The Bullet in Baja

After a great dinner at a newly discovered restaurant in Guerrero Negro two nights ago (the San Remedio), we started the trek north yesterday. We rode from Guerrero Negro to San Quintin through Guerrero Negro’s coastal plains into the desert, then into the beautiful Catavina boulder fields, and then the Valle de los Cirios mountains. We’re arrived back in the Old Mill Hotel on San Quintin Bay last night.

I’ll give you the lowdown on both bikes in more detail in a future blog, but it looks like the bottom line is going to go like this: The 650 Interceptor is an amazingly competent motorcycle, and if Royal Enfield handles the marketing right and somehow manages to keep the dealer freight and setup fees in check, this bike will sell extremely well.  It’s a great value for the money and it’s a good motorcycle, perhaps approaching even the CSC motorcycles in terms of value.

The Bullet has been fun, it’s got tons of character, but our bike has been a disappointment.  Don’t get me wrong: I wanted to like the Bullet. It’s just that this particular sample (a 2016 press bike) was sent to us suffering from a severe case of neglect.  There was almost no oil in the bike, the battery was shot, the chain was rusty, the spark plug lead was defective, probably other things were out of adjustment, and the bike still has a nagging stumble.   Gresh and I have been massaging the Bullet since we left (we repaired the spark plug wire, we removed the kickstand interlock to keep the bike from dying on the open road, we bought and installed a new battery in Guerrero Negro, and we had a few good laughs while doing all of it on the side of the road in Baja).  If the adventure starts when something goes wrong, the Bullet (at least this particular one) is every inch an adventure bike.

I doubt all Bullets (or even the rest of them) would have performed this poorly and if you own a Bullet, my apologies if what I write here offends you.  I wanted to be positive about both bikes and I really wanted to love the Bullet, but of the two bikes, the one that I would purchase would be the Interceptor and the one I would avoid is the Bullet.   I can handle the vibration and the 72-73 mph top end; I can’t handle the reliability issues.   To be fair, I doubt anyone purchases a Bullet to do Baja, and that’s what our trip is.   But the reality is we are doing a couple of hundred miles a day on asphalt, the weather is moderate, and the Bullet isn’t cutting it.  Like I said above, this particular Bullet just had not been maintained.   The Bullet deserves better, but it didn’t get it.  There.  With that out of the way, let’s get back on the road and continue the trek north.