This Royal Enfield is a wonderful example of flat tank generation. It is equipped with a Powell & Hanmer acetylene lighting set, grease gun, wooden toolbox, Amal carburetor and a three-speed Sturmey Archer gearbox. It has a lot of lovely details and is a great runner.
source.image: classic-motorcycle.com
The origins of the Royal Enfield marque can be traced back to a small light engineering firm – George Townsend & Company – founded in Redditch, Worcestershire, in mid-Victorian times. The firm moved into bicycle manufacture and by the turn of the Century had been reorganised as the Enfield Cycle Company, makers of the ‘Royal Enfield’.
The Redditch company built its first powered vehicles – De Dion-engined tricycles and quadricycles – in the closing years of the 19th Century and its first motorcycles around 1900. By 1904 the firm was concentrating on car production, resuming motorcycle manufacture in 1910 with a 2¼hp v-twin Motosacoche-powered lightweight.
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The first 2¾hp (350cc) Enfield appeared in 1924 in overhead-valve and sidevalve versions, both of which used engines supplied by J A Prestwich. The JAP engine gave way to one of Royal Enfield’s own manufacture for 1925, at which time the three-speed Sturmey Archer gearbox was standardised.
