Taurus 650 - OEM Parts and Website
I'll start off with saying sorry to those who I have neglected in the past couple of months, but I have been busy working and getting mytogether.
Anywho, I would like to start off by thanking Mrs. Sills, without her, none of this would have been possible. She gave me an opportunity and an offer that I could not refuse, and for that, the community will be more than thankful. her husband, the late Ken Sills was the previous distributor of the Taurus parts. For 27 years he held onto and provided parts to keep the Taurus 650's running. And for how ever long that I can, I will try to do the same.
In addition, I would like to thank my father, he has gone out of his way to ensure that things went smoothly. To be honest, without him, many things would have been much harder on me than they were.
And finally, a few friends and family that help me with the move. It was a BIG job, and with their help, things worked out very well.
So as of now, I am the distributor of Taurus 650 NOS parts and reproductions. The road leading up to now has been one that required many leaps of faith, trust and dedication. Many times I found myself filled with anxiety and continuously asking myself why I am doing this and investing so much. I am not one to believe in a higher power, but I do believe that opportunity knocks but once and good comes to those who wait. In my case, my leap of faith in a complete stranger to move far from home to work has lead to an adventure that changed the course of my life.
With this persons’ encouragement, I spent the better part of these past two years expanding my knowledge, learning new skills and to be honest, doing a little growing up. When I first moved for work, I was given the option to get a trike and store it in his shop while I spent some of my weeks off in town.
Prior to moving, I have been interested in the Taurus Trike, unfortunately, the Taurus trike was a very rare machine to come across a little while back. My ride of choice at the time was the 1985-87 Honda ES & SX. But that all changed the day I went away.
The day I flew away from home I was greeted by my online contact. Even though I was very tired from the flight, he and I talked a storm. One of the discussions was about getting a trike to ride for my days off. I told him about my choice of getting a decent Big Red. But on a side note, I mentioned my interest in the Taurus trike and how I have never seen one in person before. That day however, would change everything.
On our way back to town, we had to make a quick stop at a parts depot yard to drop off an auto part.
It was mentioned that there were some trikes here and there around the yard. So I went to snoop around. After some time, an a little disappointed I returned to the main office. I asked if there were any other trikes around other than the ones in plain sight. Surprisingly, the owner said yes and directed me to go check out a few odd trikes further back in the yard.
We made our way to the location specified. Upon arrival, I lost it; A kid that just opened up a Christmas present and got exactly what they wanted kind of lost it. Right in front of us were two Taurus’, emerging through tall thorn bushes, worn by the elements yet sitting there like gators waiting for the next snack to come along. With a complete disregard of my brand new clothes and bare skin, I just had to take a closer look. Stomping and brushing aside the thorn bushes, I started to clear the surrounding area from the Taurus trikes. They were pretty much all there. There weren’t many parts missing or damaged. If I had a trailer and the cash I would have nabbed them up right then and there. However, I unfortunately did not have the resources to do so. With that, we took some pictures and left. But did not forget.
Some time had passed and I was on the hunt again for a rider. I found a listing on Kijiji for another Taurus, but this one was a distance away. Listed as a running machine it would need a little fixing up to get it back out on the trails. With approval, we headed out to get it. Upon arrival, things got depressing. The advertizing was misleading, typical. The owner swore it runs, just hasn’t need started in two years. After a few look-over’s’, and a convincing pep talk by my friend, I took it home. To those who have been following my adventure, it is my Green Taurus.
While driving back home I made a phone call to the dealer listed on the key chain for the Taurus.
It was a dealer in Saskatoon, SK. After mentioning that I had an Argo Trike the lady on the phone passed me onto the owner. On the line came the voice of an old man. He kept the ball rolling by giving me the number to a dealer in Ontario that supposedly has all the Taurus 650 Parts. I promptly, gave this guy a call.
When the phone picked up, the voice of an old man came through the line. Ken confirmed that he had most parts. At this time, the game changed. I now had a little freedom to work on the Taurus without worrying about not finding parts if needing to replace any.
Work started on the green Taurus. Luckily for me, the Taurus came with a parts manual. This made things easy to take apart, service and make a list of parts I needed. Shortly after, I flew home to buy my truck. At the same time, I made the trip to meet Ken Sills for the first time and to buy the parts I needed to fix up the Taurus. Ken and I spoke about the trike at great length. I spend much of the afternoon going through my list and picking the parts out of the boxes. I made a new friend that day, I admired Ken’s dedication to keep the Taurus parts for so many year.
When I got back to work, I spent many evenings and late nights working on my machine. With some help, I got things fixed up and running. The Green Taurus was alive once more! At this point, I was making regular posts on the forums and adding info about the Taurus that little to nothing was known about. Things were now going to get interesting.
I still had the two Taurus trikes from the scrap yard in the back of my mind. I made myself a plan and bought an enclosed trailer and set out to get the two trikes which you might know as “the Twins”.
I brought them to the shop and over many months, rebuilt them to like new condition. While rebuilding them, I paid Ken a second visit. I showed him the results of the green Taurus and told him about the two that I was currently working on. This visit ended with a proposal to buy all the parts from him. At the time, he had no interest in selling.
Time went on and I completed the twins. I sent pictures by mail to Ken with a thank you note. A short while after I received a call, it was his wife. Ken had a bad fall and was in the hospital. He never got the chance to see the pictures. He slipped into a coma and never woke up. He passed away July 27 2014. I unfortunately could not make it to his funeral.
A short time after, I received an offer by his wife to buy the parts. We agreed on a fair price and set a date for pick up which I guesstimated would work out best financially for me. I had a little over two months to buy two enclosed trailers and save enough money to pay for my trip back across the country, make the move and drive back all within eight days.
I ended up buying my trailers from a dealer close to home, had my father pick them, up and build shelving in one of them. The shelves were built to house forks on the bottom, 11L roughneck Rubbermaid bins in the middle and upper storage for misc parts. The design of the interior changed many time before the final simple design was chosen. The funny thing is, even though I did not have the exact measurements of all the oddball parts, the end result was perfect within centimeters.
My father knew better then I and bought me a torsion bar towing kit (called it an early Christmas and birthday gift… lol) but man oh man did it ever become a game changer. With all the weight in the trailer, the hitch would have been dragging without the kit.
We spent two days moving all the parts. The first day we left at 7am, had the 6 hours drive down, spent 8 hours packing and transferring the parts from boxes to bins and drove 6 hours back. We got in at 3am the next day. My father and I got up five hours later and went back to get the rest with the dump trailer.
We split shifted driving down, spend another 6 hours packing. Man was it hairy; the dump trailer was full and the back of my truck. The rear doors almost didn’t close. Again, we got in sometime about 3:30am. The drive back however, I drove the first couple of hours and when I really was pushing myself to stay awake, I pulled over. My father woke from his nap and offered to drive, which he did. The plan was that he was to switch off to me in a couple of hours. I awoke still tired as heck to a heavy snow storm. We were cruising a steady 80km\h (50MPH). Still a couple of hours from home, he told me he was good and to get some sleep. Every time he slowed down I felt it, I would open my eyes enough to see what was going on. One vehicle after another was in the ditch or pulled over. I was so tired from driving the five day that I passed out about an hour and a half from home. I awoke in the last half hour from home, at this point I could tell my father was tired, I told him to pull over and I would drive the last leg. I somehow managed to gather enough strength to get us home. We made our way into the house, had a drink, and went to bed. We both slept until early afternoon that day.
When we woke up, we had a quick breakfast, unloaded the back of my truck and off I went back on the road across country to work. My father taking time now and then to unload the dump trailer bit by bit into the trailers after they have been parked and blocked. I drove 9000kms in eight day, man was I tired.
This is turning out to be a book. Lol.
So when I go back home for the Christmas holydays, I will be spending more time sorting though the parts and organizing them.
I will be posting details about the forks, I would like to lighten things up a little. I am going to be selling a pair of fork/shocks for a set price and discount for each additional set on the same order. So keep an eye out for that soon. The forks might work out for some older model motorcycles and mods.
I have a website for the Taurus trikes at WWW.TAURUS650.COM check it out, mobile friendly too.
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There's nothing like the sound of screaming 2strokes and the smell of race gas in the air
Originally Posted by coolpool
