Biker's

[bowers baldwin]

Carb and very old school. The 1999 was the last of the iron-barrel engines. In essence, this bike is not all that different from the bikes they were building when the plant got moved from England to India in the 1950's. It does have a 12 volt system but with the kick start only you can actually start and run the bike without a battery. It has the old 4-speed albion gearbox (that I unfortunately know way too much about the innards of) and a really nifty neutral finder that helps find neutral when trying to shift through the clunky gearbox gets to be a challenge.

When I got the bike it was literally a barn find that some farmer bought in 1999, rode for less than 50 miles and then parked. It was a military model just like bowers but paint quality wasn't all that good as it actually had 3 different shades of green on it. The tank was incredibly rusted inside and I experimented with an electrical method of converting rust which unfortunately messed up the paint on the tank. The messed up tank put me over the edge and resulted in me launching into making a number of changes as well as making it all one color again.

Mostly I did a lot of cleanup to expose more of the engine, hide all the electrics, and add a few bolt ons like the pedestrian slicer. I also swapped the bench seat for the solo seats to make it look more like a ww2 bike. The subtle change that I like the most was swapping the turn signals front and back with stuff that wasn't as chintzy and then relocating the fronts to the crash bar and adding running lights to them. My wife couldn't figure out what I was doing with the front turn signals until I was done, upon which she said, "they look as if they were supposed to go there". To me, that is very high praise!

My wife thinks I'm nuts because when she buys a vehicle she claims they come perfect from the factory. I'm the opposite, I modify every vehicle I buy to make it my own. I'm looking forward to getting my elio so I can start customizing it.

Nice, I cant take too much credit on the Enfield, but I have a lot of time into the Truimph (25 years worth).