Putting Jack Stocker’s Enfield back together
In the early 1990s, my pal Phil Parkin was having a bike MoT’d at Armstrongs on the famous Westgate Hill in Newcastle. While waiting, we went across the road to a newsagents which always had stacks of bike adverts in the window.
Phil spotted one for a dismantled 500 Royal Enfield Twin. Following this up, he purchased it for £125 from the girl seller. As Phil was in the RE Club, he forwarded the engine and frame numbers on to it and the reply was that he had an important machine, KAB 547, ridden by Jack Stocker in the 1951 ISDT. Phil restored the bike in road trim – metallic silver – and made it a very smart machine.
Phil rode it in several VMCC rallies and, while on one in the Lakes with his wife, Marie, on the pillion, all motion stopped suddenly. Thinking he had thrown a chain, he asked Marie to go back for it. However, on looking down, he discovered a hole in the crankcase! But, after a £25 welding job, it was back on the road.
Eventually the bike was sold to Andy Tiernan, together with a KX1140 Enfield which I had swapped with him for a 1955 Matchless G9 and the restoration of my 1932 GTP. Recently we saw KAB 547 back in trials trim and sold at auction for £13,800!
Alan Brown, Newcastle upon Tyne