[...snip!] Changed fork oil today. Seems to have cured the brake dive. Easy too. Only took about 1/2 hour including cleanup.dont know why I didn't do it long ago.
Funnily enough, it was changing the fork oil on my own 2005 Bullet 500 when I first got her back in December that began really convincing me that she and I were gonna get along just fine. Whenever I acquire some old heap the first thing I do is change all its fluids. The fact that it was so thoughtfully designed to be
so damned easy, certainly compared to other bikes I've owned, for a schmuck like me jumping on a dozen years down the road since she rolled off the line in Chennai, to perform this all-too-often odious and troublesome maintenance just gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling. Too bad the later design Continentals' forks are not so accommodating.
Another portent that I'd be just fine with my Royal Enfield Bullet quality-wise, despite the brand's many nay-sayers and haters out there, was when the very same week I got her I also found the most superbly-designed little
"Diamond TTK" pressure cooker made in neighboring Nepal in a thrift store nearby for five bucks. I dunno...I guess it just gave me faith that metallurgy, design and fabrication on the subcontinent wasn't
all rubbish. With somewhere between 4,000 and 5,000 miles in her saddle so far, roughly doubling her mileage since getting her, including a fairly long trip from Virginia to northeastern Pennsylvania and back with nary a hiccup, I guess I'm ready to knock wood, give praise where it's due, and call her "reliable." Used properly, she's a fine little tourer, and as I often tell folks, "They're such a bargain that I'm surprised
everyone doesn't have one."