ONE Ride 2013 - Royal Enfield Owners Club Gauteng

The FIRST Sunday of April is celebrated as the Royal Enfield ‘ONE RIDE’ all over the world. It fell on the 7 April this year.

The Gauteng Owners Club took part contributing 22 bikes to the thousands of bikes taking part all over the world.

The riders departed from the Germiston showroom shortly before 9am and made their way to Rhino Park Adventures. 

After working up and appetite we arrived, parked the bikes and got ready for our breakfast.

There is a growing number of ladies joining the rides. Mostly pillion riders but I am sure that is going to change in the near future. Here are the ladies...

All in all it was good, safe ONE Ride for 2013....

Ride Info:
Depature: Royal Enfield Germiston
Destination: Rhino Park Adventures
Number of bikes: 22

Go to Royal Enfield Owners Club Gauteng to view the upcoming club rides

On the road again…..so to speak

On the road again…..just means that I am back to blogging about this journey…the quest for an Enfield.

So let me start by explaining why there has been a lull in posts in the last year. Honestly…I got distracted by other things like life….So i have spent some time fixing my BMW and finally got my full drivers license. Now the wife and I can ride together.

As I might have mentioned before I am trying to convince my wife to learn to ride a bike and then the plan is to buy an Enfield for her. We are making progress and now debating what colour we should get. So I (or we) are closer to getting an Enfield. The other factor is finance….got to find a gap in the budget for the extra bike…all in good time I suppose.

I have realised that the Enfield is one of those bikes that I would like to have several variants of. Starting with the Classic, I would like to have it in various colours…Military, Maroon, Cyan, Chrome and Maroon, oh and why not the Desert Storm just for good measure. I would also like to a have a Cafe Racer version, either the factory one from Enfield (hopefully soon) or one with an after market kit. Then strangely enough I would also like a Trial/Scrambler version just to mess around on. Is this too much to ask….I think my bank manager would say so.

I recently went on a business trip to Toronto. Is was a great trip…besides meeting Rodriguez

, the first day I was walking around down town Toronto and happened to look up a side street and saw the unmistakable shape of…..an ENFIELD!!!

I chatted to the owner. Turns out that it was brought across to Canada by an Indian family. They had done the gear shifter conversion to comply with Canadian traffic law. But seemly had not ridden it much as it only had a few thousand miles on it even though it is an early 90’s bike. The guy picked it up for a ridiculous price, something like R 9000. As you can see the bike is in great shape.

This brings me to another point which I am sure I have mentioned before. I have been involved with the Gauteng Royal Enfield Owners club (https://www.facebook.com/REsouthafrica?ref=stream). Even though I do not own an Enfield, I am always invited to their outings and functions. To me this demonstrates the kind of people that own Enfields. Not an exclusive club.Whenever I meet an Enfield owner we get lost in conversation about the history and the charm of the bike.

The sound of Black Betty the Airhead

So in my last post I deviated a bit from the quest for an Enfield to tell you about the restoration of a ‘78 BMW R80/7 that I acquired from a friend. I mentioned that I would post a video of it running so you can hear what it sounds like. So here it is…

So it is not a Royal Enfield but it is a classic bike

So the main theme of this blog is about the quest to own a Royal Enfield, it is not the “Quest to own a bike”. However if you are in my position where you have wanted a bike for many years, pretty much any bike will do.

Now if I was to get my hands on a bike and it was not an Enfield, I would be chuffed if it was at least classified as a classic bike. So here is the deal, thanks to a friend of mine, I got my grubby paws on a 1978 BMW R80/7. Now that is a Classic (at least in my book). This bike has been standing idle for about 10 years. Actually I have a feeling it is a bit longer than that. Probably closer to 14 years. Tony and I struck a deal for me to take it off his hands and restore it.

This is what it looked like when I got it…

I have done a few things to the bike so far. Here is a list:

• Oil change
• Brake fluid change
• New battery
• Cleaned all aluminium parts (ongoing process)
• Repaired holes in the fuel tank
• New front mud guard
• Re-sprayed tank and front mud guard
• Repaired seat (ordered seat cover from the UK)
• Ordered new left hand side exhaust (ordered from the UK)
• Ordered new BMW badges for the tank, carb gaskets and float needles (turned out to be the incorrect ones)
• Fixed odometer as it was not ticking over
• Fixed the rev counter it was an electronic problem that a friend of mine helped me with.
• Replaced all the globes in the instrument cluster
• Replaced one of the fuel taps (sourced from BMW)

Bare in mind this bike had not been started for, as I am told, a minimum of 6 years. Once I had changed the oil, with the help of a friend we started the engine. It practically started on the third attempt. What a machine, a true workhorse.

The only major item that is outstanding is the licensing. The bike needs to go for Police clearance and a whole list of other administrative hurdles. This is going to be done shortly. The bottom-line is that this bike to is ready to ride…..So meet “Black Betty”…

She runs like a dream. The balancing of the carbs could probably be tweaked a bit more but it is close enough for now.

So for those of you that are interested I sourced the parts from www.motobins.co.uk, www.feked.com and BMW SA. The repair on the tank and the re-spray was done by Kaleidoscope Customising (Ralph - 011 4938749). Seat recovering was done by Paul’s Auto & Aero Trim (Brian - 011 6838308)

I love this bike, it has character and we have bonded over the last 2 months that I have been doing the restoration. I will post a video shortly with her running so you can hear what she sounds like.

In spite of this, the quest for a Royal Enfield continues…so don’t worry it over yet!!!

Royal Enfield Riders–Part 2

Here is another happy Enfield customer….

Follow this link…http://www.vimeo.com/28460858

I think this video will make a commercial for Royal Enfield….What do you think?

Royal Enfield Riders–Part 1

Here is a photo of Stuart and his father with their new Military Enfields.

Stuart tells me that the reason they both got the military spec was because his late Grandfather was a dispatch rider in WW2 up in North Africa and they were equipped with Royal Enfields (Fly Fleas). So they got them for sentimental reasons.

Congrats guys…..I hope you both have many hours of fun on your bikes….

What’s new in the world of Enfield

International News

New Website

The official website has recently been upgraded. I think it is more user friendly .It has a bike comparer which is great but for those of us that are outside India is does not serve a huge purpose as we only get the 500cc. Well is creates room for new models to be comapred in the future. Maybe a 750 or 1000cc.

New factory

A new state of the art factory is being built in Chennai. It is due for completion in 2013. This will increase the annual production of Enfields thus meeting the growing demand for these pieces of art.

Local News

Pretoria Distributor

The is a new place to buy Enfields, CIT Motorcycles in Pretoria.

CIT Motorcycles

1222 Pretoria Street,

Hatfield

Contact Ronnie on 012 342 8571

Stock

It seems that the Black Classic is a popular bike. Therefore if you wish to buy a black one you will have to order one specifically. The other colours seem to be available.