[paulholland]

New to the forum, great to read through the different posts here, what a source!

I live in the Netherlands and own a 2004 bullet 500 which was purchased new in India. I drove it for a few years with much pleasure, but always struggled with reliable running (fould plugs, leaking carb, bad ground contacts). Due to 'life priorities' the bike has unfortunatly been in storage for the last decade.

Now looking at reviving and doing some reliability upgrades to be able to use the bike as a dependable weekend run about. Don't mind doing regular maintenance and the odd tinkering, but not looking for a 'hope it will start' kind of experience 

So I'm looking to pick your collective brains to get it running more reliably. Possible ideas: replace the carb?, replace the flimsy bar end electric controls?, rewire the bike to thicker gauge wires and reliable connectors?, replace points for electronic ignition? 

Would love to hear your feedback/experiences/suggestions etc! Should be interesting

[stinkwheel]

The carb itself is fine. The manifolds let them down because they have a tendancy to split so fitting a mikuni branded rubber or plate manifold is a good idea. You can re-brass the carbs with mikuni jets too.

The fuel tap is a weak point, they can have rediculously low flow rates.

The piston. Indian pistons in 500s are known to fail. More likely if it's ridden fairly hard.

I couldn't say I've ever had a major issue with the points ignition on a bullet.

Regulator rectifier packs eventually fail.

Swapping out the switchgear is a minefield because of the AC/DC lighting so I've give it as good spray of silicone grease and leave alone.

As you've said, making sure the frame earths are good and free of corrosion.

[paulholland]

Thanks for the reply!

Good tip on the switch gear - I'll stay away from those

Not planning to ride it hard, so pistons I suppose should be ok

I see that hitchcocks offer all sorts of carb kits and manifolds, I'll buy some upgrades

I'll replace the fuel tap and rectifier for quality unit's

I'll do some more reading on the electronic ignition

More tips always welcome!

[AzCal Retred]

As #1 above, all good stuff.

I'd swap out the intake rubber for a piece of 1 1/4" diameter x 1 3/8" long fiber reinforced radiator hose. It is stiffer for better carb support and has a VERY low rot-off rate. The OEM carbs have given reliable service, I've no real reason to swap them out. The Hitchcock's jetting chart is a nice guide, and internal tuning parts are plentiful.

I went to the Hitchcock's "Methanol alcohol" fuel tap feeding into a 10 micron filter. Always plenty of flow & no more dust & crud in the float bowl. Clean is good.

I like points, no voodoo troubleshooting and they work fine. That said, get the point advance mechanism extraction tool to make your life easier. Get a second set of advance springs and make sure your springs are properly tensioned and not sacked out.

After having a low load, gradual uphill soft seizure on the stock Velveeta piston, casi iron rings and iron barrel, I went to an alloy barrel and forged piston. Better sealing (steel rings! ) eliminated oil tank foaming (Nivea Syndrome) and a tougher piston and better heat transfer makes uphills a worry-free experience. Kinda modern even. The alloy barrel IS noisier though.

The OEM reg/recs on all my machines parked at a battery-killing 16V. The Boyer Power Box tames that to a steady & agreeable 14V.  It also allows for kickstarting with a dead battery. Plan "B" for a kickstart machine is to keep the OEM reg/rec and use a 18V NiMH tool battery. The reg/rec can't kill them and they are small and idiot proof.

As a newer AC lighting machine, there's not much point to not just letting the headlight run continuously. A warm lamp filament is more flexible and you want maximum traffic visibility anyway. Once you aren't worried about on/off issues, a simple hi/lo switch takes care of business if you want to go back to Old Skool switches. Besides, with the 2004 you have the current (and available!) Minda switches. Mine have proven reasonably trouble free.

As Stinkwheel says, the frame earth/ground connection is prone to corrosion. Some attention and "love" to this connection is in order. Clean bare metal to metal, lightly greased, no paint or corrosion products. Maybe run your own "bonding" jumper to the casquette.

Rewiring is an interesting but time consuming project. From an electrician and Japanese bike owner perspective the OEM wiring is pretty awful. As a 2004 machine I assume you have electric start? There's a lot to clean up there that was grafted on by lawyers. As there aren't any actual "big loads", the small wire is actually OK. It's just the in-the-loom soldered (hopefully...) connections that need checking, as well as the myriad plug-in connections that often need cleaning & a bit of grease. Most of my wiring problems show up at the bit of loom that turns with the casquette.

Control cables have been an issue. I finally gave up on OEM cables and just use the Hitchcock's heavy duty items.

Clutch plates seem to like ATF best. My 500 came with a primary full of brown mystery motor oil which slipped disconcertingly until thoroughly warm. I finally went to the Barnettes friction plates and that seemed to end all the slippage. My 350 is easier to satisfy, ATF & OEM clutch bits have worked OK.

On the rear wheel, check the sprocket carrier "3rd bearing". They are in a high grit area and are an "open" bearing. Many here feel they are good for about 10,000 miles or so. Maybe a good place for a sealed bearing.

Good hunting - ACR -

[paulholland]

radiator hose ✅

Methanol alcohol" fuel tap ✅

Points - I’ve changed out to electronic ignition on my last couple of bikes, has always worked trouble free, so exploring the best option there

No uphill performance needed in Holland 😂✅

Reg/rec- I’ll check out Boyer, they also make an electronic ignition, they might have a combo set

Minda switches - time to whip out the contact spray and apply liberally

Ground - any examples of an extra ground made by people here?

Rewiring - I too come from Japanese bikes… nice thick wires with proper water- & vibration proof connectors. Just have a hard time trusting the Enfield flimsy wires… open for tips here on replacement harnesses

Control cableS - hitchcock replacements✅

Clutch/oil/atf - I’ll drain the block and see what’s hiding in there

Bearings - will replace these along the way as they wear out with proper skf stuff

[stinkwheel]

When I do earths, I like to give them a couple of options so I'll go to a frame earth AND have an insulated return route. This tends to land up with a kind of daisy-chain effect of ring terminals attached to an earth point and wired across to the next "part" of the motorbike. By part I mean bits that aren't made of the same piece of metal. So I like a wire joining the front end to the frame, the engine to the frame and the rear subframe to the frame.

So here's my frame earth cleaned up after the powdercoaters:



One of the wires goes to the battery negative, one of them goes to my wiring box (this is a custom loom) and the other goes up to a second ring terminal further up the frame near the ignition coil.


Here's the earth point near the ignition coil which kind of illustrates the "daisy chain" thing I was referring to, so one of those goes back to the main frame earth, one is for the coil (which is also bolted to the frame) and the other goes into the casquette where it's attached with a ring terminal.


Then here's what's in the casquette, next step of the daisy chain. The headlamp and ingition accessories attach to these terminals. So as you can see, when the headlamp wants an earth. It can go back to the battery directly through the casquette to the frame OR it can loop back along the daisy chain to the frame, or back along the wires all the way to the battery connection.


Perhaps this is overkill and this was done on a scratch-built loom, not a modification of an original.

[Raymond]

Reading this thread with interest. I am sure Stinkwheel and AzCal have covered all the main points.

Eventually found that irritating running problems on my Bullet were due to fuel starvation - replaced the fuel tap  with an item bought from Feked which gives almost four times the fuel flow of the one there before and it runs a lot better now.

Most unreliability with older bikes stems from electrics so I decided to rewire the bike. Which took a long time and was achieved with the kind help of the people on this forum. The bit which had me stumped was the hybrid (no, not that type of hybrid) DC and AC system. Eventually, I have opted to make the bike DC only which is more in line with all the other bikes I've tinkered with. It has a Boyer Power Box which takes care of rectification and regulation and a Boyer ignition. Oh, and LED lights to reduce the demand for current.

Instead of buying a harness, bought a selection of tracer wire and bullet connectors and set to work. Now the bike has a simplified system - as well as going DC only, did away with unneeded 'safety' features - which I just about understand, which should be more reliable than the original and which I would be more confident of fixing if & when problems arise. As usual when I rewire a bike, drew a wiring diagram - just ask if you are interested.

It runs reliably but my homemade harness is not the tidiest, so at some time I will probably do it all again. This time, I'll know the architecture of the wiring and will concentrate on making it all a bit neater. But no rush.

[stinkwheel]

Fun fact. You can buy 13 core towing trailer cable which has two thick and 11 thinner wires in it of different colours. It's comparatively easy to strip the outer insulation off it yielding a cheap source of different colour cables or you can run a whole bit as a loom section.

[AzCal Retred]

Really nice grounding/bonding scheme shown by Stinkwheel! Good grounds like that keep the currents from using the steering stem bearings as a return path and pitting them. Good grounds remove a lot of "mystery intermittent operation" issues. Well done Sir!

[paulholland]

@stinkwheel, great photos of the grounds. Love the over-engineering, definitely better safe than sorry!

@Raymond, could you share your wiring diagram, would be a great starting point.

@stinkwheel - I actually once used an old computer screen power cable for a new rear light loom, worked faultlessly for a decade.

[AzCal Retred]

Here's a copy of a simplified WD for my ES350. It's a jpg so it's easily modified with Microsoft Paint to suit yourself. The plan is to use a 6-position fuse box to isolate any peripheral circuit faults, "primitive" old skool switches for control. It's laid out "elementary" style to aid in troubleshooting. I don't care about interlock switches or neutral lights or other fripperies, just more to fail. LED's are used to minimize current draw. My 350 starts reliably on a small battery, but usually I kickstart it the first time.

[stinkwheel]

Here's my 350 trials bike wiring. It's been done with a C90 handlebar switch and a homemade relay pack to trigger the AC lighting which I think you'll appreciate is one of the reasons i suggested not messing with the normal switchgear. It's running a ZX6R reg/rec. Looks complicated but for me wiring it the parts are arranged in groupos where they are and the colours are the colours I used with dotted lines showing where there's multicore cable.


The 612 was much simpler. It had a single phase charging/electronic ignition system. I missed off the alternator to CDI wires because they were on a terminal block anyway. I sacked it off in the end and went back to points because the timing on a strobe was all over the place. One modification with this is it needed a second fuse on the reg/rec takeoff. Because the ignition self-excited and was effectively on its own circuit, the main fuse blowing doesn't kill the engine OR stop it generating power into the loom, it just disconnects the battery.

[AzCal Retred]

Nice schematics!   

The stock main ignition switch on all my bikes grounds the points when in the "OFF" position and disconnects the battery. With the points grounded the sparks stop, so even though the reg/rev carries on charging the engine will stop.

Paulholland, whatever you do, document it. Electronic format makes it easy to modify & share.

[Raymond]

Paulholland, here it is.

Forgot to mention, as part of moving away from the AC & DC set up decided to replace the Indian stator with a more powerful Lucas RM21 item. This has two output wires instead of the four on the Indian one but you could still use the four output and route all through the rec/reg. IMO £90 well spent. Widely available, here's one link:

https://www.britishbikebits.com/alternator-stator-lucas-rm21-12v-triumph-bsa-norton-royal-enfield


Probably obvious - bulbs top left are the pilot & instrument lights, bulbs on the right are the turn signals. Boyer power box could be a combined rec/reg or similar. The I is ignition switch, A is ammeter and H is horn.





With this simplified system, the main bundle of wires passing along the frame has reduced from more than thirty to five. Schematic shows points but now there's a Boyer ignition - I ought to do a new diagram but the Boyer comes with instructions where to plug it in so it's not much different.

Any questions, please ask.

[tooseevee]

New to the forum, great to read through the different posts here, what a source!

I live in the Netherlands and own a 2004 bullet 500 which was purchased new in India. I drove it for a few years with much pleasure, but always struggled with reliable running (fould plugs, leaking carb, bad ground contacts). Due to 'life priorities' the bike has unfortunatly been in storage for the last decade.

Now looking at reviving and doing some reliability upgrades to be able to use the bike as a dependable weekend run about. Don't mind doing regular maintenance and the odd tinkering, but not looking for a 'hope it will start' kind of experience 

So I'm looking to pick your collective brains to get it running more reliably. Possible ideas: replace the carb?, replace the flimsy bar end electric controls?, rewire the bike to thicker gauge wires and reliable connectors?, replace points for electronic ignition? 

Would love to hear your feedback/experiences/suggestions etc! Should be interesting

      As others have already said, the wiring on your 2004 is probably a mess as it was on my 2008. I unwrapped & went through every wire & connection on the whole bike when it was brand new. There were many unsoldered, twisted connections that were just wrapped up in the sticky, black tape that took a lot of patience to get off. Also the little black wire ground bullet connectors weren't the best. There were also a lot of spidery thin wires under the seat that needed careful attention.

     I also added relays where I thought necessary especially for the starter switch to minimize arcing & burning those little, tiny points.

      Good luck with your bike. And always use a battery tender