Forum

[StephenR]

Norm - this will go off topic... But I think if you believe that because they are Indian the quality will be necessarily low, then I think you are making a mistake. The 'Indians" have a space industry much bigger than ours, own Jaguar Land Rover, the British steel industry.... I could go on. Eicher motors has a turnover of over $1 billion a year and the CEO Sid was educated here. They would not be in a joint venture with Volvo and a joint venture with Polaris if they weren't good. The GT is much better built than before Eicher owned Indian and before the new factory was built. You can't sell 280,000 crap bikes a year. It was actually quite funny to read the Classic Bike back-to-back review between the current Continental than the original 250. The guy who owned the 250 said it was a great little bike apart from the seizures, the and the gearbox going out of adjustment every hundred miles..... I owned and rode a lot of the bikes in the "classic era" and the idea that the Brits may good-quality well-designed machines that were reliable is largely fiction. There were some very good designs but it was very rare to find a machine had the kind of all-round excellence that the Japanese excelled in. Give Royal Enfield a chance because I think they will produce, in the next generation, some really excellent machines that can still be serviced by the owner and improved via Hitchcocks.

[Jones43]

I am a bit surprised by some of the responses to my original post regarding GT Quality that started this thread, a lot of people seem to be accepting that poor Quality is the norm, my dealer said with a shrug of the shoulder, "you should have seen them a couple of years ago"

I bought the Continental for a Sunday Morning bike to give my 1969 Bonneville a bit of a rest, I was attracted to it by the Retro Look, and the general good finish and the Electric Start, and I have not been disappointed, I have now done 400 miles, mostly due to the sunny weather etc. OK it does feel flat but I am content with that, it is just what I expected, and I will keep my licence !!!.

I have already made several changes, Stainless Pipe and Silencer, Bar End Mirror, Micro Indicators, the two Big Horns have gone an favour of one Small Horn.

It is a really nice bike to ride, next on the shopping list, Real Clip-ons and a Top Fairing, and almost certainly some performance mods when it has a couple of K on the Clock (I mean 2000 Miles of course)

All I will say is if it lets me down on a ride it will be in the classifieds the very next week.

[Norm]

Stephen Eicher will never ever another cent from me, once bitten twice shy

[StephenR]

Jones 43 - his yes - I don't accept the poor quality parts of the bike - http://www.royalenfield535gt.com/quality/ - I covered this in some detail on my web site about the bike. It's just that overall it's pretty good. Just not up to the best of the Japanese and Europeans. But actually the low quality parts aren't that serious. Having had Hinckley Triumphs and BMWs I can say that even the more established makes are not immune to quality issues. I won't list the problems but I've experienced them. I'm sure as I said that Eicher will improve. A

[apparently lucky eddie]

Stephen R - "all round excellence that the japanese excelled in" Really? The Japs did n't sort out any sort of road holding until the 80's. Remember those wonderful Jappanese tyres that ought to have had a health warning on them! The chrome work was carp until well into the 80's (who has n't had a honda that on which the rear mudguard did n't rot under the seat?). Disc brakes that were worse than useless because you thought they would work and then some bugger said the word rain. I had a kawasaki that threw a rod and I was told it had "exceded its design life" at 19k miles. Ditto 250 Suzuki twin @ 10K miles and Suzuki GS550/4 @15k. Rusted wheels and fractured frames, electrical problems as bad as any Italian bike. As someone who was there in the 60's and 70's I really don't think Jappers were really any BETTER, they were just DIFFERENT to the same old stuff being churned out year after year by the British companies, they had novelty value. And now here we are modifying and tinkering with modern Austro/Indian Enfields to make them look like, run like and sound like old British bikes. What peculiar creatures we are.

[Presto]

ALE – I was there too in the 60’s when the first Hondas and Yamahas and Suzukis came on the scene. In the showroom we had at the same time BSA 175 Bantam, James 200 Sports Captain, BSA Spitfire alongside Yamaha 250 YDS, and 100 YL1; Honda 125 CB92 and C92; and Suzuki 250 Super Six and Honda CB450. The newly arrived machines were simply light years ahead of anything the UK produced in terms of design, finish, attention to detail, overall quality and performance. I agree that later (in the 70’s and after) things changed for the worse, with many poor bikes coming from the major Japanese companies, but when they first arrived they were in a different league from anything we’d seen before.

[apparently lucky eddie]

Absolutely, they were different - 6 gears (to cope with the total absense of any real torque),overhead cams, multi-cylinder engines, 12 volt electrics. All novelties to riders bored of the same old same old vertical twins vibrating apart at 5,000rpm. The new jap ones vibrated apart at 7,000 instead! Working in a Suzuki dealership at the time the finish of the bikes and reliability of the engines was really no better than the Nortons we'd sold before. One of the big sellers then was exchange cranks because the average home mechanic could not replace the delicate big end bearings. Also of course they were cheap as chips, heavily subsidised to the point that in the early days they were almost loss leaders.

[Chevy]

There are some rose tinted glasses regarding the original GT's of the 60's. Dont forget that the last of these were offered with a spare set of 4 speed gears in a box for when the 5 speed wore out quickly (although their marketing would suggest it was to give the customer a choise of gearing).

What would be the reaction if the 535 GT was also offered with a spare set of 4 speed gears?

Chevy

[Scalyback]

EICHER?

oh, you mean...



Enfield

India's

Cancelled

Here,

Enfield's

Royal

[Leon Novello]

Do not change anything that involves changing fuel mixture or altering timing. It will usually result in a void warranty.