Re: Silver Blitz 650: Royal Enfield Interceptor Ownership Review Had an incident during the Sunday morning trail ride couple of weeks back. The plan was to ride to a lake located 20 kms away from home and explore new trails surrounding it. We have already been to this lake couple of times during the last 6 months so it wasn’t a completely new place. Got to the bike to see my scooter’s seat being ripped by street dogs. Not sure if that’s a sign to what’s about to happen. Started at 6am and was joined by my friend in his Meteor 350 at the meeting spot. With a tea break in between we reached the entrance to the lake. There was cloud burst kind of rain couple of days back and water level on the stream at the lake’s entrance was higher than usual. I somehow felt that the water level will be manageable in our bikes. My friend suggested that we may have to walk down and do level check. With few minutes of eyeball measurement, I went ahead to cross the water on the bike. Soon after 10-15 feet of getting into the water I could see the water level reaching almost the fuel tank and the engine died. I was stuck with the water level well over the exhaust.
Turned the ignition off and pulled the bike out of the water. Pushed the bike on a steep incline to see the water flushing out of both the exhausts. There is a tiny hole at the bottom of the silencer pipes just below the engine. This appears to be the lowest part of the silencer pipe and could see the last bit of water pouring out of these holes when the bike is placed on the main stand. At this point seeing the water out of the silencers, I thought the worst was over until we laid the bike on the left side to see water dripping out of the air filter box. I feared of water entering the combustion chamber through the airfilter and mixing with the engine oil. Removed, cleaned and dried the battery, relays, fuses, airfilter and the spark plugs under the sun at the lake. Pushed the bike in gear from top of an incline and could see water droplets spraying out of the spark plug holes so tried pushing the bike few more times to get the water out. The engine oil looked fine through the inspection window. After letting the bike dry for nearly an hour we reassembled the parts and the bike started in the first crank. Let the bike idle for couple of minutes and rode back home at a steady pace. The bike behaved fine all the way back home. Once back home, checked the inspection window again only to face my worst fear, water has mixed with the oil and the engine oil looked white in color.
Left the bike to dry and went to get new engine oil, unfortunately the two-wheeler spares shops nearby did not have any engine oil close to the recommended grade so ordered 3L of Candice 20W50 & 15W50 since it had faster delivery and cheap since I wanted to flush the old oil. In the meantime, also got couple of oil filters and air filters from RE spares. Replaced the oil, oil filter and air filter and rode the bike for ~20 kms. Replaced the oil again with 15W50 and rode ~50kms and then replaced with Motul 10W50. The bike sounds and performs normally but I’m sure the engine would have taken a beating. Visited RE OMR service center and the service advisor rode the bike and found everything to be normal and advised to continue riding since I’ve changed the oil multiple times. I guess for now its only time to see how the engine behaves and prepare for come what may. Learning point here is to make sure to check the water level. That said will continue to ride trails with the Interceptor until I get an Xpulse.
Morning sight just before starting the ride. Street dogs gone rogue.
All the water coming out of the bike.
Noticed water dripping out of the airfiter cover.
Fortunately the Meteor 350's tool kit had the sparkplug deep wrench tool.
This sent chills down my spine.
State of the oil filter.
Thats how the oil came down at the start of the drain.
Thats how the oil was at the midway and towards the end.
Ordered these for the first oil change.
Second oil change after riding ~20kms.
Third oil change after riding ~50kms. |