Royal Enfield is currently making a perfect restart. With the new 650 cc twins made in India, the brand pays a beautiful tribute to its own past. They are brand new motorcycles that are so in Auto Motor Klassiek would fit. But we're going to talk about the past. The future comes later.
'Made like a gun' What does that mean again as a slogan for a motorcycle?
For Royal Enfield, the slogan did make sense. After all, the company had a solid reputation as a manufacturer of precision parts for weapons. And a rifle may also have serious demands. And with a Royal Enfield you could get along well. The company was founded in 1896 and took the first steps in the motorized two-wheeler area in 1901.
The first Royal Enfield had a Minerva engine and either a belt or chain drive. The company was therefore a pioneer in the use of chains for the secondary transmission. The use of kick starters was also an issue early on at Royal Enfield. In 1921 they switched to self-constructed engine blocks. The first own V-twin was 976 cc. In 1924, the single-cylinder blocks were simply added. JAP ordered. JAP, incidentally, had nothing to do with Japan. The letters stood for John A. Prestwich. The company became big by supplying engine blocks to a lot of motorcycle manufacturers. Until they started making engine blocks themselves ...
This also happened at Royal Enfield, where single-seater started as side valves evolved into OHVs. It is 'old school' OHV, because the springs just did their job in the open air. Yet…
This Royal Enfield
The engine that we found via via is therefore someone's grandfather. It is a competition machine with a saddle tank. That helps with the dating. You can immediately see that it is a 'racer' because there is no lighting. Insofar as motorcycles were already fitted with lighting and a speedometer as standard at the time, that stuff, along with the number plate, was collected to transform an ordinary motorcycle into a racing bike. An option that was actually quite common until the XNUMXs.
The lighting was not removed from this Royal Enfield. It has an original license plate stating that it does not need lighting. For the rest, the dismantling work was taken quite seriously at the time. The RE consists of only essential parts. Although: for even more weight savings, the gear for the speedometer drive had also been reduced. The kickstarter has been removed.
From an old lady
The comment "from an old lady" is not a sales pitch here. The Royal Enfield now belongs to the ex-owner's widow. The fact that the 250 cc single-cylinder has come to light is because of the long period of mourning. Saying goodbye can sometimes take a long time. The Royal Enfield is an engine of the kind where the rider was an operator rather than a pilot. You switch manually. Throttle goes with the same type of siphon that is still topical on snow and watercraft and brushcutters plus related inconvenience. And of course playing the correct ignition moment manually is also a happy necessity with which the rider can conjure masterly blows from the exhaust.
Also nice to read:
- The Royal Enfield Musket. Aniket Vardhan's dream
- Royal Enfield Bullet
- Ural sidecar crosser, that's where the Russians come
- Arnhems Oorlogsmuseum 1940-1945. Eef Peeters, the collector
- In the past ... the motorcycle market in 1948
