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My RE Continental GT535 gets a bit of TLC before a ride to Kolli Hills

25th January 2024, 15:09 by Rahul Nagaraj

The Continental GT 535 shares parts wit the RE 650 twins, making it easy to source parts at low costs.

BHPian neil.jericho recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Regular readers of the forum motorcycling threads would have already seen Dr CD's excellent 6 post-ride report on our recent trip to Kolli Hills. Before I could join the party, the Royal Enfield Continental GT 535 needed a bit of TLC.

I had recently noticed that the right front fork seal was on its last legs. Back in December 2020, I changed the fork oil at Motonerdz in Trivandrum. Since I was quite happy with the Liqui Moly 5W Light fork oil, I decided to stick to the same product. Oddly enough, I couldn't find it anywhere. I called several stores and almost all of them only stocked fork oil which was manufactured by new Indian entrants into the market. Only one store had Motul 20W forklift oil, which would not have been appropriate for my intended riding style.

Meanwhile, I went to the large Royal Enfield company SVC in BTM layout, to pick up the fork seals over the counter (OTC). Royal Enfield is very strict about not using non-OEM products/liquids on motorcycles which are serviced by them. Fair enough. The OEM fork oil is 2.5W which is too light for me. Hence, I decided to buy the fork seals from the company SVC and get the work done at Big Bear Customs, which I was trying out for the first time after hearing positive reviews on their workmanship.

Strangely, the gentlemen behind the counter at the Royal Enfield SVC politely refused to sell me the required parts. They directed me to the spare manager. He gave me some comical story about customers returning OEM spare parts which were defective and hence they had decided that no spares would be sold to customers. Seeing as he was not willing to listen to reason, I had to politely remind the gentleman that he could sell it to me at the point of time, without any fuss, and we could proceed to have good days or I could go home, write a strongly worded email to Royal Enfield about the outright illegal practices in their company SVC, and they would force him to sell it to me. Either way, I was going to make them sell me the fork seals! That woke the gentleman up and after some loud grumbling, he made the staff members sell me the required parts. They even asked for my bike's registration number to bill the product. Strangely, they didn't provide me with the bill at that time. A few days later, they sent me someone else's parts bill. God knows what is happening in the company SVC!

The good news is that the parts sharing with the 650 twins have resulted in lower parts costs for items like fork seals. I was sold the ones which are meant for the Interceptor 650. Since the 650 twins and the Continental GT 535 have 41mm forks, the parts are interchangeable. The combined cost for the 2 fork seals came to Rs 620.

Anyways, back to the topic of sourcing the required fork oil. I dropped into a KTM service centre, as the Duke 390 comes with 5W fork oil. What a welcome departure this was from my experience with Royal Enfield. The gentleman at the service counter provided with me 2 options, both of which were for the Duke 390. The IOCL-manufactured forklift is for the older Duke 390s and costs Rs 261 per bottle. The Fuchs-manufactured forklift is for the brand-new Duke 390 and costs Rs 328 per bottle. I opted for the latter. The total cost came to Rs 656. No fuss whatsoever. They didn't even ask if I owned a KTM motorcycle!

The team at Big Bear Customs did a good job with the fork oil change. Dr CD had noticed that the rear light had conked out (again! This seems to be a recurring problem, as the brake light always works but the rear light doesn't) and while dropping off the bike, I had asked the mechanic to check it. When I collected the bike, I had them swap out the fused bulb for a new OEM one. In total, I paid Rs 700 for all the work done, including the bulb.