Now I find I can definitely post photos, I'm posting the reversed photo from the internet I mentioned. Along with the same photo flipped. The correct image has the front wheel on the right side. It was the front wheel and brake plate that I first noticed looking wrong. Without that I doubt I would have ever noticed the engine issues. It shows the single cylinder engine quite clearly and the siamesed exhaust can be seen too. The exhaust arrangement and the engine details match the chopper in the film and not the auction bike. Have I said that before? The third photo is the auction 650 twin and the fourth the film still 250 single from the same angle showing the respective exhausts and engines.

Thanks for taking the time to prepare these attachments. The photos show two different motorcycles. The six photos from top to bottom: Photo 1 is from the 2015 auction publicity, it's the Triumph 650 twin. It's John Bonhams bike with his symbol on the sissy bar. Photo 2 is the same Triumph 650 twin, I don't know the provenance of this photo. Photos 3 & 4 are stills from the film, this motorcycle has a Triumph T25 250 single cylinder engine. The rider bears more of a resemblance to brother Mick Bonham than John Bonham. Photo 5 is a Triumph twin cylinder engine but not the same as fitted to John Bonhams chopper. The photo shows what is known as a "pre-unit" engine meaning the gearbox is not integral with the engine, this engine had it's origins in the 1930s and was current until around 1962. John Bonhams Triumph 650 has a "unit" engine dating from 1970, the gearbox is part of the engine. There are other differences. Photo 6 taken in John Bonhams front yard shows the chopper with the Triumph T25T 250 single cylinder engine. This is likely to be the chopper ridden in the film. The original builder of the four choppers has put some effort into making the 250 single appear to be a 650 twin by fabricating an extra exhaust outlet at the point where the exhaust pipe emerges from the cylinder head giving the impression that it has two exhausts and therefore two cylinders. This wouldn't be hard to do as the fabrication would be on the pipe and not the engine. The whole left side exhaust and silencer might even be dummys. I mentioned that at least two of the four choppers had a 250 single cylinder engine and as there is only one 650 twin accounted for there may have been three 250s. Back in 1972, in England, a full motorcycle test had to be passed to ride a motorcycle of more than 250cc on the road. I don't know if anyone from Led Zeppelin had passed this test, maybe only John Bonham, possibly Robert Plant too. Jimmy Page, definitely not. JPJ I don't know. But a motorcycle of 250cc or less could be ridden by anyone with a car licence along with some restrictions such as not carrying a pillion passenger. My guess is that the two or three 250cc engined choppers were built with this in mind. Most probably, by the time the four choppers turned up in England, some or maybe all of the other band members had lost interest anyway and John Bonham ended up with more than one of them at his house in West Hagley. With a bit of luck there will be a photo of a Triumph T25 motorcycle with this post and this is what the donor of the 250cc engine would have looked like. The builder of the choppers was a Triumph dealer and would have had these bikes on his showroom floor. They were popular in Southern California at the time. Why did I latch onto this? Because there's another photo on the internet taken in the same West Hagley front yard with John Bonham and a pre-teen Jason Bonham sitting on the chopper, but it's reversed so it appears as a mirror image. Being fairly familiar with Triumph motorcycles I couldn't work out what I was looking at until I flipped the image and then it made more sense. Then I noticed the exhaust pipes (headers) looked way too close to each other for a 650 twin cylinder engine. A bit of research led me to the Triumph 250 single cylinder engine which matched in every way apart from the exhaust pipe. That's how I came to work out there were two Bonham choppers and the auction one doesn't match the film one.

Thanks for pointing that out. Even so, the 2015 auction chopper doesn't appear to match the Led Zeppelin film chopper. There are several photos on the internet of John Bonham sitting on a chopper in the corner of a garden with a wooden fence as a back drop. It's the garden at the front of his house in Newfield Road, West Hagley and I think these photos were taken by Richard Cole. The chopper he's sitting on has a Triumph 250 single cylinder engine and not the Triumph 650 twin cylinder of the auction bike. This only confirms that around that time at least two of the four choppers were in John Bonhams custody and nothing more than that. But the chopper in the film matches the 'garden bike' photos and not several other internet photos of John Bonham sitting on the 650 twin cylinder bike that was auctioned in 2015. Yes, the auction details do state that it is the bike used in the film and that it has a Triumph 650 two cylinder engine.

To revive an old thread... An earlier poster juxtiphi points out that the chopper in the Led Zeppelin film is not the same chopper sold at the auction. I think he's right, although the auction chopper is undoubtedly John Bonhams chopper, the chopper in the film doesn't look like it's the same chopper. The motorcycle in the film has a Triumph 250 single cylinder engine, the motorcycle sold at the auction has a Triumph 650 twin cylinder engine and they are not easily interchangeable. So, the chopper in the film is likely to be one of the other three built for Led Zeppelin by Ron Hagest at Triumph of Burbank. Reading through one of the Zeppelin biographies, I don't remember which one, it's written that in the late '70s, John Bonham gave away a chopper to be auctioned off for an English childrens charity, my guess is that bike was the one from the film. In another, or maybe the same, biography, it's written that when they started filming the sequence someone, it could have been John Bonham, accidently rode the chopper through a hedge damaging it, so they continued filming with another chopper. I've often thought the rider in the film doesn't look much like John Bonham either, but he does look a lot like his brother Mick. For me, the value of this chopper comes from it's first owner, not because it was in the film, so I wonder why it's represented as being the film chopper, when anyone with just a bit of knowledge of Triumph engines can see it probably isn't. From my own research at least two of the four Led Zeppelin choppers had a Triumph 250 single cylinder engine and at least one, John Bonhams, had a Triumph 650 twin cylinder engine, but I don't know much more than that. Could Ron Hagest or maybe Jason Bonham shed any light on any of this?