a hangar at the High River Airport to store his airplanes. It’s approximately a 60-foot by 80-foot hangar, with a 16-foot wide shop running down an entire side of the facility.

“We’ve been accumulating sheet metal tools such as a box brake and shear, and it got to the point where I began to think it would be nice to be able to add shape to metal,” St. Hilaire says, adding he bought a set of hammers and dollies, a mallet and shot bag. Using the hand tools, he began learning the intricacies of shaping metal. If he enjoyed the process, he figured he’d later invest in an English wheel.

“As I was getting into that, I became aware of Dave Iggulden on Instagram (@magnamachineworks), and we messaged back and forth,” St. Hilaire says. “After learning what I was doing, Dave kindly offered to show me how to operate an English wheel.”

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Also in Calgary, Iggulden is an accomplished custom car builder and sheet metal worker with several projects to his name. Iggulden helped St. Hilaire find a vintage Trident-made English wheel that was for sale locally. St. Hilaire bought that wheel and put in the family’s shop. And instead of teaching just St. Hilaire, who is a member of the Ace-Hy Motorcycle Club, how to run the English wheel, Iggulden created a curriculum and printed a manual. Late in 2021 in St. Hilaire’s hangar, Iggulden taught several members of the Ace-Hy group some English wheel skills.

To put his new sheet metal forming skills to the test, St. Hilaire plans to replicate the Triumph TR5 gas tank. To do this, he wanted to create a wooden buck, which is essentially a skeletal form used to ensure metal panels being created are the correct shape. St. Hilaire had his TR5 tank 3D scanned by Ken Rauschenberger and was going to have a computer program lay out all of the pieces required to make the buck. He would print them on paper, glue them to wood and then cut the wood to shape.

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“Instead, it was suggested that the tank be 3D scanned, and then 3D printed in plastic and have the buck formed in that,” St. Hilaire explains.

With the 3D scanning completed, the file was sent to Terry Toporowski, who printed the pattern in plastic. Now with the finished TR5 buck, St. Hilaire is ready to move ahead with the tank replication project.

“This is really a culmination of a group effort,” he says. “I had the idea, but it’s not like I did the scanning or printing. It’s like the Beatles’ song, you really do get by with a little help from your friends, and that makes building a motorcycle from boxes that much more fun.”

Greg Williams is a member of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC). Have a column tip? Contact him at 403-287-1067 or [email protected]