Unofficial Royal Enfield Community Forum
Royal Enfield Motorcycles => Bullet with the UCE engine => Topic started by: palace15 on December 18, 2013, 03:36:16 pm
-
Back in the late 70's I purchased a new Triumph Bonneville 750, within 6 months I was first name terms with the Meriden factory claims and warranty guy. It was well known long before this that Triumph only ever responded to problems in production when customers who the factory saw has 'test riders' complained.
Fast forward to 2009, Royal En field bring out the 'classic EFI' range and low and behold the quality is no better than the dark days of Triumph, I believe the factory had some sort of recall on the early bikes due to some clutch/gearbox issue. Why has there been no recall to the reliability of sprag clutches or even worse, the potential fire risk from the joke that RE call wiring? I have been looking at a UK recall website and car, motorcycle and many other businesses list recalls, even the sex toy business of 'Ann Summers' had a recall on a faulty vibrator charger! :-*
For a couple of years now I have tried to convince a friend of mine to buy an En field, and when I broke down(electrical fault, on another thread) he came out to me and his first words were "And that's why I would rather buy a new Triumph" How could I argue? Even the Price is a bit expensive for a new En field and yet we pay, and also put up with a product that should have had at least 2 recalls to my knowledge, so without rose tinted specs, what do you guys think?
-
As the factory hears about problems they do change the stuff as it goes along, but most of the stuff that goes wrong with Enfields aren't necessarily universal, nor are they "safety" items that usually promote recalls. The gearbox recall was due to a manufacturing problem on one gear that was universal, so they recalled a batch of them. The wiring loom has been updated lately as has the sprag, but they aren't going to replace many thousands of them that may never fail. You hear about the failures on the forum because that's where people come to complain, but it doesn't mean that the problem is widespread throughout all the owners, or even the majority of the owners. They do replace the ones under warranty that fail. So why call everybody in for getting a new part when the old one didn't fail, overloading the dealers with recall work, when they can easily take care of the few that have failures?
Bare
-
yeah, build quality is sub-par and highly variable.
However, if you get a good dealer ( like go-moto in Minneapolis ), it will make a world of difference !
-
In defense of the Enfield. Having owned & maintained a bunch of British bikes, I found my G5 Deluxe to be of comparable quality, if any thing I've found the frame to be made lighter, but suitably strong. The Engine & all the Features included are beyond anything of the period, without detracting from the enjoyable classic traits. So those of us who are fond of vintage long stroke large singles, are fortunate to have something so fine available today. I like it for what it is. Mine is a solid honest excellent Motorcycle. I bought mine used, & made several performance improvements. There was no warrantee, I am still impressed by it & pleased to own it.
-
yeah, build quality is sub-par and highly variable.
However, if you get a good dealer ( like go-moto in Minneapolis ), it will make a world of difference !
I'll second that dealer recommendation!! ;D
-
I like mine for exactly what it is, except that I expect it to be dependable. I don't agree with comment about lack of speed, or HP or whatever. That wasn't what I was looking for.