The Black Bullet 1.6 - Miles Covered 23.5

At first glance, the eBay carb looks in great condition and it has all the right numbers stamped on it, so we’re in business. The only things it came without are the choke spring and alloy bellmouth to the air intake. I haven't removed the old bits hanging off the throttle cables, where the choke spring is, so that won't be a problem, it's the bellmouth that needs sorting.

Here I’m faced with the same problem as before, the old one is stuck fast to the broken carb. I could go at it and break it off, if that’s what it takes, but long-term I’m not going to be able to maintain the cycle in this way.

I’ve tried grips, unsuccessfully, and thought about notching it and tapping it with a drift, or screwdriver. In theory the ring should expand when heated, say with the kitchen blowtorch, but this has developed a gas leak and sets fire to my hand whenever I try to use it. An alternative might be to place it on a heated griddle for a minute but we are talking about part of a fuel system here and, again, it just doesn’t seem right. Let alone my lack of knowledge about precisely what the alloy is.

A strap wrench might give enough purchase and without damaging the surface. It’s clear that I need firm but gentle solutions that may be useful elsewhere, so I’m going get one and give it a try. I’ve checked to make sure I can get a replacement if it all goes wrong, both eBay and Hitchcocks can oblige, for under a tenner, so Plan B is in place. It's always good to have Plan B, think of it as panic prevention.

The Black Bullet 1.5 - Miles Covered 23.5

The Rothschild banking dynasty have built their buildings on the same bit of the square mile for over 200 years. Their latest project, New Court, is on St Swithin’s Lane and I’m in there doing a pre fit out condition survey.

It’s going to take at least two days so I’m holed up in The City, miles from home. This ghastly Premier Inn was not my idea; the company has a business account and I have to use it. My room phone accepts ‘all major credit cards’ and the internet is only £3.00 for 40 minutes – is this really the shape of the future?

I used to ride round here a lot when I was a DR for the newspapers at Wapping. How many hundred times I must have fizzed past with something urgent on board before this hotel was even built. Back then photojournalism (and newspaper printing) was all film based. Deadlines were tight and we used to flit from football match to ad agency to crime scene making pick-ups and drops.

The bike messengers were a crazy bunch of guys, no mistake about it. Based in a portakabin round the back of Murdoch's plant, in Wapping, all winter the guys would bitch and whine in this steamed up den with naked models plastered over the walls. The service was run on a rotation basis so you'd do your drop/pick-up and return to sit it out in the cabin, waterproofs round your ankles. Bike boots are generally too big to get waterproof trousers off easily so picture the scene. A group of hairy-arsed blokes with their trousers down talking big about women. It was all a bit distasteful the truth be told.

Things changed in the summer when the place looked more like an airfield during the Battle of Britain. The bikes parked up in a line ready to be scrambled, guys leaning out of windows squawking instructions at each other. Leathered-up lotharios lounging on the broken furniture that had been discarded outside, all febrile with the interminable waiting to be called up. Where to next? What stitch-up were those in Control dreaming up?

Filthy Phil, Johnny Handsome, Bubble and Squeak, and there was this guy dressed like a U Boat captain who bought a black GSXR 1200 off Pond Weed, who’d wheelied it into a gas bottle store, smashed the fairing and wanted nothing more to do with it. This bike without its fairing looked like it would slope off into the night, as he slept, to kill puppies. I’ve never had a bike like that, actually I did have a TL1000S for a few months, so that’s not strictly true, but I don’t think I missed out. I've never had the talent for out and out sports riding.

Anyhow, the replacement carb for the Black Bullet has arrived and I’m in bloody London. I need to get back home ASAP and take care of this repair.

The Black Bullet 1.4 - Miles Covered 23.5

Long van haul into London on jammed up roads today - radio on, bored idiots lane swapping. Some twerp cut me up as I was getting off at the services and I followed him in. Funny thing is these kind of people never look hard out of the car. They carry their mean and self-serving idiocy inside and express it through other media, like cars, or business. Always a step removed from those they pass over.

Back on the slab and once the news programmes had subsided into drama serials and inane chit chat, I switched the radio off and got to thinking about my blog. Not much going on with the Black Bullet off the road but I've still a few miles unaccounted for.

The little riding time I've had has left me with a few first impressions and one of those is vibration. If we're going to go any further than the shops, I'm going to have to order some foam grips or gloves with cushioned palms. Can't ride safely with Vibration Whitefinger.

The bike doesn't handle in the modern sense of the word, you sit so high up in the saddle. I'm going to have to ramp it up gently. With stiff but bouncy forks and no rear suspension, every bump is an adventure. I won't be taking many pillion riders, not more than once. The pad mounted on the rear mudguard looks like a bit of a cruel joke.

The torque is all low down and dirty, which I generally like, and the gears are few but long. Quite how you get the bugger stopped once you get up to speed is another matter. I need miles under my belt to talk any more about this.

I know if I ask Bob, he'll look at me like I was born yesterday and just laugh.

The Black Bullet 1.3 - Miles Covered 23.5

My first eBay carb auction was a bit of a farce. Hitchcocks can supply bits for £118, the Amal carb started at £35 and shot up to £91 in the last minute. I bid half the Hitchcocks price and lost out - stupid. I didn't think old bits would be as expensive as new but why not? When the holy grail among collectors is how 'original' your piece is, a finite supply of old parts may well command prices that bear no relation to the modern equivalent.

So, I had to have a rethink and as luck would have it there was another Amal 276 up for auction the next day. This one had the seductive words 'lightly oiled' in the description. The carb was complete (minus the choke return spring) and so I'd be bidding for spares as well as the replacement housing. Provided it's a decent example, I said to myself, it would be worth what Hitchcocks were asking for the housing alone. It was also a 'long neck' carb which is no longer made. Hitchcocks were offering me a 'short neck' plus extension rings, not a like-for-like replacement.

I'm not a collector I just want to ride this crazy hardtail iron, with its sprung bicycle seat, but I do want to keep it as it came to me, in what they call 'good original condition'. The guys at Hithcocks described it like this when I sent them a photo to ID the carb. As they're based in Redditch, where the Black Bullet was first bolted together, and they must see a lot of old bikes, I couldn't help feeling proud of the old girl. It's a compliment, nothing to do with me but there it is, making me feel good all the same.

Anyway, I sat down to watch the final 15 minutes of the second auction tick by. Laptop full of juice, internet connection steady, £120 posted in the box and cursor hovering over the bid button. One of the other bidders twitched at 5 minutes, pointlessly pushing the price up a quid, to forty quid. You've got to hold your nerve and stay out of sight til the last seconds. At 20 seconds my nerve gave way and I bid the full 120, a flurry of activity from the others, 62, 94, 103, the end. Congratulations, you have won your 'lightly oiled' salvation.

The carb should arrive later this week. It's crazy but I'm so made up about this. One of the old guys in the village popped in on his dog walk to find out how it went. Bob's a Triumph man, tried to source bits for me from his mates before the auction. I hardly know him so I was touched when he remembered to call me an hour before final bidding. Until I got into this fix, he was just some old bloke with a tick who drinks in my local.

Even in the shed, the Black Bullet is working its magic.

The Black Bullet 1.2 - Miles covered 23.5

Hitchcocks is a hangover from the past. A parts supplier that has hung on in Redditch, Birmingham, longer than the factory where the Black Bullet was made. The staff have already helped me out with both parts and know-how but I'm torn between them and eBay this time, as I've got to try and keep the costs down.

On eBay I might also be able to get an old carb, which would be more sympathetic to the original condition of the bike, Hitchcocks will supply me with a new one. One advantage of new is a tick on the 'parts not to have to think about again' list, which could save time and trouble later.

Until I've sorted out the carb issue I'm stuck at just 23.5 miles covered.

The other not so good news is that the bike has no legal standing. It's been so long in storage that it's fallen off the map. The Royal Enfield Owners Club dating officer thinks half the bike's history belongs in Chelmsford and half in Wales. I don't really care about this, I just want to ride it, but to do so I need a dating certificate to get road legal, which only he can provide.

Until then I'm restricted to the private roads and farm tracks around where I live and I'm impatient to get out there, riding for fun in the summer sun.

The Black Bullet 1.1 - Miles Covered: 23.5

Bugger, I've broken it. It's nearly 60 years old, lots of owners i'm sure, but I'm the idiot who broke the bloody carburettor. All I did was clamp it in a vice to hold it when it crumbled like a stale easter egg. It's old, I see now, and the grey metal they made things out of in the 50s isn't steel but I didn't think of that at the time.

I had studied exploded diagrams of these carbs on the net, sourced an Imperial toolkit, set aside time from a busy work/family schedule, run through the process in my mind, step by step, and gingerly prised the carb off the bike to take it apart in the shed and clean it. It's hard to see what I've done wrong but take one look at the immediate result of my careful attention and right just doesn't describe it.

Perhaps this is what all vintage bike owners are supposed to feel like. Desperate to get out there, flies in the teeth, but stopped in their tracks by what is basically a pile of old crap, at least by modern standards. I'm not sure I'm up for this now. I feel Canute-like, trying to hold back the tide of entropy.

I can't leave it here though, defeat has a bitter aftertaste that never goes away. I feel a call to Hitchcocks coming on.