Mending History
Mending history
UP FRONT
David Edwards
IT MUST HAVE BEEN A TERRIBLE AND excruciating death, hungry tongues of flame all around, timbers and roof tiles raining from above.
On September 16th of last year, a carelessly flicked cigarette butt started a blaze that laid waste to one of the world’s great motorcycle collections, England’s National Motorcycle Museum. Unchecked by any kind of fire-sup-pressant system and with the Birmingham Fire Department stuck in heavy rush-hour traffic, the conflagration consumed three of the museum’s five exhibition halls, and destroyed or heavily damaged some 650 motorcycles before it could be brought under control.
Sadly, among the incinerated was the famous “Texas Ceegar” streamliner, which in 1956 had cannonballed across an ancient dry lake in Utah at 214.40 mph, giving Triumph its “World’s Fastest Motorcycle” brochure pitch and its most beloved model name, “Bonneville.”
A true homebrew, the Ceegar had blunted the best efforts of the German NSU factory, which a month earlier, at great expense, had set the land-speed record at 211 mph and change, assisted by what seemed like a lab-coated cast of thousands. By contrast, the Texans had no money, no engineering degrees and no access to a wind tunnel. No problem for the team’s 49-year-old leader, J.H. “Stormy” Mangham, used to flying by the seat of his pants-quite literally. As a teenager, Mangham purchased a surplus WWI Jenny biplane, taught himself to fly and became an American Airlines pilot in 1928 at age 21. With an aviator’s understanding of airflow, it was Mangham who penned the streamliner’s fiberglass shell, laid over a complex tubeframe chassis that stretched almost 15 feet.
Powering the rig was a lone iron-barrel Thunderbird 650 Twin thoughtfully massaged by Jack Wilson, then a 29-year-old service manager at Dalio’s Triumph shop in Fort Worth, later to become a Bonneville Salt Flats legend and owner of Big D Cycles in Dallas. Running a potent mix of 80 percent methanol, 20 percent nitromethane through its twin l3/8 Amal GPs, Wilson’s T-bird mill barked out about 80 bhp. More importantly, the man’s quiet confidence anchored the team.
“Wilson never seemed to be in trouble, hurried or worried,” reads a Cycle magazine report of the record attempt. “Never did the 40-incher refuse to fire, and even the most critical ear could not find an off-key beat in the exhaust note, which could be heard for miles over the salt. When the machine was unloaded, it was ready to run.”
Jammed into the tiny cockpit behind a tiller handlebar was 27-year-old dirttracker Johnny Allen, also from Fort Worth, all 145 wiry pounds of him. A year earlier, Allen had piloted the ’liner to 193 mph. Now with improved aerodynamics and a new paint job, the Ceegar would rocket into history.
The acceleration is fantastic... it just seems to lift you along pinned to the back of the seat,” Allen said of his run. “It’s a pretty wild ride, with that wind tearing at your head.”
Mangham, Wilson and Allen have all since passed on, and last September their beloved streamliner almost joined them. Almost...
Dennis Tackett, a corporate project manager by trade and a Triumph nut by affliction, to the rescue. A longtime friend of Wilson’s, he knew that the original molds for the Ceegar’s fiberglass amazingly still existed. They were stored on the roof (!) at Big D for 20 years, then moved inside to the shop of Ed Mabry, Bonneville habitué and driving force behind Team Texas Triumph, builders of the world’s fastest “real” motorcycle (i.e. partially streamlined), a land-speed Hinckley Triple that’s gone 260 mph. Tackett convinced the museum to send the old streamliner’s cremains to Fort Worth for restoration.
“It was built in Texas; it needs to be rebuilt in Texas,” he argued.
When the volunteer restoration team (www.saveourstreamliner.com) opened the shipping container a month later, the scope of their task hit hard.
“Holy crap! Only the frame is left!” exclaimed Tackett, looking at the twisted and buckled birdcage. Mangham’s wind-cheating bodywork had vaporized. Wilson’s hard-working little motor looked like something out of a Dali landscape, its aluminum components melted to slag.
Six months later, Mabry has painstakingly heated, kicked, cajoled and cursed every original frame tube back into place. A new shell has been pulled and is ready for paint. Keith Martin, another Big D alumnus, now running RPM Cycles, has a new motor ready to go, built around the Ceegar’s resurrected crank, gearbox internals and iron cylinders. By the time you read this, the bike should be all but completed, waiting for its photo rollout at a historical streamliner reunion slated for the inaugural International Motorcycle Speed Trials, September 6-10, in Bonneville. After that, it will be returned to the National Motorcycle Museum.
A state-of-the-art sprinkler system has been specified. □
