My conscience had been niggling me for ages ever since taking up biking I had thought about buying a British bike at some stage. I followed a familiar line of graduating up the ladder through various small capacity oriental ironmongery, passing a test at the appropriate moment. About three years into my biking life I was reasonably happy with my lot, which consisted of a reliable Honda CB250RS. I wanted something bigger, but bank managers and insurance premiums prevented me from doing so.
One day, leafing through the MCN Smalls, my eye stopped on an ad for a Royal Enfield 350 Bullet. I must admit that I didn’t know what one of these looked like, but it seemed to me a good way as any of getting in with the Ruff Tuff Brit biking bunch who hung out at the local, as well as being covered by my existing insurance and being a bit different.
A word with a few mates seemed to confirm that it was one of the most reliable bikes ever made on this fair isle, so I went to see it. The owner was an engineer by trade and had an impressive workshop in his back garden complete with lathe. He started telling me the trouble he had obtaining spares for it and how he had knocked the odd part up himself when he couldn’t , buy it. Oil changes every 500 miles - this was too good to be true. Out of all the used bikes I’ve bought, I have never felt so confident that here was a bike that had been pampered and looked after by someone who knew what they were doing. 350 notes later the bike was mine.
It took a bit of getting used to - gearchange on the right, one up, three down and a small lever on the gearbox which when given a hectic kick would put the bike into neugtral straight from 2nd, 3rd or 4th gear. The electrics were the usual sick 6V joke one expected to find on a 1957 lightweight, which meant that night time riding just wasn’t on unless it was an emergency. The horn sounded like Donald Duck on a bad day, and was usually drowned out by engine noise, anyway.
The engine made a lovely noise, there is some indefinable magic about a big single cylinder engine; a combination of power making itself felt throughout the bike in big thumps and a noise that was music to my ears, backfiring on the overrun an’ all. Actually, it was quite easy to get the bike to backfire deliberately which was quite fun at traffic lights and the like - just wind the throttle up, close it quickly and it’s there.
The Enfield looked to me like one of those bikes that appear on the cover of one those mags that claim to represent that time in motorcycling history when the best bikes were British, when men were really men and an inability to kick an M20 into life would get sand kicked into your face.
The men who posed on these bikes were nearly always the retired colonel type complete with pudding basin helmet and genuine imitation leather Biggles flying goggles. The bikes were in pristine condition, kept in an air conditioned bank vault and taken out once a year to the owners club meet, where their owners would lie outrageously about how they rode their bikes into work every day, went to the South of France on it etc.
I was not that type, my bike was going to be a workhorse as well as posing tackle. I loved the bike’s looks - everything seemed so solid compared with my plastic Jap bike, it was very, very heavy and pumped out something like 18hp when new. That was the manufacturers claim, so god knows what was actually getting transmitted to the rear wheel. This power or lack of it didn’t bother me, ’cos the bike would plod along at an indicated 60mph quite happily.
Higher speeds were best left to the brave and foolish, because the Avon Speedmaster tyres had a square section design with only the tread on the flat section hitting the road fine on the straight, but cornering was an acquired art of picking the right line in advance and keeping the power on smoothly. Any attempt at fast cornering quickly resulted in the back stepping out, the ancient shocks attempting to keep the whole plot from pogoing, with the bike sliding on the edge of its tyre.
Seriously folks, the back tyre had corners on it. I would have been interested to see how it handled on modern tyres. The SLS drum brakes worked, after a fashion, but it was a good idea to plan ahead because stopping power was pretty pathetic compared with modern discs and the engine braking was often more effective than the brakes.
I changed the engine oil every 1000 miles and used 90 weight oil in the gearbox every 2000 miles. The final drive chain snapped on me, but it looked like the original so I wasn’t too put out at lashing out a tenner for another one. The chain I bought was the cheapest I could find, and it was interesting to compare it with the old one, because the side plates on the new one were about three times as thick as the old one.
The tyres didn’t seem to be wearing out at all. Petrol worked out at about 80 to a gallon of four star which was very reasonable. A constant oil weep never became worse than a slow drip. Oil consumption varied, but probably used up about a pint between 1000 mile oil changes. Gearbox oil consumption was nonexistent.
The bike did about 12000 miles in six months of reasonable weather, despite my resolve to use it strictly for posing at weekends. The Honda was pushed to the back of the garage and the Enfield was used all the time. Its strange behaviour was easily forgivable, counteracted by its noise, looks and sheer charisma. Before I get the editor of this esteemed rag shaking his head and thinking there goes another fool, because he thinks I should put away the rose-tints and face reality, consider this: I used the bike for six months and put over 12000 miles on it, apart from the oil changes and odd leak from the cases, and the drive chain, it didn’t break down, never needed any spare parts and never needed or appeared to need any servicing other than oil.
I am not a mechanical wizard, and have reliable chaps to back up this seemingly outrageous claim. Pressing financial circumstances forced me to sell it, but I got what I paid for it, and only had to put petrol and oil in her.
While I read tales of other people’s misfortunes with Triumphs, Beezers, etc. and would probably agree with the vast majority of what the Ed says about people paying too much money for a piece of mechanical mayhem, I can only count my blessings and say if the unsuspecting punter wants a reliable British bike which is dead cheap to run and insure, then this is the business. It certainly attracted a lot of attention wherever it went, from the don’t make ’em like they used to brigade, through to spotty adolescent stroker boys, to one old lady, complete with shopping trolley and hairnet, who summed up the bike very ably with a genuine, ’cor, isn’t it beautiful'.
Philip Blunt