A few months ago I 'scratched an itch'. I'd been wanting a vintage motorcycle to work on as a hobby. My idea was to find a single cylinder bike as it would be less complex. Though I'm pretty capable working on cars I'm not particularly experienced with rebuilding motorcycles and wanted to conquer the basics first. By accident I came across the perfect bike to tackle; antique in design but not old in manufacture date. It was a Royal Enfield Bullet 500.
The history of the Royal Enfield brand is an interesting one. I'll paraphrase here so the reader won't lose interest. Royal Enfield was a British company that made good quality and innovative motorcycles but, like most English brands, collapsed in the late 1960s. However, back in the mid-1950s they had made a deal with India to manufacture the single cylinder 'Bullet' model in a factory there. That concern has survived to this day. Though they still make a Bullet it is a complete re-design with integrated transmission, electronic ignition and fuel injection. The original Bullet, however, was made continuously from around 1955 to 2008. Essentially you could buy a brand new 1955 motorcycle in 2007, which is what the original owner of my machine did. I liked the idea of a 1950s riding experience but without the rust and hard to find parts. My Bullet had suffered a valve failure and was no longer running. In fact, the head was not on the engine and it came with a box of parts and fasteners I would have to figure out how to put back together. The basic bike was otherwise mostly complete, the paint quite presentable and the chrome mostly clean. I hauled it home on a trailer and set about my education.
It had been a long time since I undertook a project of this magnitude and I wound up touching almost every part of the Enfield before it was back together. I had lost touch with the joy of working on a machine that allowed easy access to every component and fastener. Though I had a manual to guide me, working on the various systems was fairly intuitive. There was no mystery to how it went together and even the box of mystery parts and fasteners all found eventual homes with no drama. Royal Enfield actually used "Untainted By Technology" as a catch phrase in their advertising. Though I laughed at this slogan at first, I came to respect what it meant. There were no complex electrical gizmos to control the functions that make it run. Even the headlamp switch can be taken apart and cleaned if need be. Though the quality of some of the Indian made components is low the original design lends itself well to the home mechanic...or the rider that may find himself stranded along the road with only a pocket knife and a rock to use for tools. The Enfield is a machine made to be worked on by normal folks, not just factory trained 'technicians' in white jump suits. Though I screwed up a couple things or failed to fix them right the first time it was not an anger-inducing crisis. Being so easy to disassemble I wasn't bothered to repair something a second (or third) time, a reaction markedly different than most any post-1980 device I have worked on.
Upon successful completion of the project (it started, ran and is even able to be ridden now) I found what had been missing from my once joyful time in the garage. Modern machinery just isn't that pleasant to work on. Things are too complex and packed together too tightly. Often I can't see what I'm working on and can only blindly feel it. The Enfield was an absolute delight by comparison and now has me reconsidering my future projects. My joy of wrenching had become tainted by technology. I am pleased to have come across an antidote.
