OUR CLASSICS

That’s what Team Rupert has been doing – and he’s generously imparting the info on how to do it, in case you need to make such a custom device for your own bike

Rupe’s Enfield project didn’t make it to the Classic TT, but at least it has a tasty mudguard

RUPERT PAUL Rupe’s re-imagining a 1960 Royal Enfield Meteor Minor as a capable, stylish Brit twin, as its former owner the late John Robinson might have done.

There are all sorts of reasons why you might want a custom mudguard. I developed a need for one after making a set of forks for my 1960 Enfield Meteor Minor 500 which consisted of modern Enfield Bullet tubes and 1978 Suzuki GS550 sliders. The original Enfield mudguard was long gone, and anyway this bike has a much lighter, leaner look than when it popped out of the factory in Redditch in 1960.

I could have bought a used Suzuki mudguard or an all-purpose glassfibre job, but neither would have looked great. Instead, I started with a general purpose aluminium mudguard from an autojumble, shortened and fitted to a loop frame made of 6mm welded rod. There are all sorts of ways you can use this simple combination; this is just the one that suited my Enfield the best. The man on the MIG welder was Scott Campbell, a 3D designer who teaches product design by day and makes bespoke bike parts in the evenings.

You need a fair range of tools (see right), but many can be picked up secondhand at autojumbles and some will already be lying around in your shed – wooden blocks and masking tape are just as useful as a profile gauge or six-inch Record vice. But the most important thing is somewhere you can make a real mess. Cutting and finishing steel generates piles of grit and filings that aggravate engines, goldfish and spouses. If you’re reasonably familiar with cutting, filing and welding steel, you should be able to do the job in a day. That includes time for mistakes, false starts and cursing. Making something as advanced as this is certainly a challenge, but it’s also great fun.

‘YOU NEED SOMEWHERE YOU CAN MAKE A REAL MESS’

You could always buy a glassfibre one-size-fits-all mudguard – but it’s a lot more fun and involving to make your own like this one