Help me understand something... How can a 125cc scooter go 45 all day long with bursts to 55-60 yet an Enfield with 375 more cc's has trouble? What gives here?
Okay, first of all, a 125cc scooter is a two-stroke engine, which means that it's more equivalent to a 250cc four-stroke. A two-stroke engine has no valves or issues with oiling. It's all lubed by the fuel system, so there's never any oil overheating problems, or oil starvation problems, or oil pressure problems. And since there's basically nothing outside the cylinder, it's all cooling fins. And a two stroke has a very efficient and low-friction type of design,which doesn't generate alot of excess heat from inefficiencies..
Secondly, an Enfield has no trouble at all with 45 all day long and bursts to 55-60mph.
In fact,it has no trouble with 55-60 all day long, with bursts to 75-80mph.
I do it all the time.
The issues with the Enfield arise when you take a stock Enfield and try to go on the highway for several hours at 65mph+. Especially if it's a hot day.
The stock Enfield engine has a poor level of efficiency, produces alot of unnecessary heat that it has trouble shedding, and it heat-soaks the castings.
Much of the oiling is done by simple "slinging" and "splashing", and it isn't an efficient oiler, and it doesn't flow much oil to begin with.
It's an almost 60 year old design, which was originally a 350, and it was punched-out to a 500, so the design was really intended to cool a 350, not a 500.
And in those days, 55mph was the normal highway speed limit all over the country anyway.
If you want to go faster on a Bullet, it's very possible, but many don't want to spend what it costs to modify it to do that.
So, they accept what's available from the stock design, and ride within those limits.
The Bullet in stock form is handy for all but the superhighway types of use.
It can ride fine all day on roads with 55mph limit. And it has enough power to pass at that speed, and can burst up to over 70mph with no problem, although it's not real fast at doing that.
It's not the actual speed that can present the problems. It's the constant riding at the higher speeds that causes the overheating to show up.
It's an antique that was designed to do what the speeds were, when the design was originated a long time ago.
You don't have to ride like a granny on a Bullet.
You can ride it with quite a bit of spirit, and it's a sporty ride on the twisty roads,and you can push it to 75mph or more on some straights when you want to.
Just don't go on the interstate with a stock Bullet and expect it to maintain a constant 65-70 for hours on there, because it won't do it without overheating. It needs to have the throttle varied down to lower speeds periodically, to let it cool off some.
On the twisty back roads, where you are accelerating and decelerating in turns, and having alot of varying throttle activity, you can do pretty much whatever you want with it.
Topic: Newbie questions (Read 4581 times)