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Originally Posted by avisidhu
(Post 4467737)
For all the hoopla about Quality, no reviewer seems to have spent time or effort giving a detailed analysis of the same. Just one or two lines here and there, and a woeful reminder that similar coverage happened with the Himalayan. Why don't these fellows have their ears to the ground, and tailor their reviews towards what people actually want to know? |
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Originally Posted by timuseravan
(Post 4467741)
A lot of first reviews have mentioned that quality is quiet good - almost as good as any other Indian bike. Vibrations are also down a lot which would mean lesser problem with bolts or other parts falling off. But its impossible to talk about reliability with half or one day of riding. RE would have checked the bikes before handing over to Journalists so distorting any true picture. .... |
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Originally Posted by nasirkaka
(Post 4467666)
Superb pricing and very very tempting! :thumbs up I may just get back RE with interceptor 650, provided the quality is good. No hurry this time as i personally dont see any specific need for this bike, except having a torquey low revving retro styled twin in the garage for one of those lazy sunday breakfast ride types. poormans bonnie for sure!! :) |
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Originally Posted by srini1785
(Post 4467758)
My father once worked for RE when they had a factory in ranipet and he told me how Explorer was a success in its initial days only to be rejected in batches due to its gear problems after a few months in the market. Let keep of fingers crossed for the time being. |
| We've got to mention the build quality here, as at least at first inspection, the Interceptor seems to be a big step up from the company's current lineup of motorcycles. We’d go so far as to say that this is built as well as pretty much any other Indian-made motorcycle. |
| The cross-braced handlebars are tall and really wide, yet you have a very slight lean to reach them. The footpegs too are slightly rear-set - a far cry from the forward set pegs of the Classic or the Bullet - so the rider’s triangle is just spot on. However, the seat height, at 804mm, isn’t exactly short. But then the seat itself is quite narrow, so getting your feet down to the ground isn’t too much of an issue. Still, shorter riders won’t really be able to flat-foot the bike. And then the narrow seat isn’t too great either, even though its soft enough. Short stints in the saddle are comfortable enough, but after a full day of riding, our backsides weren’t too happy. And if we’re being really picky, we'd have to say the rear part of the seat is also somewhat of an issue. The sharp slope off at the back will have slightly larger or heavier pillions feeling that they’re sliding off the bike. |
| At the heart of this motorcycle is a fuel-injected 648cc parallel-twin motor, which for the sake of keeping things simple, is primarily air-cooled. But there’s an oil-cooler here as well, with oil circulating through the head to cool down the area around the spark plug and valves. So in that sense, it’s a true air-and-oil cooled unit. The other bit of modernness is a 4-valve head that allows this motor to breathe better, and unlike RE tradition, these valves are actuated by an overhead chain-driven cam. The numbers are the highest we’ve seen on any RE motorcycle - 47PS @ 7250rpm and 52Nm @ 5250rpm. However, they aren’t really what this engine is all about. The focus here has been on producing a flat torque curve from as early on in the rev band as possible, and this motor makes 80 percent of its torque from just 2500rpm. So anytime you open the throttle, you have plenty of grunt available to get moving. But even though this motor is fairly quick to rev thanks to its short stroke configuration, it’s pointless pulling it all the way to its redline of 7500rpm. This is an engine that’s best enjoyed from 2500rpm to 6000rpm. |
| It’s amazing how relaxed and refined this motor feels at slow to medium speeds. There are barely any vibrations when cruising along at 120kmph, with the tacho needle hovering a little below the 5000rpm mark. Once you build up the speeds, you will notice minor vibes, but these are of the low frequency kind and won’t leave your hands or feet tingling even after prolonged stints of really wringing the throttle hard open. RE says that the brief here was to make an engine that could ‘easily crack the ton’ - i.e. cross 100mph, or 160kmph - and it’s a claim that we were actually able to verify. |
| The gearbox, too, bears mentioning. It’s a 6-speed unit - a first for any modern Royal Enfield, and a super slick shifting one at that. Gear changes slot in with a soft, positive click, and in our full day of riding, we never got a single misshift or false neutral. There’s a slip-and-assist clutch here, which works really well during hard downshifts. That said, the clutch lever feel isn’t as light as we were expecting. The bottom line is that this twin is completely different in feel from any of the company’s single-cylinder motors in terms of refinement and performance. And if this is the sign of things to come, bring it on RE! |
| Now we rode these in dry conditions only, but when we set out in the morning, the tyres gripped nicely even though the temperatures were really low. And even when we encountered some gravelly roads, they didn’t put a step wrong. But RE has stuck to their tradition of 18-inch wheels rather than opting for a more modern 17-inch setup. In some places, these larger wheels caused the bike to weave about a little bit, but that was only when we were pushing the bike really hard, and this weaving never got to the point where it felt really unnerving. The brakes deserve special mention too. At the front, there’s a 320mm floating disc - the largest on any RE motorcycle till date - and the rear gets 240mm unit. The calipers are by ByBre, while the dual-channel ABS has been specially developed by Bosch. Overall brake feel is quite good, and there’s a decent amount of bite on offer as well. |
| For how good the handling feels, the suspension setup for bad roads doesn’t feel all that great. The Interceptor is running fairly beefy 41mm forks at the front and twin preload-adjustable gas-charged shocks at the back. Now most of our ride was over fairly good roads, and the bike behaved impeccably over those. But the back end did tend to feel stiff at times, and over a series of bumps, it managed to bounce me around on the seat. To be very honest, these Californian roads weren’t exactly the best place to judge how the ride will feel on our roads back in India, so we’ll reserve our judgement on that. |
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Originally Posted by nasirkaka
(Post 4467887)
Any idea on what is the ground clearance for these twins? |
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Originally Posted by payeng
(Post 4468306)
But somehow the designs lack some "oomph" for me. Purely from design point of view they somehow don't get me say "Wow" |
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Originally Posted by VishJ
(Post 4468330)
I hope we may see a lot of these twins in the Indian roads roaring with their beautiful exhaust note. |
| But somehow the designs lack some "oomph" for me. Purely from design point of view they somehow don't get me say "Wow". |
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