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no self respecting hooligan, film 
star wannabe, Youth Congress 
activist or milkman was seen 
without one of the thumping
exhaust singles.
Flash of the Thumper
 

Boozo Boz, Johnny the
wild one, Harley Davison
& the Marlboro Man
Screen Wheels
 
 

Diesel Enfields, Mz and
Nato experiments
Selling a Horse in
Donkey's country
 

Unqualified and self taught 
mechanics on one hand,
and unscrupulous dealers
on the other
...and the art of 
motorcycleMaintenance.
 
 

“Do you have gas shockers ?? 
For Enfield Bullet ??
No demand, doesn't Sell
 
 

A stallion on Viagra? No just
a Lemon from Bimota
Return of 2-stroke?

Selling a Horse 
in Donkey's country

 I just couldn’t sell my bike. Broke and compelled by circumstances to remain stuck in Auroville in Pondichery, I decided to sell Marmalade, my trusty Enfield 350. So the next few days Xeroxed sheets of paper heralding a god sent opportunity to own a unique orange motorcycle found themselves pasted all over the commune. Soon a steady stream of visitors started trickling to my quarters, enduring my sales talk and subjecting the bike to every possible molestation imaginable. Yet, in spite of everything, I was not getting even a fraction of the price I would have commanded in Delhi. The only outcome of the entire exercise was that a French “girl on a motorcycle” who accompanied one of her potential buyer friends and my own ridding companion almost scratched each others eyes out, after I slipped of with her with the excuse of checking out her own bike. The lady left of in a huff  and my companion  a few days later, leaving me alone with faithful Marmalade, still standing unsold. If there is a moral in this story it will be “don’t try selling a horse in a donkey country.” In my case it was an Petrol Enfield in a Lombardini country.
Immaculately maintained Marmalade (okay, okay, I know that the crank seized after two weeks, but it is beside the point) was of no value in a place dense with diesel two wheelers. Enfields, Soorajs and a motley collection of converted machines each powered by the same pump/generator - Greeves Lombardini 325, distinctive in its clatter and providing not less a mileage than 60 kilometres per litre of diesel. Not since Gujarat where every milkman is mounted on one, did I see such a concentration of oil-burning motorbikes. Hence, it was also here that I took my first ever diesel bike ride. A neighbour wanted to buy a used machine and asked me to check out one example of the Enfield kind, which I did and frankly confessed that I couldn’t really make out anything from the experience.

Strapping an oil burner on a rolling bike chassis for economy, as prevalent it may be here, but it really not a swadeshi innovation. In the late forties, a chap named F.E.Sidney of Rottingdean, somewhere in England, took a prewar Norton model 18 and designed a direct injection diesel single to power it. The age wilted grapevine has it that the motorcycle manufacturer itself had active interest in the project, though obviously it amounted to nothing but a single bike that ran on diesel, and apparently quite well. 
More recently, another promising dieseling phenomena which also came to nothing was the French Boccardo, powered by the engine of the Citroën Visa AX, the successor of the famed 2CV, mated to a Guzzi Gearbox. The brain child of designer Louis Boccardo, the last anyone heard about the undertaking was that he had been arrested for fraud.

With a history as shaky and slow as the bikes themselves and sans mass production, diesel bikes have nonetheless continued to plod along in significant numbers on the roads worldwide. England probably having the largest figures after India. 
Taking the part of the Lombardini out there is the 412 cc Subaru Fuji Robin direct injection single, pumping out 10 bhp at 3,600 rpm, in place of the peak power of 6.6 bhp of the Indo-Italian unit. Though fitted on the frames and chassis of countless different bikes by enthusiasts, the man responsible for popularising this method of propulsion is Paul Holdsworth of Redbreast Industrial Equipment, Northhampton. Primarily a seller of small industrial machinery, which includes the Fuji Robin in its cement mixer guise, Paul started R.B.Developments for retrofitting the engine on bikes. Mainly using imported Indian Enfields, he thus created a new variation of the British classic. With a small but steady market for their diesel bikes, R.B.Development also carried out a similar transplant on a MZ, not the  usurper with the MuZ title, but into a real pedigreed Kanden MZ two-stroke. However, unlike their Robin Enfield which retains the four speed Albion gearbox of the Bullet, for the MZ they opted for a variomatic transmission, a la Kinetic Honda, which proved more adaptable to the stationary and single speed nature of the motor. Attaining considerable popularity in Europe, the development of the MZ Robin diesels was then taken over by Gred Engmann, the German importer of these machines and the man responsible for the VanVeen rotary engine motorcycle. 

Besides their poor speeds, another area that can be squinted upon in diesel bikes,  is the area of engine development. Sparing possibly F. E. Sidney, almost all the subsequent moves in this direction revolved around shoehorning engines manufactured for various lowly applications into motorcycle frames. The only saving grace being the work of Dr.Stuart Mcguian and his team from the Royal Military college of Silverham of the Cranfied University, who in association of with the Defense Research Agency of England, developed a diesel two-wheeler for possible Army applications, in view of the new NATO single fuel regulation. Dr. Stuart’s team took the bottom end and the gearbox of our Chenai Enfield Bullet, strengthened the casing, fitted a new crank, piston, con road and a four valve head with indirect injection and cramed it into an Eric Cheny made trail frame. The end result is a 542 cc bike producing 16 horses at the back wheel, expandable to 18, with off road capabilities, a top speed of 75 mph and acceleration comparable to many conventionally fueled machines. Surprisingly the bike has still not made it into production. Wonder why doesn’t Enfield pick up the tab and start touting Dr. McGuian’s name with promises of manufacturing the bike as they had been doing with Fritz Egli all these years.