Concours d'elegance 2012

The Baton Rouge Concours d'Elegance took place Sunday April 15th at the municipal golf course, after an hiatus of a year. The lull seems to have taken a toll as there were not as many vehicles as in other occasions. In particular there were only three motorcycles: a Harley v-rod, a Triumph Tiger of the 1960's and obviously the most beautiful, my Royal Enfield C5.

There was less drama in this visit than in my previous entry, but still some drama was there. I have been having problems with the solenoid. And since the US C5 model has no kickstarter, that can turn into a serious problem. Sometimes one would press the starter button and nothing happened. Tapping the solenoid usually fixed it, so I thought it was an open ans shut case: replace the solenoid. Royal Enfield USA sent me two under warranty, but the problem persisted, and in fact got worse: now not only did it sometimes fail to start but sometimes the solenoid would remain engaged, which would risk destroying the starter mechanism. I finally bought a solenoid in an auto parts store and this one worked better but still has the problem that it sometimes remains engaged. I discovered that if I repeatedly press the starter button it would disengage sometimes or sometimes tapping it fixed the problem. So now a hammer has become standard equipment in my bike. My current theory is that there is something wrong with the button, perhaps some residual current keeps on running and that keeps the solenoid engaged. Maybe the Louisiana moisture is the culprit. I will have to keep on studying the problem, the starter button does not look all that easy to disassemble without potentially messing up the accelerator, etc. At the concours, thankfully, the bike behaved itself and gave no problem.

Lots of people took pictures of it and admired it in general. Let's see if this somehow stirs interest and we end up getting a Royal Enfield dealer here in Louisiana.