[gashousegorilla]

 So, the logical conclusion to the high speed wobble is to eat more and add some weight to your body and bike!
9fingers

    YOU got it !!!  Hahaha !  Or... have no fun with food and drink, stay healthier and thinner  , but reduce your tire pressure for a wider contact patch simulating you had more girth or gear on that bike. Haha !   

 Really though, these bikes are very lite with pretty thin tires.  The faster you go in a straight line , the more that tire wants to become more round , and with tire pressures that are too high  it wants to get rounder with a have a smaller contact patch .   To the point were damn near anything will upset the stability of the bike.  I'm talking about speeds here above 70-75 MPH.     Every bike , rider and tire combination likes a little different tire pressure combination.     ME ?    I'm pushing 200 pounds geared up .  And I run my tires pressures  18-20 PSI front  , 26-28 rear.   On BOTH Avon Road rider's on the C-5 and K70 On the G-5 .   One has and 18 inch rear and a 19 inch front, the other 19's front and rear.  BOTH will behave the same way at high speeds if the pressure is too high .   Too low you may be thinking ?   Dangerous even ?!    NOPE ... 10 years I have been doing it.    The bikes are stable up into the 90's , and no problem  with the tires.   I would start with what the owner's manual say's ,  and adjust a bit up or down to suit your needs.  NOT ... because someone told you those pressures are too low , or based on another heavier bikes you may have had and etc.    Try what the manufacturer of the bike says and adjust from there.


  Also think about riding in a straight line  at high speed down an interstate sitting straight up.   The wind is blasting you in the chest , and lifting and pushing you and the bike backwords a bit and lightening the front end.   And your front tire contact patch becomes even smaller...    The frames , the front and rear frames that are on a pivot point at the neck , become less rigid.  Unbalanced between front and back ... too much weight at the rear and not enough at the front.   These frames are not particularly stiff to begin with either ..

[9fingers]

What gashousegorilla said..........................
9fingers

[Narada]

I sometimes wonder if the stressed member aspect of the frame isn't a factor in itself? When wiggling the bars at slow speed mine gets really wiggly! 

[gashousegorilla]

I sometimes wonder if the stressed member aspect of the frame isn't a factor in itself? When wiggling the bars at slow speed mine gets really wiggly! 

   Your Schwinn Stingray when you were a kid probably had a stiffer frame .  Hahaha !    Come on , look at these little tubes on this frame ?!  We are riding relics.

  Look at a modern crotch Rocket or a Ducati for that matter.  They go MUCH faster and at WAY higher top speeds .... and are dead stable doing it.  Even with a shorter wheel base and a like NO rake in the front end.  Their swings arms are super large , stiff and light .  The frames are extremely rigid and or trellised.  Massive up side down forks , with fat tires front and back...   even Liter bikes  then ours in some cases  that run higher tires pressures.    It's the frames....   

[ringoism]

Well, a few weeks into it, the B-5 is my daily rider, while the AVL (with a couple other bikes heretofore regularly enjoyed) has been parked. 

I've got the steel "carriers" bolted back on - always thought these were hideous / loathsome, but you can strap just about anything (cans of spent motor oil for recycling, iron rods for my woodstove project, boxes of fruit jam bottles, etc, etc) on them with such ease and it just adds so much to the utility factor - an entirely practical alternative that can do almost anything a car can while being a lot easier to maneuver and park and a lot cheaper to run. 

Incidentally the carriers, as every good Indian tourer knows, along with the "leg guard" (I think we used to call these "crash bars" back in the days when Americans would have them), have the added benefit of indeed protecting limbs and tanks and gear levers / engine cases / etc, when (not often "if") the bike at some tricky point on the Manali-Leh or Spiti roads happens to flop over on its side.  I'm figuring it might make it a good candidate for my wife to learn to ride.  She's been on my little KH125 Kawasaki before - very lightweight but a bit nervous ("obnoxious" another girl learner called it) - whereas the RE is just so lazy and easygoing, and though heavy, is not really threatening in any way.  And yeah, it can probably fall over without hurting her leg.  Will have to see about that.     

The AVL has a much lighter and nimbler feel to it, I guess due to the lack of the same carrier, the lighter mudguards (fenders), the lower gearing, the additional power, whatever.  It's certainly "fun".  But it would seem a little more demanding and potentially temperamental, too. 

But this one is rock-solid, and geared pretty tall and seeming to have a pretty heavy crank, it's content to move along fairly briskly at low revs and pull well enough in pretty much any random gear; The "muffler" (/"silencer") has about a 2-inch outlet and in truth exhibits few if any such effects, my wife more appropriately described it as a "noise blaster"... I feel like a bit of a hooligan these days and sorry to confess (having crossed the half-century mark), it is not an entirely bad feeling.  Even here where Bullets are a dime-a-dozen and so many are running aftermarket short-bottles/Goldies, etc, a lot of heads turn when this one comes along.  In truth it's got a bit of that old IB magic - nice exhaust tone and rather quiet engine...  I could consider it a safety-feature and with it use the horn less than Indian driving normally demands.  But I'm going to have to change it out - my seven-year-old and wife both complained of ear-aches from riding on the seat behind me. Oddly enough, my own ears aren't bothered at all being that the sound is from behind rather than below - and my tinnitus, irritated to some degree on all my other bikes, is surprisingly none the worse for it. 

Anyway.  Warm, bit humid but clear days and beautiful cool nights in this post-monsoon apple harvest season are just perfect for riding and I've been doing a good bit of it.  This evening we rode up from a village down-valley with the whole family aboard - four of us - the wife and 5&7-year-old boys... about a thousand foot altitude gain in I guess around seven miles, and the thing was just so utterly unstressed and un-bothered by it: handles / turns about the same, pulls about the same, just torques along very comfortably at maybe 2,000rpm's in 4th/5th, effortlessly overtaking slower uphill traffic with really no issues at all.  The AVL has heatwaves radiating off the engine after the same run solo, this one is just utterly unfazed by it all.  It is almost truck-like but a lot more entertaining / satisfying than driving most trucks, I suppose. 

I think around the time this bike was built RE was selling several thousand of these a month in India... which sounds like a lot, but it's nothing compared to the 50,000 or so CL (C-5 styled) 350's.  Yet this just seems pretty near the perfect all-rounder for Indian conditions:  Not quick but not sluggish, vibrates no more (and probably less in this case anyway) than the 350UCE's, manages good fuel economy, seating and suspension pretty comfy, the whole thing very simple and straightforward and serviceable...

It's got me debating whether to pick up a C-5 (500, pictured) of the same year at around $500.  Bit of a fixer-upper, but maybe not a bad one at that.  Always liked the chrome version, as well as a kind of blue-green they offered here. 

The Indian vehicle market is in a serious downturn at present, and besides that I'm seeing more and more RE Twins around, am hearing the UCE is slated to be discontinued (I suppose for some OHC design or the other) and wondering how long the Bullets can keep plodding along in the modern context. 

Never thought several years ago that I'd one day be actually liking them / wistfully contemplating their demise at all. 

I still don't like many of them.  350's are just universally underpowered (the older the worse), 500 IB's quick to burn up (bad oiling) and comparatively thirsty, etc, the AVL's unforgivably clattery, unless they're 500's and that fault can at least be overshadowed by the improved performance...

But I think I've got a great one here, and eager to get out on a longer tour someplace. 

There's a long-awaited new road that's just opened up between Lahaul and Zanskar (Ladakh) valleys, the first few vehicles have just successfully been over it this past week (still a bit hairy with much of it unpaved and some pretty substantial water-crossings), and I'd hoped to do it this Autumn myself.  Would be a little torn trying to decide whether to take the AVL or this or my little Honda dual-sport. 

Now it's looking like my would-be travel companion may not get off work, and I'll have to be getting busy in my own shop to fill some orders for the woodstoves, and it'll start getting colder than we may feel like facing on an unknown, hardly ever traveled road that includes a 16,500ft pass, in early October...

Longtime mechanic friend down-valley assures me I can make about as much in a season renting it for tours as I paid for the bike, so will look forward to that for next year, meanwhile it's looking like a pretty reasonable daily rider, maybe the most balanced all-rounder I've ever owned. 

-Eric

[Enfield Pro]

Well, a few weeks into it, the B-5 is my daily rider, while the AVL (with a couple other bikes heretofore regularly enjoyed) has been parked. 

I've got the steel "carriers" bolted back on - always thought these were hideous / loathsome, but you can strap just about anything.

You aren't kidding Eric, that is one impressive luggage system. It looks like you could carry a Prius!