18 MOTORCYCLE CLASSICS September/October 2019
Story by Greg Williams
Photos by Jeff Barger1966 Triumph TR6SR
When Tom TeRonde was 11 years old, his dad bought him a
Honda CB160 to tear around the family property on the outskirts
of Oostburg, Wisconsin, where they had a few horses and grew
Christmas trees. His four sisters were into the horses, leaving
Tom as the only one in the family curious about internal combus-
tion engines.
“Boys would often come around to hang out with my sisters,”
Tom says of his young family life. “And I clearly remember one
day when three guys pulled up on two Triumphs and a BSA. That
made quite an imprint on me. I hoped that one day I could get
something like one of those Triumphs — it was the sight and the
sound, and I thought it was a very cool way to get around.”
Better than the small-bore Honda, at least, but Tom had to
wait until he was 19 before an opportunity to acquire a Triumph
presented itself. In 1977, Tom had just finished his first year of
school at the University of Wisconsin. He went to visit a high
school friend who happened to be selling a 1966 Triumph TR6SR.
The sidestand lug was broken off the frame, so it could only
be parked on its centerstand. The speedometer didn’t work, and
there was no air filter. The distinctive Triumph badges and knee
pads had been stripped off the tank, and it was painted white
with stylized green flames.
“I could look past all of that,” Tom laughs, and adds, “He told
me he wanted to sell it because he found it hard to start. I asked
how much he wanted for it and the price was $300. I told him it
was sold.”
Tom had been saving money doing roofing work and that’s how
he paid for the Triumph. Apart from the Honda CB160, he’d never
had or ridden a larger machine, but the Triumph, which he didn’t
find to be a recalcitrant starter, soon became a constant com-
panion. He’d ride it from his home near Oostburg to campus in
Platteville, a distance of some 200 miles. That wasn’t a daily jour-
ney — only during semester breaks. When he finished his degree
in radio and television broadcasting, a field he never did work
in full time, he regularly used the Triumph for the next 20 years.
By the late 1990s, though, there was an accumulation of issues
that forced Tom to park the Triumph. None of them separately
would have been deal-breakers, but the clutch was slipping and
one of the header pipes was loose at the exhaust spigot and he
couldn’t get it tightened down.
“I thought enough with the minor annoyances, and started
dismantling the motorcycle,” Tom reports. “But I’m no mechanic.
I can get stuff apart, but getting it back together is another story.
I realized soon I was in over my head.”M
Make no mistake: kids are impressionable.