CARBERRY DOUBLE BARREL V2 ROAD TEST: Paul C’s plan B

Fifteen years in the making, the Carberry Double Barrel is ready to give an alternative to Royal Enfield’s own twin cylinder bikes

Last November’s global debut of Royal Enfield’s new 650cc parallel-twins at the Milan Show opened a fresh chapter in the brand’s 117-year long history, which began in Britain in 1901. But since 1955 the Royal Enfield empire has migrated to India. For the first time since its UK factory closed in 1970, Royal Enfield is now manufacturing twin-cylinder motorcycles as part of the Indian firm’s attempt to corner a serious slice of the middleweight 250-750cc global marketplace.

Previously, its entire production – it made 825,000 bikes in 2017, 96% of them destined for buyers in its home market – were ohv pushrod singles. But now, it’s intended that its all-new single-ohc twins will propel the Indian brand to becoming a true world player. “What we’re trying to accomplish, in our own bumbling and gentle way, is world domination [of that middleweight segment]!” says Royal Enfield’s dynamic CEO Siddhartha Lal. And as well as being unduly modest, he’s not entirely joking…..

But at the other end of the scale in terms of volume and longevity is Dream Engine Manufacturers (DEM), a recently-established small-scale manufacturing operation located in Bhilai, an industrial city on the plains of Chhattisgarh state in central India, which is offering its customers a different interpretation of how an Enfield-based multi-cylinder motorcycle should be. For its Carberry Double Barrel V2 is powered by a 998cc 55º V-twin engine first conceived in Australia 15 years ago, which essentially comprises two Royal Enfield 500cc Bullet cylinders and heads on a specially designed crankcase incorporating a stock Enfield five-speed transmission, wrapped in a dedicated twin-shock classic-styled frame package.

As such, it represents Plan B as an alternative way of building a twin-cylinder Royal Enfield, and it comes as no surprise that the astute Siddhartha Lal not only purchased an earlier version of the bike for his engineers at RE to assess, but has also kept close tabs on the Carberry operation, to the extent of agreeing to furnish DEM with the necessary stock Royal Enfield components to construct the Double Barrel engine and frame. Just in case, you see….

Billed by the local press as ‘India’s first Superbike’ on the grounds that it’s the largest capacity motorcycle yet to be entirely built in that country, the Carberry Double Barrel V2 is the brainchild of Aussie engineer Paul Carberry, who teamed up with Bhilai-based businessman Jaspreet Singh Bhatia two years ago to create DEM in order to manufacture the Double Barrel V-twin – so named in recognition of Royal Enfield’s antecedents as a shotgun manufacturer, whose rifles equipped the British Army in the First World War.

“We’ve named it the Double Barrel because it requires two Bullets, and fires two barrels!” smiles Carberry. Nice one, Paul! DEM is selling complete bikes for INR 735,000 (about £8,000 or US$11,000) tax free, or standalone motors for INR 496,000 (£5,500 or US$7,700) complete with carbs and electronic ignition. A fuel-injected Euro 4 compliant version of the engine is under development and close to being customer-ready, according to Carberry, with ABS also soon to be available, both at no extra cost.

“We want to offer a version of the motor with carbs for Custom bike builders,” says Paul, and as an illustration of that check out the unique award-winning Carberry-powered Chopper produced by expat Brits Paul Smith and Stuart Cantellow at Goa-based Rag & Bone Customs (see www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWNNT7rvitY) that’s yours for INR 1.5 million (£16,200 or US$22,750). More such creations will surely follow, given the Double Barrel motor’s meaty looks.

It’s hard not to admire 59-year old Paul Carberry for his persistence in completing the 15-year journey to series production readiness of his bike. His unstinting belief in the project has overcome many hurdles that might otherwise have caused a less determined individual to fall by the wayside during the roller-coaster ride that pursuing his dream of doubling up a pair of British ohv singles to produce a neo-classic pushrod V-twin has entailed.

“The basic premise was to create a classic British-style 1000cc V-Twin using as many stock Royal Enfield parts as possible,” says Paul. “The Bullet single’s a lovely little bike – but it is small, so it’s just a bit lean on power. That’s the only thing against it nowadays, when everyone’s going retro and neo-classics are selling so well. So adding an extra cylinder takes care of that, as well as making the kind of bike I personally like, and which I know other people do too. My aim is to offer a well-mannered torquey cruiser with the look, the feel and the sound you’d expect from a bike with a traditional British character, that’s fun to ride, but has enough modern technology to make it reliable, all at an affordable price.”

And that last objective meant building it in India, for his design parameters for the Double Barrel engine also focused on keeping production and maintenance costs to a minimum, via the worldwide availability of Enfield parts.

However, Paul Carberry first conceived the Double Barrel during a seven-year spell in Jakarta, Indonesia, mostly spent profitably hoovering up WLA Harley V-twins left over from the Second World War and restoring them to sell in the USA and Australia. Along the way he began importing Royal Enfields for sale in Indonesia, after visiting the firm’s Chennai HQ. That’s when he had his ‘what-if’ moment, and started down the path of making his own multi-cylinder Enfield-based motorcycle. But to create the Carberry-Enfield V2 motor, Paul headed back down under to call on the services of Melbourne-based development engineer Ian Drysdale, creator of the Drysdale V8 sportbikes, and a man with a formidable track record of thinking outside the box. It’s a big leap from manufacturing a street-legal four-camshaft 32-valve V8 sportbike for customer sale, to concocting a dedicated pushrod V-twin engine for a retro roadster. But when your name is Ian Drysdale, engineering variety is the spice of life.

“It was an enticing challenge to produce something low-tech on two wheels, for a change,” says Ian, a 21st century maverick engineer of eclectic vision, who asks not why, only how. Drysdale’s 2003 prototype air-cooled ohv 998cc 55º V-twin engine measuring 84 x 90mm covered thousands of kilometres of road testing in Paul Carberry’s hands, fitted in a twin-shock frame he’d designed and made himself. This used a braced section of the Enfield Bullet chassis at the rear, mated to a specially-fabricated front section with twin downtubes and a double frame backbone. The dry-sump engine’s ideal 60% balance factor was achieved by heavy-metal weights plugged into the crank flywheels, delivering a level of smoothness with the relatively tight cylinder angle which you’d normally only achieve via a power-sapping counterbalancer.