2023 RE Himalayan: Why I decided to postpone my buying decision

After going through all these and considering its price point, I withheld my booking; waiting for time based reports from the users.

BHPian .yogeshnaik recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I went to Motoverse (Rider Mania 2023) to Hill Top at Vagator, Goa taking pre-notions, high on expectations with a good mindset visualizing after reading the contents from the media and Royal Enfield's Influencers thinking I would book a Himalayan 450 Hanle Black colour. After visualising the Himalayan 450 in actual, I am still deciding, my friend is still in a slumber state whether to go for it or not.

Most important is, I enjoyed the ride approximately 1,327 Km to & fro on my Classic 350 Reborn from Bengaluru - Vagator, Goa - Bengaluru. With ample amount of detour on the way to Goa, the Royal Enfield Classic 350 Reborn is a versatile motorcycle and a blessings in disguise in terms of comfort while cruising on highway, bad stretches and on muddy roads, slush & rains.

The Motoverse event was from 24th to 26th November, 2023. I spent some good time to inspect the Himalayan 450 in terms of its overall looks, build quality, its new engine and ergonomics. I concluded it with a mixed bag of results and categorised them as below:

• The Good
• The OK
• The improvement needed

Here are the details, same are narrated in the attached video link at the bottom.

The Good

• Suspensions are excellent, they are Showa and they have to be nothing less than perfection.

1. Front - Showa upside down*forks, with separate functions
2. Rear - Showa Mono-shock at the rear

• IPC & Controls at ease, the Instrument Panel Cluster with TFT/LCD

• Screen and the layout is good, the round shape is something new to accept and the missing real time needles are to be accepted for the new rider

• Seats are excellent, they have a great job

• Phenomenal Riding Ergonomics

• Riding triangle is perfect & precisely adventure oriented

Perfect Riding triangle for the adventure motorcycle

The OK

• Chassis weld quality

• Short Stroke Engine

1. Felt less torque at < 2000 rpm
2. Bailing out of a small puddle needs more throttle efforts unlike long stroke engines
3. Delayed throttle response is significant, engine responds after a noticeable time frame after the throttle is twisted, not seen such behaviour in BMW G310 GS & KTM Adventure 390, where the latter two are ride-by-wire. Any sensitive person can make it out easily.
4. Prominent Engine noise (harsh treble masking the actual exhaust note)

The Improvement Needed

• Strange Engine noise found on ~500+ Km run engine

1. Tentatively could be the Tappets or the Timing Chain improper tension or the Crank’s Connecting Rod

• Uniform weld quality is needed

• Work on throttle body controller that is making a delayed throttle response.

Non uniform weld blobs

Frequent ON/OFF of Radiator Fan is observed

The radiator fan started often, even after the bike was idle for few minutes, this means in bumber to bumper traffic, we can expect the fan coming ON/OFF often. The colour on exhaust pipes indicated that a good amount of heat is generated. The hysteris curve can be fine-tuned here for the Radiator Fan's ON/OFF for the lower-threshold and higher-threshold of engine temperatures.

The Verdict

After going through all these and considering its price point, I witheld my booking, wait for time based reports from the users and decide on the next version.

In a herd of motorcycles, we checked another vehicle that was ~200 Km run, but we felt that it will soon sound like the one that has run ~500Km

Note: I also owned 3 Royal Enfield motorcycles, namely, a Bullet Electra 350, an Interceptor 650 and now a Classic Reborn 350. Being a fanboy does not mean that the rider should mask the improvements to be conveyed to the manufacturer for fixing these. As a true BHPian, I conveyed to best of my findings as the first instance. I would love to see this product with the expected quality in the field as it is mentioned in most of the channels comparing with the quality as that of Triumph etc.

A bike lover likes all the bikes may be as rider's perspective or a designer's perspective or an engineer's perspective that goes from canvas till the simulations. Later it depends on what type of material goes into the actual production and it depends on the multiple factors on the production line. The dissatisfaction happens when expectations does not meet the reality and few some hyping and magnifying the product. There it loses the transparency of the conveyed message to the masses.

Again, the Rider Mania earlier, I saw it was full of emotions, that is why I came on my Classic 350 with that emotion, Motoverse (Rider Mania) was a bit different and difficult initially; the event became more fruitful when I met several Riders from Pune & Mumbai, especially some from Mumbai Riders as well, their view about Motoverse was the same.

For a true biker with engineering background, he/she does not discriminate nor hate but waits for the product to be made with the right expectation and perfection.

Video link

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