A question about Enfields....

[oldbmw]

As some of you may know, I have been dithering about buying a new (to me bike) After four years and many miles I still dislike and do not react correctly to the left foot gearchange on my BMW. It is for sale, and hopefully will be sold soon. I have located two Electras in the UK. One red ( my first colour choice) the other black. The red one has 6.000 miles on the clock, and sports a rear carrier and givi top box. being 2005 vintage and priced at £2500. the Black one is from 2007 and has 1700 miles on its clock. Thing is the black one has a go faster kit installed and was traded in for a Triumph Thruxton, so clearly the Enfield was not fast enough for the PO. But with just 1700 miles, why did this become a problem? What worries me is it has had a hard time of it trying to meet the owners Gold star fantasy whilst being run in ( and with a nikasil barrel it can take up to 8K miles). It is priced at £2700. both bikes come with short ( 3 months warranty) which may not be much use to me in France. It so happens witha bit of juggling I will be able to collect the bike, and visit Big Knock on the same trip. so it is crunch time for me.
What are your thoughts on the choices available to me?

[Diesel Dave]

HI Larry,

Notwithstanding the need to swap over the gearchange once you get the Electra ..... you may also want to change the gearchange pattern to the one up four down brit style - this will require opening up the gearbox and it's a really fiddley job.

There are a couple of faults with the Electra you should be aware of:

1) they can spit exhaust pushrods as the cups are very small - easily fixed with no damage -mostly happens on brand new bikes with low mileage.

2) They will eject oil from the breather until you replumb this to a more suitable configuration it will clog really quickly with emilsified oil.

3) It will wet sump - a lot, the gear oil pumps have no restriction stopping oil flowing through them standing still, park it with the piston at TDC and even drain the crankcase if you havn't used it for a month.

Read Tims words of wisdom here:

http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/Bul ... sage/28784

Cheers
Dave

[oldbmw]

Thanks Dave,,, the gearbox is np to me as I am ex Triumph, and they were all 1 down 3 up
I guess the fix is different pusrods with bigger cups...
I note Hitchcocks do a breather pipe mod, but think that may be for the old engine...

Did not know they had switched to a gear pump......

My query really though, was which of teh two bikes seemed the better buy?

Regards Larry

re the yahoo site, It wont let me in unless I allow it to read my hard disk and allow cookies....yet it wont give me similar priviledges.

[Diesel Dave]

Larry,

IMHO the electra represented all the upgrades that owners kept requesting for the Classic:

1) Alloy Barrel
2) Roller big end
3) Better oil pumps
4) More power.

So naturally when Royal Enfield fulfilled all these wishes - nobody wanted it.

They ditched the original spark plug fitting decompressor because people kept undoing the cable before removing it from the head and so the little valve would drop inside. replaces with a valve lifter which everybody complained was too heavy to use.

I have ridden the 350 version of the AVL motor and it's a little cracker.

Engine breathing needs a bit od replumbing for the temperate climate, but then again so did my classic as it would push oil into the air cleaner case and then drip onto the exhaust.

Dave

[Diesel Dave]

Larry,

I mailed Tim in NZ for a quote on the Electra X:

Nearly 30,000K and no spanners on it other than as per scheduled
Ridden hard from day one and often riden two up for a couple hours at a time
with +200kg load with the throttle almost to the stop.

Best Enfield I own.

Tim
N.Z.