Some guys go through bikes like wives. Others find a bike and keep it for the duration. That’s the case with this classic Triumph Chopper built and painted by Jim Murillo. In 1989, he was married and moved to the sleepy mountain community of Lake Elsinore, California, on the edge of the sprawling city of Los Angeles. That’s where Duane Ballard lives now with his Cycle Source Staff member and wife, Lisa.
It’s was once a place where hippies and tweekers could escape the city and find more trouble. Jim was attempting the family man routine when a big bearded friend, Jeff, on the edge of town overlooking the lake from under the water tower asked Jim to help him move across town. While they loaded the truck, they kept stumbling over a 650 frame and engine under a soiled tarp in the tattered enclosed patio collecting dust and lakeside mosquitoes.
“What’s that?” Jim asked after he kicked it the third time.
“It’s an old Triumph,” Big Jeff said as he hoisted another packed cardboard box, with fully tattoed arms, into the back of his truck.
Jim helped him all day. He started tinkering with Triumphs when he was 18. He helped lakeside dwellers keep their Triumphs alive. As the sun crested the hills and the truck couldn’t take another bag of old laundry, the neighbor pulled the tarp off the frame.
“You want this?” he asked.
“Hell, yeah,” Jim said as he scanned the 650 TR6 engine and bolt-on hardtail frame.
The owner showed Jim a rusting long springer front end. This wasn’t any dirty discarded Triumph. It was a long, classic chopper with most of the corroded elements. By the time Jim drove his truck home, the neighbor had dug up a set of wheels, the sissybar, the frame and a complete TR6 driveline, fenders and a gas tank.
Choppers, unlike stock motorcycles, are addicting, like slinky broads who steal men from long-term wives, only to leave them in the gutter on a cold, windy night. In less than a month, Jim had the ’67 Triumph running after he scored a new kicker gear. He switched out the funky bolt-on hardtail section for a better quality unit that followed the sleek line of the frame’s backbone. Soon, he was blasting along the side streets of Lake Elsinore and down the Ortega Highway toward the coast, and farther and farther away from his wife.
He rode to Lookout Point and the Candy Store, where they made Candy and sold beer to the riders looking for a place to hang out. Ortega, or Highway 74, was considered death highway by many of the locals who zipped, testing their motorcycles and their handling prowess along the winding snake-like road that took riders from the lake to the coast for a couple of margaritas and back, if they survived. One weekend, Jim rode with a riding partner, Mike Burch to the Candy store. They had just downed a couple of beers then peeled back in the direction of the lake along the twisting two-laner.
As they entered a sweeping curve heading up the mountain, they rode side-by-side. They knew every turn, the degrees of severity, the arch of each bend, and the local hazards, like granite boulders, or tree limbs, around every corner. They also felt confident, almost like a single vehicle connected at the steering necks. As they rounded a blind corner, they came face-to-face with a flying ’50s Chevy pickup bearing down on them half in their lane, and Jim was riding center position.
It was blink-and-you’re-dead time. Jim’s 650 TR-6 chopper and springer front end were treacherously in the heavy truck’s sights. He couldn’t roll left unless he wanted to depart the roadway, slide through the gravel border and off the Ortega precipice. And he couldn’t fly to the right into his partner’s space. Mike was packing a cute SoCal blond who immediately froze to her P-pad.
Mike didn’t flinch. He nailed it, and his Jim-tuned mid-’50s Triumph sped forward, vacating the track along the road’s edge next to the shear mountain bank. Jim leaned slightly to the right and his springer snaked quickly and gracefully around the truck, like the move had been planned for a month. The girl immediately requested a pit stop. She pissed her pants.
Ortega Highway was a winding maze of hair-raising experiences. By ’91, the Chopper demon yanked Jim’s chromed sissybar into a divorce and he left Lake Elsinore to find a clean-and-sober future on the coast in Los Angeles and refine his skills as a painter. In ’93, he kicked off his first rebuild of the 1967 Triumph with a complete top end job, new paint, rewiring, but with the same springer and spool wheel, no front brake and Mustang tank.
Jim is a master custom and restoration painter. He’s not a big-name guy, and he doesn’t like any particular style.
“I want to master any style a customer needs,” Jim said. “I don’t want anyone to point at a bike and say, ‘That’s a Murillo paint job.’ ”
But he handles each job as if it’s his last. He’s versatile. If it’s a restoration, it’s exact. He’s painted several Bonneville bikes for the Bikernet.com 5-Ball Racing Team. He’s painted helmets, bicycles, helicopters, stoves, antique furniture, pedal cars, antique baby buggies, restored motorcycles, custom bikes, drag bikes, bobbers, hill climb competitors, speedway bikes, and minnie bikes.
He started painting at 14, handling prep work for his older brother, who opened a paint shop in his mom’s Torrance, Califa residential garage.
“We were shooting enamels when the city officials showed up,” Jim said.
At 16, he started painting bikes and worked for a year at Gordon’s Auto Body, on high-end vehicles such as Porche or Mercedes, as a painter’s helper handling prep sanding and taping. It was just a kid’s job, but it turned into Jim’s long-standing vocation and a constant learning process.
“The technology changes so fast,” Jim said. “If you’re out of it for a couple of months, you have to relearn the craft.”
Two elements stuck with Jim for the duration: this Triumph, through economic ups and downs and a divorce or two, and master painting, a solid vocation and constant creative challenge. Jim has become one of several Triumph service and restoration sources in the Los Angeles basin, along with Earl’s, the Triumph Bobber King, Century Cycles for old parts and service, and Jim’s Custom Paint for the classic Triumph chopper ground-up project.
BIKERNET SEMI-EXTREME MURILLO TECH CHART
Owner: Jim Murillo
C Phone: (310) 490-9404
E Mail: jim.murillo@yahoo.com
What kind of bike?
Make: Triumph
Year: 1967
Model: TR6
Fabrication: Jim Murillo
Finish: By Jim Murillo
Time: 1-year
Assembly: Jim Murillo
Assembler: Jim Murillo
Value: $15,000
Engine:
Type: Vertical Twin
Displacement: 750 cc
Year: 1967
Horsepower: unknown
Head: Triumph
Valves: Rowe
Pistons: Morgo
Cylinder: Morgo
Camshaft: MAP 1065
Lifters: none
Pushrods: Triumph
Carburetor/Injection: Carburetor – AMAL 900 series
Air Cleaner: velocity stack
Transmission: 4-speed Triumph
Blower/Turbo: none
Ignition: Boyer
Exhaust: MAC 3-bend
Mufflers: none
Finish: chrome
Fasteners/Hardware: chrome / stainless
Credit: Triumph engine was re-built by John Yorke, Thoroughbred Motorcycles, Maple Falls, WA
Frame:
Type: Triumph
Year: 1967
Builder: Triumph
Stretch: unknown
Rake: unknown
Swing Arm: no
Shocks: no
Modifications: Triumph front, bolt-on hardtail
Forks:
Type: Springer
Year: unknown
Builder: DNA, Paughco design
Finish: chrome
Triple Trees: Paughco design
Modifications: 4-over
Wheels Front:
Rim: DNA
Size: 19-inch
Hub: DNA
Builder: DNA
Finish: chrome
Fender: none
Tire: 90/90-19
Brake: single disc brake
Wheels Rear:
Rim: JP Cycles
Size: 16-inch
Brake: drum
Builder: M/C Wheelworks
Finish: chrome
Fender: 6-inch flat
Tire: Dunlop
Hub: Triumph
Misc:
Handlebars: 12-inch apes
Risers: 5-inch Flanders
Headlights: 4 ½-inch sport light
Taillight: Lucas
Turn Signals F/R: none
Speedometer: none
Tachometer: none
Gauges: none
Electrics: custom
Seat: Two piece Drag Specialties / vintage
Backrest: sissy bar
Footpegs: custom
Oil Tank: horseshoe with battery
Fuel Tank: Emgo, 2.2 gallon
Paint, Chrome, and Finishes:
Molding: Jim Murillo bondo
Colors: Candy-apple red, with white ice pearl
Type: Urethane, “House of Kolor”
Special Paint: airbrushing by Yvonne Mecialis
The Painter: Jim Murillo
Address: Jim’s Cycle Painting, Hawthorne, CA
Chrome: Vern’s Chrome Plating
Powder Coating: none
Color: none
Work by: none
Comments from Jim plus some shots of his other bikes and paint work:
This Triumph (the one featured0 was given to me in 1989 (free) for helping a friend move. All that was there was the motor and the frame. He also gave me some wheels and an old springer, which I put on the bike. But these parts have long since been replaced over the span of two re-builds.
I started putting together this final rendition of the bike in 2009; working on it in my spare time. Even though it is basically “finished,” it is still an on-going project, as I chrome or replace little things here and there.
This Triumph has always been my favorite, and I’ve had many an adventure on this old gal. Since it’s a hardtail, you feel every bump in the road, but it’s the only true way to ride. It seems everywhere I go, someone comes up to me to talk about having a Triumph, and their memories. This chopper always draws attention at shows, and on the street.
With the new 750 top end, this bike really flies. And the seating position is very comfortable to me. It’s cool to have a disc brake in the front now, after running for so many years with just a drum in the back (spool front wheel). But I love Triumphs whether they’re vintage and stock, or custom, and updated.
As of this writing, I’m working on another Triumph chopper….a ’68 500 T100R (my very first Triumph, acquired when I was 18!).
