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Enthusiast's journey to a modified Royal Enfield Himalayan

17th June 2021, 13:10 by Chirag Moro

I was still pursuing bachelors when I got my first motorcycle, a Honda Unicorn Dazzler. This marked the beginning of the many motorcycles and mods through the years.

BHPian MadMotoMods recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

This happens to be my first formal post on the forum which I plan to make a bit detailed.

Quick Introduction, I am a fellow BHPian from Gujarat and have a strong inclination for Motorcycles and 4x4 (own a 1996 MM550). This post though is going to be about my journey with Motorcycles and my builds on them.

The First Motorcycle: 2010

I was still pursuing bachelors when I got my first motorcycle, a Honda Unicorn Dazzler. This marked the beginning of the many motorcycles and mods through the years.

As a student, I had no income. So I started working on Data Entry jobs along with my studies. This was so that I could fund my innate desire to mod my motorcycle. Over the course of the next 3 years, as I saved and spent the money, I gradually modified my Dazzler to probably one of the fastest ones in the country. This included 7 Engine Rebuilds (4 big bore failures and 2 upgrades to finally reach a steady 185cc build). This earned me the nickname of running in man in my local biking group as I was always doing a run-in / break-in of my own motorcycle as well as sometimes for my friends.

Back to motorcycle, the Dazzler had an extensive list of mods, many of which were imported from Indonesia since it was sold there as Honda Mega Pro. People my age were chasing Android phones and Gadgets, I was chasing mods.

List of Mods:

180cc Big Bore
Cylinder Headwork
High-lift Camshaft
Protec Ignition Coil (Indonesia)
BRT Racing CDI (Bintang Racing Team - Indonesia)
R9 Mugello Exhaust (Indonesia)
K&N R1100
28mm Round Slide Carb
Bugbon Quick Throttle
9power Electric Current Amplifier (Indonesia)
Low Resistance Spark plug Cable (Split-fire Twin Core)
NGK Ix
Custom Rear Sprocket (3 teeth lower)

The outcome of the above was as follows:

0-60: around 3.5 seconds (Was quicker than the 200s available back then)
0-100: 9 seconds (Stock bike did it in around 18 sec)
0-128: 20 seconds (Stock touched 121 in over 1 minute)
Top speed of 138 kmph

You can see the results here (except top speed. Can't find that video)

But the above was my learning Experience. As mentioned earlier, to reach to the final result above, I had already spent more than the cost of the motorcycle and most of it was lost in engine rebuilds.

Well, the bike was fast, but nothing about it spoke reliability. As I grew more inclined towards long distance riding, I decided to let go of the bike. I converted it back to stock and sold it off, while selling off some of the Mods to other enthusiasts I could find.

Before I proceed to my next ride and its mods, here's a pic of my Dazzler:

The Second Motorcycle: 2013

So I decided to move to something that was equally fast and more reliable in its stock trim. I went ahead and purchased a used Duke 200 (22k Kms on the Odo). It was a from a friend who I knew maintained his motorcycle well. He upgraded to a 390 and I couldn't resist the price offer he made. Also, he had already had a paint-job to suit his "Taste".

Meet the Jagermeister edition Duke 200:

I took it on and rode it like that for sometime. By now, I had started making some good money from Data Entry and was about to complete my Masters Degree. This time, I was not interested in getting any engine mods. The bike already had a PowerTronic installed from the previous owner. So, I decided to go crazy with a themed paint job. What did I go for? DOTA (In-case there are any Gamers in the house).

I decided on going with the theme of the character, Dragon Knight from the game, his armour, Sheild and the logo of the game.

Below are the character and logo inspiration, just so that others can connect.

Courtesy: Valve Corporation

That's the character. I really wanted to get the shine from his armor and the shape of his helmet:

With the idea in my mind, I started off by getting the bike dismantled entirely. Right to the chassis. Then off went everything to paint:

All parts that could be platted / anodized were bifurcated and the rest went to paint. The front fork went for Anodized silver, the fork caps went for Anodized gold (which turned out yellow).

Every other alloy element, went for the special treatment. As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to represent the copper hint of the armour across the bike. Hence, I went with Copper platting.

Here's the Rims post Copper platting:

The Helmet from Vector. This was going to require some stable hands and judgement. Definitely not mine:

And the finished tank with the Dota Logo and Helmet before it went for the final clear coat. Notice the Golden outline on the helmet. Again, this was thanks to Chintan bhai and his experience with Vinyl:

The paint, anodizing and platting took a fair amount of time. Reassembling the Duke was fun as well. We ended up with 6 extra Nuts / Bolts left, without a clue on where they were supposed to go: