RING ENFIELD DOHC CONTINENTAL GT 250
It's hard for those of us not equally gifted mechanically to ever imagine how someone can take a derelict motorcycle race engine from a long-ago bygone era, often already dismantled into a succession of cardboard boxes devoid of any notes about timing or reassembly, and then carefully piece it together again just as the designer intended. And not just as a static display in a museum, but reinstalled in the original bike it formerly powered, to be ridden in public as a living recreation of all our glorious yesterdays. Such incredibly gifted men are few and far between, making it pretty unlikely that anyone else has worked on such a vast range of exotic engines of every era, and all types, as British engineering wizard John Ring.
Modest and unassuming, former sidecar racer Ring, 74, epitomises the talented backroom boys whose engineering skills brought British teams to the fore in Grand Prix racing on both two wheels and four back in the last century. After a career as a draftsman at the Royal Naval Dockyard in Portsmouth which he'd joined as a craft apprentice, John ended up as commercial manager at the Royal Navy Air Yard at Fleetlands in Gosport, which was responsible for maintenance of all RN fixed wing aircraft, and nowadays the helicopters that have largely replaced them. Taking early retirement to look after his wife Pam when she became ill left John staying close to his Portsmouth home – but with time to spend in his well-equipped workshop there.
Former trials legend and Grand Prix road racer Sammy Miller is to be praised for his determination that all the 500-plus motorcycles in his eponymous Museum on England's South Coast just 40 miles from Portsmouth should be ready to be fired up and ridden. But given that his declared focus for his collection is on rare, unusual, exotic and iconoclastic two-wheeled designs, this by definition meant he needed someone who could return the often broken or just downright worn out engines powering the more uncommon models he's acquired over the years to running order. Enter John Ring,
