Anna P rises from her 40 year slumbers!

You may be aware of my restoration of a 1961 Royal Enfield Crusader 250 Sports, that I've been doing on and off over the last couple of years. The full blog of the restoration is here but here are a few before and after photos to whet the appetite!

So she is now all but finished and, excitingly, today was the first ride and the first time that she has moved under her own power for over 40 years, so a momentous day!

After a little fine tuning, we then started doing some shakedown laps of my local village. I have a test route of about a 2 mile lap, which means that if anything goes wrong halfway out I can pretty much coast back home! 

We did just over 10 miles without any big incident. Four main things to address: 

• there is a bit of an oil leak from the valve cover, which should just need tightening a bit.
• the gear change is a bit notchy, particularly going back into first from second. Some of this could be because the clutch is dragging slightly (the friction plates seem slightly too thick) but I'll check the selection adjustment as well.
• the petrol tap seems to be leaking slightly. I'm going to swap it for one with a reserve on it as well anyway.
• one of the indicators is loose!

I was very pleasantly surprised at how nicely she ran; how nimble handling and sprightly, especially considering I'm running in a new engine. She span up to 50 as easily as the Classic 350, although to be fair, she is quite a lot lighter.

I couldn't have hoped for better from a shakedown, after a complete rebuild from essentially a box of bits, so there is just a bit of tweaking to do and I can start building some "confidence miles" locally and start running in the engine. I pulled the plug to see what that was like and it looked pretty good, considering I’m just running locally at low ish speeds.

I’ve fitted some period throw over panniers so I can carry plenty of tools with me if anything needs tweaking while I’m out 🙂.

And of course I am now planning adventures on her! The first big one may be a few days to the Isle of Man for the Manx Grand Prix - it would be immense for her to make that journey after so long rotting away forgotten.

Oulton Park

Having passed his test and got his new bike, Paul was keen as anything to try a bit of motorbike camping, so we scheduled in an overnight camping trip just down the road to Oulton Park to watch some club racing, courtesy of the Wirral 100 Motorcycle Club

It was only a 25 minute bimble from home, but the rain had set in for a couple of hours, so we ended up riding there and setting up camp in light drizzle. It soon cleared up though and the weather for the rest of the time was great - hot and sunny.

I took my tarp with me, so we had somewhere to get a BBQ going in the last of the rain. Then had a good wander around the paddock followed by a couple of beers back at the tent. I love the smaller club meetings - so much more accessible and friendly than stuff like BSB and Formula 1.

Couldn't resist a bit of artiness, once I spotted the tents reflected in my tank :-).

The racing on Saturday was excellent, with a varied programme including a chance to see these old TZ 250 and 350 Yamaha GP bikes racing again. I love watching 2 strokes racing - something about the smell and the angry wasp noise that just does it for me!

As Saturday came to a close, we de-camped and headed for home, with plans for a longer camping trip next time.

Evening trip to the Ponderosa Cafe

Paul and I took advantage of this lovely weather for an evening spin out towards Llangollen, stopping at the Ponderosa cafe. After a rest we headed home via Ruthin and Mold - one of my favourite roads. 🙂

It seemed a bit weird riding out together on motorbikes after so many years doing it cycling!