I recently picked up a 7 year old 2016 Triumph T120 Black. The bike has just over 10K miles on it but looks like it was well cared for by it’s previous owner. The bike is completely stock so I decided I needed some cool modifications to make it “cooler” and lose some of that “old man” bike look.
I started researching available parts, probably like you are doing right now if you are reading this. There are a ton of available parts for these Triumph T120 series bikes so it’s a matter of picking the right parts from quality companies.
I love the look of an old school desert style bike like something Steve McQueen might have ridden when he first started playing in the dirt.
When I bought the bike, the stock tires were bald so new tires were required. Since it needed tires, it was a good opportunity to throw on some more aggressive dirt style tires.
I settled on the Shinko 705. It is a great 80/20 dual sport tire that I’ve used on Bonnevilles before. I used a 150/70R17 for the rear and a 4.10-18 for the front. They give the bike a great dual sport look without sacrificing on-road performance too much like a true 50/50 tire would. To show off the front tire a little better I installed a stock fender from the Scrambler 900.
I then swapped out the giant front turn signals for some little European spec LED lights from Triumph. These are a little difficult just because the connections are inside the headlight bowl. Luckily these
new lights plug into the factory connectors so there was no splicing and crimping required. (I wouldn’t be so lucky on the rear lights)
I found these Euro Spec lights on Ebay since US Triumph dealers can't sell them.
I wanted to remove as much chrome from the bike as possible so I started by swapping out the mirrors for some slick Triumph oval bar-end mirrors.
Triumph also makes it easy to swap out the tank badges with something else so I swapped the chrome to some blacked out ribbed badges from the Triumph catalog.
The rear of the bike needed to be de-cluttered as the giant tail light, turn signal and license plate mount looked huge hanging off the rear fender. I looked at a bunch of different solutions like British Customs, R&G and New Rage. I settled on a kit from Motone that I purchased from New Bonneville. This kit comes with two different tail light styles so I went with the Lucas style rear light instead of the round one. The kit didn’t come with very good instructions but I figured it out as I installed it.
I had a few issues with the kit though.
The kit required me to remove the bar that goes around the back of the seat so now I can’t install a backrest. The kit also mounted the tail light too high and the seat wouldn’t latch. I ended up using some additional spacers to lower the entire assembly enough for the seat to latch. Since I was using the Euro spec Triumph turn signals to match the front, they didn’t plug into the new harness provided by Motone. Cutting and splicing with new connectors was required.
Overall the tail tidy really cleans up the back of the bike and gives it a more off-road/cafe styling. I would recommend you do a lots of research on what kit you chose.
Some late night shopping led to me to purchase some other Triumph parts including a skid plate and some case protectors that should provide some protection when I take the bike off-road.
The last upgrade for the bike was the exhaust. Like the tail tidy, there are a ton of options available. I decided I didn’t want to remove the catalytic converter which meant I could go pretty wild since the cat would reduce the sound enough regardless of the muffler choice. Rather than spend $500-$1000 on new silencers, I went with the Motone Jupiter-2 exhaust tips. You just remove the entire silencer assembly and replace it with these fancy tips. The factory hose clamps the kit came with looked terrible on the black exhaust so I shot them with some high temp flat black spray paint before final install. The bike looks great with the silencers gone and the sound of the bike is perfect now.
For detailed instructions on performing all these modifications, you can watch my YouTube video.
I still have a few more mods planned for the bike including a new rear sprocket with a few extra teeth and a new gold linked chain. I'm also looking at new rear shocks to replace the stock chrome units.
The Triumph Bonneville T120 Black is a great platform to customize however you see fit. While the mods I did aren’t for everyone, that’s the fun of customizing. Do what you want! I'm thrilled with how the bike turned out spending just 1 day's work.
