Wonderful Max

Max emerged from his office. He was 6 foot six, of ruddy complexion with a patchy ginger beard, a south west accent with a touch of western ‘Aus’, grubby white string vest, folding rigger boots and patchy stained Levis. He was a ‘proper’ spanner man, opinionated with knowledge, backed up by 30 years in the business. He led me upstairs to the stores. There were row upon row of catalogued, efficiently arranged Triumph parts. He rummaged through a pile of 60’s seats, explaining on the way the background history of Triumph, their designs, development and eventual demise.

 “These seats may need to be slightly altered to fit your kit, but if you can’t do the simple ‘mod’ in the first place you shouldn’t be doing the job, no offence. I get so many wankers coming here for parts who haven’t got a fuckin’ clue what they are doing. I just say to ‘um if you don’t ‘listen and learn’ you might as well fuck off,” so I listened then bought a pair of seats and runners for £40.00. Blunt he was, but Max had the experience to support his abruptness. We chatted as we wandered around his impressive storerooms. Clean chassis’s stacked, road race wheels, a complete room with panels, bonnets, doors, boot lids, interiors, dashboards, engine, gearbox, suspension components, everything was available, easily accessible. There were no leaking roofs, oil stained dripping floors, disorder or mess. This was the real deal, the dog’s bollocks. A purveyor of quality parts. The list became filled, clocks were purchased for £10.00 and £5.00 respectively, twin SUs £70.00. Max could provide a stage two head for £300.00 and a re-con overdrive box was £500.00. He suggested that I bring all the relevant ‘shopping lists’ to his workshop, he would then be in a position to recommend the most effective approach; he would also be in a better position of understanding what we wanted to achieve. This seemed a sensible logical proposal being the most encouraging news that we have received for some time. If only we had known about Max back in February we would not have had such a roller coaster of a journey?

I hope that October brings better fortunes than September. It has been a difficult frustrating month.