Roger Shuttleworth, an Enfield employee, worked at the Greenland Mills factory in Bradford, which, he says, was set up to build engines for the twins, then shipped to
Redditch for assembly into the bikes.

He writes, "In about 1963 the Enfield vacated the mill and transferred
production of the big twins to the underground factory at Westwood."

Employee Reg Thomas writes "I had redesigned the bottom half of the
Interceptor engine before leaving Redditch, and it went into production at
the Westwood underground factory as the MkII."

So it would seem that the Mk1A engines were made at Westwood, but only the Mk2 was assembled there.
(by Robert Smith--Freelance Writer)

My research, such as it is, also points to no Interceptors being made in 1966. 1965 seems to have been the last year of Redditch production (Interceptor and Continental GT), with production of Interceptors only resuming at Enfield Precision in Bradford-on-Avon for 1967

On the subject of GT and TT Interceptors, again my understanding (and it may be wrong) is that the US model Mk1 (1963-65) Interceptors were sold either as Custom (single or twin Monoblocs with standard cams; and yes, I have seen a Mk1 'ceptor with a single carb, at the INOA Rally in Olympia 1999. The owner swore it came that way), GT (twin carbs with sports cams) or TT (twin carbs with sports cams and revised cam timing).

..

To the best of my knowledge, the "TT-7 Interceptor" name didn't;t happen until the 1967 model year, when it became one of the variants of the Series 1A ... the other was the "GP-7 Interceptor". The bikes were differed only in paint & trim details.
The Series 1 Interceptor workshop manual refers to a "T.T Interceptor". No mention of a GP at all. Note that the Series 1a machines were TT-7 and GP-7 as I noted in my earlier email; not sure what the added "7" meant.
Reply by gREgg

Enfield Indian Notes
Chief or a Trailblazer. They are 700cc Super Meteors that came with the Indian head valenced front fender. The Chief had fat tires on 16" wheels and the Trailblazer had regular 18" wheels. Classic Bike and Classic motorcycle both have done features on them in the last year or two. I've probably fired my copies out but will check and let you know.

Also Classic Motorbooks in Osceola Wis. published "Indian Motorcycle Photographic History" by Jerry Hatfield. The last chapter has a number of good original b&w photos of the Indian badged Enfields. Maybe you can find a copy in the library. Don

How many Series 11 REs were produced total.

In my parts book the frames for the Series11 seems to start at # 1000,as that was when the new fork stop for the roadholder fork seems to have been introduced.

I've been told that part #s ran until about 2500 before production ceased in 70(?), giving the total around 1500 units, or motors anyway, but was this numbering just for the motors used in the Interceptors? IE did the Clymer Indian 750s have their own numbering system outside of this total or were they included, and likewise were the Rickmans in this series as well? Or were the Rickmans just built from left over Indian motors as some books suggest, and how many of each were made?

A friend told me once that he remembers Chariot Cycle in Winnipeg selling Rickman Enfields in the early 70s and offering an extra motor with each bike!

Any input on this?

Bob

This is true. I can remember the flyers that Chariot Cycle sent out: you could buy a Rickman Enfield for about $1200, or a bike plus a spare engine for about $250 more. It's been a long time, so the exact numbers are a bit of a fog.

The engines the Rickman Bros bought were most likely the ones built originally for Floyd Clymer's final enterprise ... but not delivered prior to his death. From the numbers I recall, Rickmans bought about 600 engines total ... hard to believe they thought they could build a long lasting business with a one shot deal of so few engines.

What's peculiar to me is just how it came to be that so many of the Rickman Enfields and engines happened to get to an obscure distributor in central Canada. Hadn;t heard of them before, and haven't heard of them since. It was also about the same time that a relatively large quantity of Rickman frames for Triumph twins came onto the Ontario market.

It seemed to me that just about any dealer of any size had a couple in stock ... but never saw any actually get on the road. Makes me wonder where they all went. .. gREgg

I guess it all depends who you talk to. According to OSPREY COLLECTORS LIBRARY "Royal Enfield, the Post war models" the numbers put together by Rickman Metisse was any where between 90 and 130.

My machine has 12/70 date on the plate. It is complete except unfortunately the origional clipons were missing when I bought it back in the 80's.

Rickman were in the bussines of frame making, mostly in the beginning for scrable machines I think. As far as I know it was the first production motor cycle in the world with disk brakes front and rear although I am sure there are many who will dispute this. Ian Abrahams used to run a world Rickman Enfield register years ago.

I have lost touch with him unfortunately. I still have the list of machines found, still in one piece. There were not many. I guess we will never know the numbers, where they all went to and how they ended up where they did.

Cheers, Phill. C

Notes on Rickman Interceptor Production.
Rickman production started in 1970 with six prototypes (with non sequential No.s) and then seems to go into production in '71 with frame #R1001, then continuing into '72 until #R1130 was produced and ended there.

In another part of the text he says there were 137 produced total, but with the total with the prototypes it seems to be actually 136, 26 going to Chariot Cycle in Winnepeg

...Bob