[medra42]

Plus, running it at high rpm for long periods like you can do with impunity  on a jap bike is giving the manufacturer more credit for engineering ability than they deserve.

I was under the impression that running any engine close to the red line for long periods of time, regardless of country of origin, was a recipe for an early engine grave.

[Arizoni]

I think the difference between the Japanese companies and Royal Enfield is best determined by looking at their histories.

Royal Enfield is basically a copy of the 1955 Bullet with quite a few improvements but few major changes.
It is designed to be ridden like the people in the United Kingdom rode in the 1950's and people in India ride today.  City commuting and ventures to other cities at brisk, but not really high speeds and some long distance riding but again, not at really high speeds.

All of the Japanese companies have been involved in International motorcycle racing for years and the things they learned by doing this have found their way into their designs.
Weak design features and marginal materials have been eliminated long ago.
High horsepower and reliability, two things that often don't go together have been molded into their machines resulting in exceptional performance and life.
That allows the Jap motorcycles to be ridden hard for very long distances without failing.

Good as they are, IMO, the Japanese motorcycle long ago lost their character.
They replaced character with complexity.
Their complexity has turned them into appliances, to be used and discarded.

[ace.cafe]

No air cooled Japanese bike can take continuous top speed running either, no matter what kind of fish stories you hear from owners.
Water cooled might be a different story. Might be.

Japanese bikes aren't magic. They break just like anything else does.

[gizzo]

I was under the impression that running any engine close to the red line for long periods of time, regardless of country of origin, was a recipe for an early engine grave.

You know what I mean.

[gizzo]

No air cooled Japanese bike can take continuous top speed running either, no matter what kind of fish stories you hear from owners.
Water cooled might be a different story. Might be.

Japanese bikes aren't magic. They break just like anything else does.

Of course. But you can't deny that they're generally built to a far higher standard and with more expectation for longevity than an Enfield.  I love my gt to bits, just don't think it's the right bike for long drawn out high speed flogging. (and I think the Indians are punching above their weight when claiming to build a world class product) I'd buy an mt09 or bandit for that.
Slightly on topic: my Suzuki savage (650 single) is in a similar boat to the Enfield: not the right bike for high speed travelling but keep it sensible and it will run forever and look good doing it.
I do think, however, that extended riding at 70,75mph on either bike is not asking too much of them. They're both up to it.

[medra42]

I'm not sure that Japanese bikes are built with higher expectations than Indian bikes, mostly because one of the people who introduced me to the RE is a guy from India who swears that RE is the bike you buy when you're a 'Big Man,' and that they last forever. Of course.. that's an anecdote and doesn't mean much of anything.. but it colors my perception.

[gizzo]

Haha that's funny  . I work with a couple of Indian guys. They are in awe of my GT and they also said it's a motorcycle for a "big man" and not to be trifled with because they are ridden by tough guys. which  i am not. Its like they consider it to be their Harley. They don't quite understand that it's a niche (i almost said "novelty")  bike here.
I'm into it because of what it is , not where it's built.

[Farmer_John]

Personally, I like it because it's a total anomaly.


Total modernized old school tech, right down to the not so polished cases.

It's a machine, meant to be treated as such and as such, is only in your hands to be used as such.

Such is as such was...

[KD5ITM]

(I'm curious to see what dumps out of the crankcase)

When I did my first service I was very surprised to see what little jump out of the crankcase besides oil. Just a few small metal shavings and the oil looked like oil and not like a metal flake paint job from the late sixties

[medra42]

Haha that's funny  . I work with a couple of Indian guys. They are in awe of my GT and they also said it's a motorcycle for a "big man" and not to be trifled with because they are ridden by tough guys. which  i am not. Its like they consider it to be their Harley.

Yeah, I had a really hard time explaining to him that, in America, 535cc is a small bike. He kept insisting that he'd never be able to ride it because he's not big or strong enough.. it's around this time I started to wonder if he was just messing with me.

[ace.cafe]

Here's the thing.
Of course, I am a performance enthusiast who likes to go fast. Nothing surprising there.
I just caution against continuous full-throttle activity. Most races have quite a bit of throttle and speed variation. That is much different than a kid like we all have seen or heard about, that gets on his underpowered bike and goes on on the highway with the throttle pegged for a couple of hours trying to get somewhere.
Even if it doesn't blow up, it is cutting down the life of the engine pretty hard.

if you beef up the hp to a level that can do a higher speed like The Ton, then it is not working so hard at 80mph. There is sufficient power to handle it easier. That's one of the reasons that people buy performance upgrades for these bikes.

I hope that clarifies my position.
 

[Uncle Billy]

GTs are what they are and nothing more - a 50-year-old retro design originally made for a close-to-third world home market, that with a few up-to-date mods is depending on its retro looks and precise handling to compensate for the weak, grumpy nature of its retro motor to sell it in a world market populated with designs and performance at the front (or even ahead) of the evolution of industrial design evolved over the last 50 years.

Since the GT's motor is so thoroughly from the last century as it was on India's roads, it's inadequate and ill suited for totally fitting in among today's evolved designs on the super highways of the 21st century in other parts of the world. 

The GT is a good second bike, in the same manner as a '50s vintage MG would be an entertaining 2nd car - fun to drive and look at but ill suited to regular use on limited access super highways or any other circumstances where fitting in the flow of steady 70 to 80 mph traffic is what's required.

YMMV

[SteveThackery]

Since the GT's motor is so thoroughly from the last century as it was on India's roads, it's inadequate and ill suited for totally fitting in among today's evolved designs on the super highways of the 21st century in other parts of the world.

I don't think you know much about the history of the Bullet engine.  The 1950s design was abandoned in the early 2000s and replaced by a substantially re-engineered engine developed by AVL.  It also had a totally different gearbox designed by Reading University in the UK.  The engine and gearbox were deliberately designed to look like the originals, but not a single component is interchangeable with the original 1950s "iron barrel" engine. 

This was re-engineered once again in the late 2000s to give us the modern-day UCE engine.  The crankshaft is the same as the AVL (and I think the gearbox, too?), but everything else is completely different and MUCH better.  In fact, it is a more recent design than many engines found to this day in Japanese bikes.

Thanks to a massively improved lubrication system, steel conrod and beefed up bottom end, it's a pretty strong engine.  There are hardly any reports of UCE engines blowing up or wearing out, despite what you assert, and no recognised mechanical weaknesses which result in regular failures.

Having said that, I am VERY disappointed by the quality of both the design and the manufacture.  That noisy valve gear should NEVER have made it into production (bearing in mind every part of the valve gear is brand new and it uses hydraulic lifters).  I've just ordered and received a pair of pushrods for my own UCE, and they are terrible!!  The "spherical" blob at the top isn't spherical and wobbles when you spin the pushrod in your hands.  Ditto the spherical hollow at the bottom - it isn't round, and it's very obvious to the eye.  The aluminium shaft is covered in deep scratches which have been partially hidden by what looks like a quick rub over with 80-grit wet-and-dry.

You could argue that none of this matters and the pushrods will work just fine like that.  To me, it just shows a really disappointing approach to manufacturing quality which I think should have been sorted out when the new UCE engine was being developed.  Even the rubbish we Brits were turning out in the 50s and 60s were better made than this.

Uncle Billy - do you have any evidence to back up your assertions?  A list of blown-up UCE engines, for example?

[Bulletman]

mostly because one of the people who introduced me to the RE is a guy from India who swears that RE is the bike you buy when you're a 'Big Man,' and that they last forever. Of course.. that's an anecdote and doesn't mean much of anything.. but it colors my perception.

Actually that's much more than an anecdote, it's still regarded as a "Royal" motorcycle, even more so today.

[Uncle Billy]

Steve, I don't think you understood my post very well. It's not about Enfield's history.

Long stroke large displacement singles are an under-square retro design, which you won't find in modern engines from anyplace, let alone Japan. 

Long stroke motors have higher piston speeds than short stroke motors do because "long stroke" means the piston has to travel farther than a short stroke motor's piston does, each revolution. 

That means the cylinder bore and the piston and its rings experience a higher rate of wear than a short stroke motor's internals do at the same RPM.  Honda's 599cc motor has a stroke of 42.5 mm, the RE GT has a stroke of 90 mm.  That means that at 6000 rpm (or any rpm) the Honda motor is experiencing less than half the wear per unit time that the GT does.  They don't blow up, they are wearing out faster - more than twice as fast in my example - even if they have exactly the same most modern metallurgy in their parts.

Because of the high velocity of the piston mid stroke, long stroke motors also experience high rates of acceleration of the pistons and connecting rods at the ends of the stroke as they are pulled to a stop, then rapidly pushed in the opposite direction which puts more stress on them and demands more of the top and bottom end bearings than in short stroke motors.

All of this, which was true of motors in the last century, means that riding at super highway speeds on an Enfield, the motor of which has the same bore-stroke relationship as last century's motors, will wear it out faster than such speeds on a bike with a motor of modern internal dimensions. 

Maybe it would be less discomforting if I didn't understand these simple facts, and I could blithely run my GT wide open for an hour or two without qualms but it's too late for that.  Holding my GT wide open in order to stay with traffic on an interstate makes me very uncomfortable if it goes on longer than 10 or so miles because I have other bikes that are comfortably purring mid-level rpms at 80 plus, so why should I stress and strain and torture my GT like that?

To me, my GT is a toy to play with on winding country roads and to travel the byways with to get anywhere distant.  It's not for superhighways.