Royal Enfield and the fart of motorcycle maintenance

Royal Enfield bikes are a craze among us Indians. It is a dream for many and there is a cult following for Royal Enfield (RE) bikes. And a true biker is never done until he has taken an Old Royal Enfield bike on a Leh-Ladakh road trip. People take notice of you when you are on the road on a RE bike. The RE classic is such a legend, that Royal Enfield / Eicher motors is now selling more of the classic than ever. RE replaced TVS as the fourth largest bike seller in India in the last month.

But none of this makes sense. Within the last week, 3 friends asserted to me about the shitty low quality bikes RE makes. 2 of those were Thunderbirds and a classic. This is excluding my Himalayan, whose battery has now failed for the third time in seven months.

I had always fantasized about owning a RE during my college days, but I could never get to that as I didn’t have the money and didn’t find it practical then. Back then, A Royal enfield bike was not easy to come by, since you had to wait for months to get a bike delivered. People usually bought used bikes and modified or maintained it. Maintaining an used RE was an art in itself taking effort , patience and finding the right mechanic to keep it running fine. So when people owned a RE we knew they would have put in a lot of effort and time on that bike. But a new RE bike will also require the same maintenance as an old one. It breaks down often or has recurring minor issues. If you knew how to maintain a bike by yourself, this happens to be an interesting hobby. It is an antique right out of the gate.

When you buy an RE, riding bikes ceases to be your hobby and maintaining bikes becomes your hobby.

It makes no sense. If you buy a new RE bike, you have to invest the same amount of money and time as you would on an used bike. Let me explain. First of all, your RE bike is supposed to have problems before the first service. The first service is like an initiation ceremony for your bike. If you run into any problems, you will get prompt advise from many RE fans and owners about how your new bike’s misbehaviour is normal and how it takes at least a couple of services before all the kinks are ironed out. This is somehow acceptable and is normal. How is this acceptable ? How does this get past QC on an assembly line? Mine wouldn’t even idle until 3 services( in a month ) and wouldn’t run after that.

Wait for a couple of services, then you will start loving the bike. Why can’t I love my bike from the get go ?

The bike looks really cool though. Everyone turns around to take a second look at the bike. Whenever I stop at a signal I do get a lot of looks and questions about my RE Himalayan. It is a new and bold design. Understandable. Classics and Thunderbirds from RE also get the same attention even though nothing has changed in their design or performance. Mostly this is because of the sounds their exhausts make. It is loud , it is bad and some riders intentionally get louder exhausts. It is bad because the engines are loud by being raw and not tuned. This is where an RE fanboy would jump in and say “That sound is how you know you are alive. The RE thump is your heart beat”. Bullshit!! The looks you get on a Classic RE / Bullet are just looks of disgust for all the noise produced for low speeds.

yaanai varum pinne mani osai varum munne ( You hear the bells first and then you get to see the slow elephant )

Trips on an RE is what life for a rider is all about. Cruising on the highway at a slow steady pace, covering miles and miles to the thump of your RE beat in unison with your heart. You must have heard the romantic stories about Royal Enfield road trips. Well, they are all true. But it comes with an acceptance of the harsh realities of an RE bike. The reason you have to cruise “slowly” is because any RE engine will start vibrating once it crosses 80 kmph. Yes, 350 cc and 500 cc bikes that cannot overtake any car or lorry can’t accelerate or maintain a high speed. You are forced to just cruise. The story about their flagship bike, the continental GT, is even worse. It has so much vibrations that you hand becomes numb and lose sensation after a while. That is right, A cafe racer that can’t handle highway speeds. The vibration are bad enough to rattle your balls all the way through a trip. The bikes are terribly slow too.

There is a reason why the RE Trip logo has a incomplete symbol for biological male. It is sans balls.

For a bike that been there for so long, There are way too many hardware problems that still seem to haunt most RE owners. I have listened to many scary stories from friends.

1. The clutch cable can snap anytime. This happened to a friends thrice now he travels with a spare clutch cable all the time. This is a serious problem since it can easily kill an inexperienced driver.
2. You will hit false neutrals and gear box won’t shift. I have lost count of the number of times I have found myself between a lorry and a hard place unable to overtake because my gearbox shifted to a gear in Narnia.
3. Electronics on a RE a joke. You will just keep replacing the digital instrument cluster every other or every year. Equally subpar is the plastic part on the bike.
4. Brakes on RE bikes are a joke as well. They can’t stop even if your life depended on it. Oh Wait! Your life does depend on it. One more reason why you need to drag your ass on a highway instead of just getting to the destination quickly. Also they rust real bad.
5. Unreliable mileage. The bike gives varying results for the same riding conditions. Strange.
6. And the worst part is , the service engineers are terrible and they can’t fix the bike and neither you nor the service engineer will know what is being fixed on the bike. If you spend a day or two at the service station ( which you end doing anyways since you own a Lemon ) you will feel sorry for all the people who have bought a RE.

My Himalayan spent 20 days of its first month in a service station. And its battery has died down thrice ( first time , second time , and this article is being written when my bike sits useless in my parking lot with a dead battery for the third time)

Their best engineers reached out to me after I tweeted about the second failure, and tried to fix this problem for a week. They have no fucking clue what they fixed and it is still not fixed. I have no bill for the money or time I spent for the first few services, Reason: my bike serial number is not present in some record keeping system of theirs ( Expected : it is a RE process ). I just gave up.

Royal Enfield and the Fart of motorcycle maintenance

If you want to experience passionate motorcycle maintenance , I still recommend buying an old enfield. They are still gold and they don’t make them like they used to. Alternatively, You can also buy a new Royal Enfield and keep repairing it, because we are not supposed to expect quality and we will keep buying substandard bikes anyways because of lack of choice.

Royal Enfield, Made like a Gun. Diwali Gun perhaps ?? because it is sound only ?

My sincere advise, get a bike with a Japanese engine or any one of the other Indian bikes. All of the Indian bike manufactures have many improvements They at least have some reliability and accountability. Last but not least, what make RE bikes popular is their legendary ageless engines. But,

Royal Enfield engines are British age bike engines marketed as engines with an Indian soul.

This was original published on Medium by me : https://medium.com/@phrishikesh/royal-enfield-and-the-fart-of-motorcycle-maintenance-d467fb346c12

My Sad Himalayan Story

I am a big hypocrite. I have advised my friends from getting Royal Enfield bikes for  years now. They usually have many problems requiring servicing, lack power, have vibrations at sub highway speeds and no power to overtake. I hated any one who said You had to experience a royal enfield ride to love bikes. When everyone said it is a looker I have pointed out it is only because it makes so much noise and not because it looks good. It just grows on you and you tend to live with its problems, that is what I have been told by folks I could get through to.

Didn't I say I was a hypocrite ? Yeah. I did. Royal Enfield then launched the Himalayan. Raving reviews. Everyone was talking about it. I took a test ride. I did like the feel of the bike and was super excited. The Engine sounded good and it had a nice feel to it. Totally new stuff from RE. I booked it immediately.   A big mistake.

I write this right now sitting in the waiting room of the service center knowing very well that my bikes problems have not been solved.  It has been two months since I got this bike And here is how it stands right now.

 1. I have ridden a total of 600 kms and my bike has already spent 10 days of the 2 months  at the service center
 2. My Engine wouldn't run at idle speed and will get cut off if I switch gears.
 3. Engine has terrible knocking and can't slow down at any speed or gear without knocking.
 4. My Battery has died already at 580 kms.
 5. It Heats up for no reason ( It heats up enough to affect the ambient environment temperature sensor to show 48 degrees )
 6. And nobody at the service center has any clue as to what is wrong with the bike.

After waiting for more than  3 months for getting the bike, even though I booked it on the very first day, I got the bike.  The sales people at the Legend Motors showroom didn't care about the bike. They just sold it had no clue as to what they were selling. I was advised to kick start the bike every morning before I started using it for the day.  I mockingly  asked them to show me a demo of kick start knowing  very well that bike has no kick start. As soon as I started the bike it switched off. I was assured that it takes a week for the engine to settle down.  Knowing RE idiocrasies, I drove away on the bike which switched off many times before I reached home. A very sad feeling to have a new bike fail on you so many times :( .

After riding for about 250 kms , I gave up . The engine was still problematic . It kept switching off at low speeds. It kept knocking if let go of the accelerator. I took the bike to the service center way ahead of the scheduled time. After the bike spent 5 days at the service center and replacing a bunch of wires. I was assured that the bike problems will sorted out now. I tested it and was not satisfied. The folks at the service center unlike the showroom folks were nice to me, but they had no clue what needed fixing. After arguing with them for while . They assured me they will have some one from the factory take a look at it the next week.  I also mentioned that the knocking problem existed ( there was news about a faulty part that need to be replaced. ). I had been assured of my bike being one of the lots that had fix from factory itself.   I took the bike and rode it with great regret .

How does a bike get off the factory line without being tested for something as basic as idling speed / idling run? How can the engine not run for a whole 5 secs when you turn it on? 

Problem existed still. Every RE owner I talked to told me such problem with the bikes will always exist. It just goes away with time. They described this as a character of the bike .  I could not digest it that such sub standard bikes were so popular. They were describing each bad problem as a character of the bike. So many people acknowledge this cold start problem and that engine will die on you at low speed as a common phenonmenon. But I came to terms with the engine problems like others.

Now I stared experience new heating problems. The engine heat was crazy and I couldn't even ride with jeans on. It would heat up so much that the temperature indicator on the dash would shoot from 36 degrees when I start the bike to 48 degrees when I have ridden it for half hour to an hour. It is supposed to show environment temperature so the engine heat was just affecting the sensor. This did not exist before the first service.  And Engine still had a knocking problem.

What use is a bike if you cant cruise at 50 -60 kms without knocking up  ? 

Then in 2 weeks times It died out on me again. I started the bike from office , rode 25 kms home. The battery low indicator was on when I halted to open my gates. I killed the engine hoping the indicator was wrong.  Well damn me, cause the battery had already died out on me and the bike wouldn't start .

A whole of 600 kms and the battery had already died out on me . How the hell is this bike supposed to scale mountains ? 

The bike stands in the service center right across me as I write this. It still can't idle. I am pretty sure I can't ride it smoothly until the engine heats up.  I am not sure if the knocking is solved. I hate my situation. So I write this blog cause I don’t want to agree with all those die hard fans out there that RE bikes are great. I may have got 1 bad lemon out of 1000 bikes and this is just an anomaly among other himalayan bikes.  But that is a very low standard for a such a highly valued company. If something cant be fixed and I have to live with that bike for the rest of its life, I refuse to accept the Himalayan is a great bike. I reject all good reviews of Himalayan out there.


Update 1 : I have been contacted by Royal enfield to resolve the issues with the bike. It has gone back to a service centre.

Update 2 : My bike has spent about a week and it still can't idle. I have a new problem of bike now shutting down as soon as I touch the throttle. The knocking is still bad if not worse . However, the heating issues have definitely been resolved although the service engineer would not say anything about what was fixed.  I have just accepted my fate and decided to just live with it. Can't give it for service just to get it back with different problem because they don't seem to know what they are doing ( Best Engineers promised by the Tamilnadu Sales head for my problem)