Thought I'd share this with you guys and gals. Picked it up yesterday from a friend as a project. Someone took this old T7-ish bike and mongled it into a high rear fender knobby tired whatchamacallit. Complete with apes. So, it's ready for the Darien. Just needs a few more bits. Time start mapping some routes... after I get the wheels unstuck and rolling again. May be time for new tyres too. Probably could reuse those tubes.
Yeah, I'm used to Jap bikes. I've been creepin on the EnfieNd pages trying to figure out what it really was. Documentation on these is a hot mess.
Hell, it doesn't even have consistent parts bolted on it, near as I can tell. Looks like an Indian Tomahawk/Apache subframe bolted to an earlier 7t frame, maybe. At this rate I'll need two whole parts bikes.
Got the wheel off without drama. Well, I had to cut the brake cable, but nbd. Shoes were frozen so I had to add water and bfh them loose. No more locked front wheel. Now to do the rear. Behold the chopperyness of it all. That's a Goodyear Grasshopper on the back. Flat tread cycle tire, not darksided.
I couldn't say. This is my first Enfieldish bike. I'm starting to think it's an Indian from the parts it has. It's mid-fifties, maybe late fifties, so it's made in merry ole' England, at least.
Kraven, If you turn that into a rideable bike for anything less than that cost of a running, riding Enfield I would be shocked...my heart might actually stop in my chest. But anyway, cheers, I look forward to watching the build!
Agreed with mostly Indian. The hole for the larger speedo was only ever used on Indian badged Enfields. But you might not be that hard pressed to get it into something workable... If you get it into a fair rolling frame, you could more or less wrangle any Enfield engine pre UCE (not sure about AVLs, but even a cheap Made in India 350 or 500 Iron Barrel, which you can buy complete from India...Although don't expect to stress it much!) with little more than some custom mounting brackets. There might even be plates that directly fit available from Hitchcocks, dunno. That'd save you a ton of dosh trying to buy a proper big Enfield twin engine and restored. Have a good look at Hitchcocks spare parts section. If you don't care to put a big twin engine in it, reckon it'd be a sweet and not crazy expensive job (relative to most full restoration jobs) to get an awesome and interesting workable dirty bike out of it. Really looks like someone was either in the midst of either chopping a scrambler, or scrambling a chopper and gave up. Wonder who's shed the original engine is rotting away in... I'd take a bundle more photos and have a chat to folk in the various Enfield forums. See if you can find a frame number to ID what it originally was through the rust?
Yeah, the engine is, as I understand, gone via catastrophic failure years ago. Big surprise. I'm digging around trying to find some parts for it. So far it looks like a trailblazer with the 18 rear and 19 front. I gotta tackle the forks and rear wheel. Then it'll be a roller with functioning suspension. Well, after I buy some old armstrongs for it. It has an alloy rear fender off something on the rear. Maybe a tomahawk, I dunno. But I've been poking around and looking at putting a Jap engine in it instead of English. But I'm gonna keep poking and see what comes up. Looks like the Harleys used the same Stewart-Warner speedo the Indians did, so maybe I can re-face one of those into the proper look and put it back in place. I don't want to veer too far from original, but I think I'll maybe scramble it and see how I like it. Those lame apes are leaving, for sure.
