March 15, 2019 – The ExhaustNotes Blog

I finally spent some quality time on the Royal Enfield 650 today. We rode from Tecate to San Quintin, Mexico through the Ruta del Vin0 and Ensenada. My initial impressions have been reinforced. Royal Enfield nailed it with the 650 twin.

The bike scoots along feeling fresh and light all day. In top gear 4000-ish RPM moved the bike along at 60 miles per hour, 4600-ish was 70 miles per hour and 80 miles per hour saw the steady tach needle planted at 5000 RPM give or take a few.

I don’t know what RE claims for horse power but sitting bolt upright and letting the thing rip led to a 7500 rev-limited RPM @ 115 miles per hour (indicated) in 5th gear while 6th gear topped out around 110 MPH at lower revs (7000? I was too busy to get the exact number).

Unlike an old, torsion-bar Honda 450 twin that would rev high but never seemed to enjoy it, the Royal Enfield 650 twin loves to rev and it feels like the 7500 RPM rev limit could easily be exceeded by another 1500-2000 rpm before any self induced porting restrictions came into play. There must be a wire that needs cutting somewhere.

All in, this bike is plenty fast for me as I don’t plan to do street racing anymore. I’m too mature for that crap.

The Meteor (I’m trying to get RE to rename the bike) ) 650’s transmission shifted crisply all day long and in heavy stop and go traffic it didn’t get crotchety. 5th and 6th gear are close enough that I found myself sometimes running a gear down at cruising speed. The engine is so smooth and quiet it’s best to give the lever an additional tug, you may have another gear to go.

Pulling in the clutch started to feel a little sticky, kind of segmented, so I gave the pivot to cable connection a squirt of lube and the lever was smooth again.

The bike has ABS brakes and the front lever needs a strong pull to get maximum stoppage. There’s only one disc but for me it stopped well enough. If you’re the kind of rider that enjoys standing a bike in its nose you may want a bit more front brake. The rear brake must be ok because I never noticed it.

After a full day of riding the Royal Enfield 650 twin has done nothing to diminish my initial enthusiasm. It looks so good and really runs great. It’s shocking that the same company that builds the retro Bullet made such a sweet machine. This is a cool bike, make no mistake.

My Bullet, loaded this morning at the hotel in Tecate. There’s a motorcycle under there somewhere.

We had a glorious ride today, from Tecate along the Ruta del Vino to Ensenada, and from there down the Transpeninsular Highway to San Quintin, which is where we are spending the night. The weather has been perfect. The Bullet, no so much so earlier, but I think we’ve got it wired now. More on that in a bit.

Joe and I swapped bikes today, so I was on the Bullet and he was on the 650 Interceptor. He’s in love with that 650, and it’s easy to see why. The 650 is a home run for Enfield, I think. Like me, Gresh is wanting to buy one, too. But I’m finding I really love the Bullet as well. Yeah, it was missing a bit, but like I said, I think we found and fixed the problem. You know, it’s not an adventure until something goes wrong, and then a big part of the fun is figuring out what to do about it. I’ll get to that shortly.

The photo ops along the Ruta del Vino were awesome, and we took advantage of them…

The Royal Enfield 500cc Bullet on Mexico Highway 3.

Uncle Joe hogging the Interceptor on the Ruta del Vino.

Dos Amigos reflected in an Enfield engine case.

Another cool thing….with all the rain we’ve had this winter, I’ve never seen Baja so green. As we rode through the old wine country south of Ensenada, the green mountainsides were blanketed with bright orange wildflowers. It really was quite a sight. I didn’t get any photos of that, but I will on the return leg of this trip.

So, about that Bullet missing deal. The bike only did it when decelerating and then accelerating, and it felt to me that it might be a clogged injector. It doesn’t take much to mess with a fuel injector. Gerry Edwards, my good buddy at Brown BMW, used to work on my RX3 and he’d always dose it with Lucas injector cleaner. Gerry thinks the stuff is great, so Gresh and I found a Mexican AutoZone store in Ensenada and I bought some. We put a little bit in and it didn’t really make a difference (if anything, it felt like the Bullet was missing more). As we continued to ride south, I thought about what it could be and concluded it might be related to a spark plug. We stopped at a Pemex station and pulled the plug. What happened next was interesting. The plug body looked like it had been arcing, but even more interesting was the way the sparkplug cap literally fell off the lead to it. When we looked inside the cap, the screw that turns its way into the lead was covered with green corrosion. Joe got a wire brush and cleaned the connector well, we put it back on, and the bike is running way better. We’ll know for sure tomorrow when we pile on the miles to Guerrero Negro, but I think we’ve got it. I felt a noticeable improvement as soon as we put it back together.

Pulling the Bullet plug. The Bullet actually has a pretty nice tool kit.

The spark plug cap. The little green thing is the screw that screws into the spark plug wire. It had corroded. We’re pretty sure this is what was causing the missing, and we’re pretty sure we’ve got it fixed.

You know, you’d think that I’d not like a bike that’s missing, but I am loving that Bullet. I love the vintageness (if that’s a word) of it, and I’m enjoying racking up the miles on a big single. It’s cool. It’s kind of a Lawrence of Arabia feeling, floating along at a steady 65 mph and listening to (and feeling) that big thumper thumping away. I can’t really describe it, but I’ll think about the right words some more and give it another go in tomorrow’s blog. I like it. A lot.

I’m happy to report that the Old Mill Hotel in San Quintin is going strong, and they’ve opened a new restaurant (the Eucalipto). We had a couple of beers after the bikes were put away (Lucia took good care of us), and then it was on to a fabulous dinner (Gresh bought!).