Tim Wu

Tim Wu  is a professor at Columbia Law School, former chair of the media reform group Free Press and a writer for  Forbes, The Washington Post, and particularly Slate. He coined the term "net neutrality", the concept that network operators should not block or favor content,  and tirelessly communicated what is an arcane and technical topic of communication policy to the public. A topic that could have profound implications for how society develops. To the point that he has now been officially appointed to the Federal Trade Commission to look into the issue. The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article this week titled "Can Tim Wu save the internet?". A man of many interests, one of them is old Honda Motorcycles. I decided to write to him pointing out this blog and he wrote back saying he's considering getting a Royal Enfield!

Art inspiring

American artist Jon Den Hartigh is fascinated by vehicles from India. He used them to inspire some of the pictures in his current exhibition at the Kynkyny art gallery. Everyone in this blog knows Royal Enfields are inspirational, so we agree with him.

Franco Sheene

Frank "Franco" Sheene, the father of two time world champion Barry Sheene was an accomplished racer himself. In 1951 and 1952 he entered the Isle of Man TT on Royal Enfields. He passed away in 2008.

Enfields on elephants

And other great pictures in Davida Moto Photo Gallery.

Poker run

In Nepal they organized a long distance motorcycle race where competitors had to pick up poker cards. The riders were on Royal Enfields. Awards were also given not only to the one who got the best poker hand, but also to the competitor that suffered the most break downs! They had 146 riders from 15 countries, quite an event!

Where in Pamplona?

The Royal Enfield dealer in Pamplona, Spain is "The classic bikers" in Calle Errotazar 21-28.

Miss Enfield is back!

As we mentioned, when the Enfield Cycle company was broken up in 1967, Enfield Precision Engineering was sold to a Greek millionaire that moved it to the Isle of Wight and concentrated on the production of powerboats. The most celebrated one was "Miss Enfield 2". With its V12 engine it took the world by storm winning six of its first ten races and placing second in three. It won the celebrated Cowes-Torquay race. Notice the gun next to the Union Jack!
Apparently the current owner is thinking about restoring it for next years' edition of the Cowes-Torquay race. Good luck! This is what it looks like today.

Flying Flea, the video

Tickle that AMAL

I decided to give a more retro look to my Enfield by installing an AMAL monobloc carburetor. AMAL was started after World War I with the amal-gamation of several manufacturers in cluding Brown and Barlow, AMAC and others. The company was sold in the 1960's to the IMI group of Industries and in 1993 it became the property of Grosvenor Works Ltd in North London. They revitalized the product line re-introducing many "obsolete" products that enthusiasts nevertheless wanted for their vintage machines. In 2003 Burlen Fuel Systems took over, who also produce Solex and Zenith products. The monobloc carburetor has the famous "tickler" a button that when pressed pushes down the floats and floods the carburetor for easy start when cold. It also has a handlebar mounted lever that opens or restricts the air admission. Allegedly it helps with cold starts. I don't notice any difference with it. The bike starts on the first kick. Burlen Fuel Systems is headquartered in the outskirts of Salisbury, Wiltshire.

Alpha centuri

Alpha Bearings of Dudley is an engineering company that manufactures parts for engines, still in business today. In the early 1960's the small but powerful Villiers 197cc engine was being used for racing. As more and more power was extracted from it (they got to around 30 bhp!) stock parts kept on failing. Alpha stepped up to the plate supplying better parts. This eventually led them to decide to produce entire engines, called "Centuri" (there is little information out there and I'm not sure if this is a typo or not). Alpha was part of the E H & P Smith conglomerate that owned, among other companies, Royal Enfield and Albion Gearboxes at that time. Due to this relation the Alpha Centuri was fitted into an Enfield frame, as shown in the picture. Apparently Royal Enfield was not happy about this. They eventually settled for a GP5 frame, but Royal Enfield demanded that the frame not be modified, which lead to a sub-optimal placement of the engine. With the demise of Royal Enfield's own racing effort, Starr engineering got the dynamometer that had been used to tune the GP5. With a Centuri engine and a new frame, reminiscent of the GP5, Hadley, an unpaid helper at Alpha collaborated with Starr and continued development. The bike proved fast but fragile, and the Albion gearbox with its false neutrals proved a hindrance. Eventually the project was canceled in 1968 by E H & P Smith who decided to pull out of racing entirely. Read about recent attempts to restore a Centuri here.

Steve Linsdell

Steve Linsdell started racing in 1977 on a hand built Royal Enfield with a 1959 Bullet 500cc engine and a Colin Seeley frame. The public was quite skeptic when he took the field at the Isle of Man TT in 1981 and astonished to see him finish second in the newcomers race at 94.87 mph. This is the last Royal Enfield to go on the IOM TT podium! He then achieved many other victories on a Super Meteor 700cc twin. He is now helping his son Olie in his racing career. Steve is featured in the TT Superbike Legends Sony Playstation 2 Game. He is the owner of Flitwick motorcycles. Read an interview with him here.

Where in Bradford?, part II

After the war ended, the War Department motorcycles were re-sent back to the factories to be refurbished as civilian machines and sold as new. Royal Enfield was inundated with thousands of motorcycles. First they stored them in the underground factory in Westwood. But the damp conditions there were bad for the bikes, so a building in the center of Trowbridge and two buildings in Bradford-on-Avon were either rented or acquired. We covered one of the Bradford buildings in another post, it does not exist anymore. Now we found evidence of the other building. In the book "Secret underground cities" N. J. McCamley mentions that the other building was in "an old brewery in Wine Street". There is an old brewery on 53 Wine Street still today. It currently hosts  an online gift book company. They responded to my email saying they would try to find out if Enfield had ever been there, but could not find anyone to confirm it. Wine street is rather short, the odds of having two breweries on it are low, so I'd say it is is rather likely that we found the right place.

New views

This blog is becoming rather large. Particularly for newcomers, this may become a problem in that it is not easy to find articles quickly. We have added three new views below the header for quick access, which allow to view things as a flipcard, sidebar, mosaic. We hope this helps.

An Enfield car in 1964?

As we have mentioned, when Royal Enfield was taken over by the E&H P Smith conglomerate in 1962 at the death of Major Smith (no relation), who had led the company since the 1920's, things looked good for a while. In particular when Leo Davenport convinced superstar champion Geoff Duke to become associated with the company. Duke's involvement with Enfield's most visible result was the development of the GP5 racer, we will cover that in another post. It is claimed in the book "Geoff Duke: the gentle champion" that he also tried to convince the Enfield motor company to build an inexpensive car. It was going to have an Austrian made Steyr-Daimler-Puch air cooled boxer engine driving the front wheels, like the one that eventually went into the Haflinger all terrain vehicle. The romance of Enfield and Duke was short lived, however, as losses mounted and E&H P Smith decided to breakup the company, and the project never saw the light.