Man does not live by street-tracker alone, tasty as that diet may be. Even Richard Pollock, acknowledged Tracker King (he’s built more than 100 to date), likes to cook up something different every now and then. The latest Triumph special to roll out of his Mule Motorcycles shop, for instance, is more of a café roadster.
Most obvious difference is wheel/tire choice. Gone are the 19-inch Morris lookalike mags Pollock prefers for his trackers, replaced by Mule hub kits laced to a wide 17-inch Sun alloy rear rim and an 18-inch front, both ends wearing sticky sportbike rubber. That change alone gives the bike a more aggressive, hunkered-down stance, even if the 5.25-inch rear rim was so wide it required fabrication of an offset countershaft sprocket to gain proper chain/tire clearance.
Also looking quite butch is the Yamaha YZF-R1 inverted fork, held in place by a custom billet triple tree, and mated to Beringer six-piston brakes. A modified Joker Machine bracket holds both the Sportster headlight shell and a Motogadget speedometer, the latter with analog face and digital readout.
There’s even that rarity on any Pollock machine, a front fender—though admittedly the abbreviated blade won’t be knocking much rain spray or road grime!
The rest of the chassis is largely stock, exceptions being a set of Racetech shocks and Mule’s vertically mounted oil-cooler kit, which permits a much straighter run for the headpipes on his 2-into-1 exhaust system.
The fuel tank is factory, just with a different take on Triumph’s traditional scalloped paint scheme, while the solo tailpiece is from the Mule catalog, complemented nicely by abbreviated aftermarket side covers.
Clip-on handlebars would have taken the roadster in even more of a café direction but at Pollock’s suggestion the owner wisely opted for the added leverage and around-town comfort provided by Mule track-bend bars. Proof that no matter what it looks like, there’s more than a little street-tracker in every bike Richard builds.
