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1948 Model G (Bullet?) Opportunity

2LZ

2LZ

Well travelled
Location
Volcano, CA
Laserman said:
Wow, sure is a beaut! Grats on having a real piece of Redditch!



Soon as I saw that word I had a flashback to high school auto shop - my old teacher used to rant about Whitworth and British Standard bolts and nuts :LOL:

He hated em!
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It makes me feel like a total rookie wrench again! My eye is getting used to it but they are named sizes that make no sense to the average guy. See pic. That's a 1/4" wrench.
They name them supposedly to the width of the stud, not head, from what I've read.....but that's also not always the case I've found. Besides, how the hell does a guy know what size the stud is unless he pulls the bolt out!?whitworth.jpg
 
2LZ

2LZ

Well travelled
Location
Volcano, CA
Off with the tank yesterday to access the valves. Of course, the tank rubber mounts had turned to little bowling balls. Thankfully Hitchcock's has had everything I need, so far.
Super simple bike to work on, like my two new RE's. I'm glad to see Mr. Lal has brought that aspect of the bikes forward to modern times.
Rerouting all the cabling/wiring where need be, while I'm in there, but I'm anal about that kind of stuff.
VERY happy with how it looks inside. G Rocker Box.jpgCompared to my BSA (20 years newer), this machining by the fine Redditch folks is light-years ahead of my 1968 Brit bike. Take a gander at these rockers! Little works of art. I know Royal Enfield had many "firsts" compared to the competition like telescopic forks and rear suspension, but this machine work is nothing less than impressive.
 
Woodstock

Woodstock

Well travelled
Location
Woodstock, NY
2LZ said:
Off with the tank yesterday to access the valves. Of course, the tank rubber mounts had turned to little bowling balls. Thankfully Hitchcock's has had everything I need, so far.
Super simple bike to work on, like my two new RE's. I'm glad to see Mr. Lal has brought that aspect of the bikes forward to modern times.
Rerouting all the cabling/wiring where need be, while I'm in there, but I'm anal about that kind of stuff.
VERY happy with how it looks inside. View attachment 13330Compared to my BSA (20 years newer), this machining by the fine Redditch folks is light-years ahead of my 1968 Brit bike. Take a gander at these rockers! Little works of art. I know Royal Enfield had many "firsts" compared to the competition like telescopic forks and rear suspension, but this machine work is nothing less than impressive.
Click to expand...
It is not as pretty as Victorian engineering, for some reason the Tower Bridge mechanicals popped into my head, but British engineering of most eras is aesethically pleasing to me. Agreed 2LZ the rocker arms are little works of art. It is obvious you will enjoy this ride.
 
Laserman

Laserman

Well travelled
Staff member
Location
Yuba City, CA
Definitely harkens back to a to time of aestthetically-pleasing engineering and solid machining; before beancounters started sniffing the farts of engineers and they ended up using computers to produce crap that breaks lol

Gotta love old stuff; I just can't get into this "replace junk with junk" mentality. Heck I have jeans older than the last high-school graduates and I'm not even old yet.

You have a niiice oldie to keep alive (y) Hope to see it in person sometime, you're not far from me 😁
 
smilespergallon

smilespergallon

Well travelled
Location
Durham, NC
Laserman said:
before beancounters started sniffing the farts of engineers and they ended up using computers to produce crap that breaks lol
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I was having this discussion with a friend who works as an electrical designer. An engineer friend off his is building a tube chassis track car to play with. He says he could work out all the engineering math and figure out exactly the size of tubing he needs with stress testing and vibration simulations and all that, or he can do what engineers ACTUALLY DO when left to their own devices which is size the materials up one to remove uncertainly and add durability while hiding the extra costs somewhere else in the budget.
 
2LZ

2LZ

Well travelled
Location
Volcano, CA
Aitrus said:
I don't have mechanical know-how to tackle a project like this, but I'm following along with great interest!
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Didn't have a choice. My dad was an engineer who didn't know which end of a screwdriver to hold, and we grew up in the country so the nearest shop was almost an hour away. He brought home a small tool box from Sears one day and set it on the garage floor. Then he said to me and my brothers, "If you want to get you uncles Honda 90 that's behind the shed running, figure it out."...and then he went into the house. Inspiration.
 
smilespergallon

smilespergallon

Well travelled
Location
Durham, NC
2LZ said:
Now I need to figure out how to post vids because I've had requests. Old dogs, new tricks.
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Youtube is actually pretty user friendly as long as there is no music in the background or whatever it takes to trigger the copyright bots.

I'm not up on all the latest methods, last year a friend convinced me to register a domain and now I just put everything up on there. Maybe one day I'll make myself a web page like its 1996 or something.
 
2LZ

2LZ

Well travelled
Location
Volcano, CA
Found ancient leather cable ties (cat collars?) on the bike when I took off the tank. Wondered if they were original or not or maybe someone in the past just used what they had at the time. According to Hitchcocks, yep! They're the real deal. They still sell them. I'll be ordering some for the reassembly and will use them where visible to onlookers.
Glad their still available. Anything I can do to make it more authentic, great. I'll be framing the originals for the shop. They're pretty brittle and worn at this point.
 

Attachments

matter

matter

Well travelled
Location
Bradenton, Florida & Salt Springs, Florida
2LZ said:
Found ancient leather cable ties (cat collars?) on the bike when I took off the tank. Wondered if they were original or not or maybe someone in the past just used what they had at the time. According to Hitchcocks, yep! They're the real deal. They still sell them. I'll be ordering some for the reassembly and will use them where visible to onlookers.
Glad their still available. Anything I can do to make it more authentic, great. I'll be framing the originals for the shop. They're pretty brittle and worn at this point.
Click to expand...
That's a really neat vintage feature! I never thought much about cable ties of yester-year.
 
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2LZ

2LZ

Well travelled
Location
Volcano, CA
So on a different note, not sure if I previously mentioned it, but I found this metal tag in one of the tool boxes. Being the curious sort (and a retired analyst by trade), I wrote the REOC in the UK to see if this was from them. They wrote me back this morning and said that their club goes back to 1976, but if the wording is exactly as I stated to them, it seems that this may have been the club from when the factory still existed. They requested a pic and I just sent it. I'm curious to read the response when I get it. I'll pass it along here.REOC Tag.jpg
 
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