The Black Line Mystery

The Royal Enfield Hunter Tyre Mystery

 I’d noticed a strange dark line around the rear tyre of the Hunter, almost since I first had it, but didn’t really think anything of it. I initially thought that it was a consequence of the flat tyre incident, where the bike was ridden on a rapidly deflating tyre until a safe place to stop was found.

 I then assumed that (with the tyre fixed and fully inflated) it would gradually wear away. It didn’t, but it did start to move further around the tyre.

 I then assumed that this was due to me getting to grips with the bike and leaning more around the corners and that the black line was just a quirk of the Ceat tyres. That was until the day when I reversed the bike out of the garage and heard something rubbing. Push it forward, nothing. Pull it backwards and I could hear a noise.

Up onto the centre stand then for some investigative work. Took me a little while before I spotted the culprit - a cable (zip) tie (used to hold the chain slider in place) that hadn’t been trimmed. So after managing to wiggle my side cutters into a fairly tight space, the end was trimmed and hopefully the black line will gradually disappear.

The culprit was the unclipped tail of the cable tie used to secure the chain guide.