My RE Hunter 350 accident story; Recovered myself & rebuilt the bike!

Part of my “Rider Lore” with all the stitch marks that bear my resilience in the face of one of the worst accidents one could be in.

BHPian hawker350 recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

13th of August, 2023, Sunday.

I haven’t slept all night in the excitement of my great plan for the morning. I had convinced all my gearhead friends to run a convoy ride from Mandi House to Khan Market. Planning and heading the entire convoy of nearly 4 motorcycles and 2 cars made this a huge deal for me.

6:40 AM

I get up from my computer, I didn’t feel like sleeping the entire night and instead spent it rewatching both the Pacific Rim movies for the nth time, I can’t keep track anymore. I wash my face, brush my teeth, wear my gear and head down to Hawker with a cloth. Wipe her down well, including the wheels so she can shine for her big day.

7:20 AM

I start her up, let her pick up the oil a bit while I wear my gloves and drop the first gear. I head out of the society, riding like I usually do, joining NH-8 at Rajiv Chowk.

7:30 AM (approx.)

NH-8 is three lanes. I am in the rightmost lane of a flyover before IFFCO Chowk, behind a brown sedan. I decide to switch left and go faster in the middle lane since it’s all empty anyway.

I accelerate and switch lanes at about 90kmph, and notice a tempo parked dead centre of the highway (I do not know how it was not noticed before this maneuver). Pull in both my brakes, as well as the clutch. I remember coming down to about 70kmph as it got close and bang! I black out.

7:35 AM (approx.)

My misadventure is noticed by a policeman, he pulls my unconscious body off the vehicle and takes off my helmet. He stops two men on a bike in an attempt to transport me to a hospital but I can’t be seated because my knee won’t bend. He looks again at the empty Sunday morning highway and notices a Maruti Eeco van coming into sight and signals them to stop. They pick me up along with my belongings and lift me into the back seat of the vehicle.

I wake up and the first thing I say is “papa ko bata do, unka number lo” (tell my father, take his number), I black out again. He takes the number down and informs my father about my accident and that he will inform him of other details as soon as he gets me to a hospital. I remember opening my eyes a few times during this ride to the hospital; seeing my hands carefully placed on my crotch and my right leg straightened out on the seat.

I open them once more being lifted out of the Eeco onto a stretcher. I understand I am being wheeled into a hospital and doze off.

8:25 AM

I see my mother at the end of my bed. I can’t move my body. I notice about 5 fluid lines attached to me. Several nurses and hospital staff came to check on my fluids and vitals. Other family friends join in and hype me up.

8:40 AM

A team of doctors comes in, introduces themselves as the ortho and sports medicine team and lists out a number of X-rays and scans.

I’m taken in for my scans and I can’t feel much pain with a new bottle of painkiller being attached to me every half an hour or so. Doctors come in again and look at my scans to say I have some dislocated bones that need to be put in place first. I’m given a sedative that DOESN’T make me unconscious nor could it stop the pain or the string of very strong words. The doctor starts his practice and the entire ER is made aware of an accident victim in bay 8.

I have broken 11 bones across both wrists, both thumbs and my right shin. Along with other torn cartilage and muscle.

I was shifted into the surgical ward and my parents were briefed to keep me empty stomach in the morning so they could perform surgery around 11 AM.

14 August, 2023

I’m hungry and the surgery is delayed because they notice my right scaphoid is also broken and they need to re-prep the team and get the consent form signed by my parents. I finally am taken in for surgery at 1 PM.

The entire ordeal lasted around 5 and a half hours after which I woke up while being wheeled back into the ward. I meet a few relatives after which I try to sleep.

All of the story above has dates and timestamps because I thought it adds more clarity since I have never gone into such detail while explaining it to anyone till now. The few days after the accident passed very quickly as I tried to process what had happened. How did I make such a mistake? How did I not notice a whole tempo in the lane I was about to enter? Do I even remember it correctly? These questions messed with my mind along with the pain I faced and the lack of sleep because my back just couldn’t take the lying down for so long. I was shifted to another hospital soon and then was sent home for recovery. The boredom of lying all alone on a bed and not being able to get up was near fatal in itself. I had my friends, relatives and music to keep me going.

The most uneasy part of this ordeal was the inability to sleep properly. In the initial days at the hospital, my body would try to enact a dream and jerk me awake, thereby causing immense pain in my broken wrists. Once I came home, I was out of comfortable positions to sleep in due to my condition and would have trouble falling asleep and waking up in the middle of the night due to pain. Apart from all this, the back pain was a daily battle as well.

Through all this, the one man making sure I ate well, rested well and didn’t abuse my pain medication was my father. He made sure I was getting the right food at the right time, carrying me to relieve myself and making sure I was clean and hygienic. Apart from this, he made sure that I didn’t use Instagram reels as my only escape from boredom. We had movies, series and articles that he would make me read so I could exercise the only part of me that wasn’t injured, the brain. He made sure I had my exercise in order every day, some of which he had to help me do so my muscles wouldn’t go too weak.

Doctors gave me about 3 months before I could stand and another 2 before I could walk. I stood up and walked within 2 months. I even kept a date-wise progress of my recovery, noting down whenever I performed a task all by myself whether it be eating, drinking or wiping my ass. I was making progress!! As a part of recovery, I had to walk as much as I could and therefore took frequent strolls in the evening while I saw Hawker waiting to recover as well.

Enough of me though, time to talk about Hawker.

Hawker was recovered from the highway by a close relative of mine and delivered to my house.

She stood still, untouched for 8 months while I recovered from my injuries, attended the gym and studied for college. I didn’t want to give up on her or the bike life.

Finally, on 8th April 2024, I found a mechanic nearby who offered to come home and have a look. Navjot Chaudhary runs a workshop by the name of Billu Bullet Workshop at Subhash Chowk. He came home about 20 minutes after our conversation on call and gave me the assurance that he could take it away to have it repaired, which was carried out by the evening. Hawker was stripped down to the chassis by the night and he closed shop.

Hawker got a proper look over the next morning and was diagnosed with:

1. Bent in twin pipes that anchored the engine.
2. A very frightening angular bend on the main spine of the chassis that also had some tearing and rust on the underside.
3. Bent suspension on the front right with a crack in the lower tube.

We loaded the chassis into his car and I rode with him to Dabri, where we handed it to another workshop to straighten out. The shock absorber cylinder was handed to a person in Janakpuri to cut off the damaged piece and engineer a new one to weld on and make it like nothing ever happened. Several days passed with my daily routine being to call Navjot up and ask about the status of the parts, and his to tell me that they were a bit delayed for whatever reason.

Finally, the chassis and shock absorber arrived and I was thrilled to see the workmanship on these parts. The shock absorber’s tube was like new and the chassis was completely straightened out. Time for them to be spray painted.

The very next day he started putting my bike together again. I had already put in the request for a change of handlebars, a Yamaha R15v3 to be precise. The handlebars were procured but the shops that sold the fork extender/handlebar riser were closed for multiple days. This infuriated me but Navjot yet again had a solution handy. He lowered the T on the fork to make space for the handlebars and bolted them on, sacrificing some ground clearance for my little café racer dream.

As we kept going, we kept facing minor snags concerning multiple parts:

1. The tiny silver crown on a clutch wire near the lever was missing and therefore needed a replacement, but Royal Enfield said I would have to purchase the entire lever assembly and so I did.
2. The entire headlight dome and the outer ring had been altered into something not that and therefore, had to be completely replaced with new stock parts. I never liked the stock halogen headlight though, and even during the rebuild, I requested him to install a minus DRL headlight.
3. The accelerator cable lining had split and was fraying the cable inside. Hence, replaced.
4. The bracket for the front mudguard was bent and was also replaced.
5. The key had been cut in half with part of it left embedded in the lock. Hence, the lock set was replaced as well.
6. The original Hunter meter on my bike had disintegrated on impact (as many people claim it is prone to do so even in minor accidents) and therefore needed a replacement. Since the meter’s history of crumbling to fine dust is widely known, the stocks at Royal Enfield spare parts never last long. Therefore, to go ahead we would need another meter. I spent several days looking up different bikes on the internet to see whose meter looked good enough and was affordable. None of them really suited my needs. At the time Navjot was in the market, he picked up a chrome meter from a Meteor 350. We then decided to place it in the centre, unlike the garbage idea of placing it on the left. To do this, he cut up a new bracket to put on the T and install the meter. The clip-on handlebars provided a much more stable ride and manoeuvrability than the stock bars.
7. The BIGGEST AND MOST INFURIATING part of the build came when it had all been finalized and he took it for a test ride. The meter wouldn’t read speed. It showed all the stats for my bike, connected to the ECU and told the kilometres on it as well but it wouldn’t read speed or measure distance traveled. Instead, read “ERROR” on the odometer. We started with the obvious solution, cleaning the sensor on the front caliper. Didn’t work. He got down to the next solution and took a look at the battery wiring to check if something hadn’t been connected properly. He came to the conclusion that it was. We double-checked with Royal Enfield engineers by sending them images of everything from the fuse box to the battery terminals and we were given the AFFIRMATIVE that all wiring had been done perfectly as recommended by the factory.

As a Gen-Z kid, my move was to check the entirety of the Royal Enfield Reddit forum for a matching solution. I found the same meter code problem, but couldn’t find a solution.

The next obvious pocket-pinching solution was to replace the sensor and so I did. Went to the nearest Royal Enfield showroom and picked up the new one. Came back, had it installed and it STILL DIDN’T WORK AUGH.

At this point, I was at my limit of patience. It had been two days of every possible knowledge gathering and hardware renewal and we didn’t even know why it was happening, much less what to do about it.

That’s when I requested Navjot to pull apart the wiring once again and check it. So, he did, and guess what?

THE RELAY WAS ON BACKWARDS!!! We had a long moment of silence after he put it on and spun the front wheel to see the meter work but, hey! At least my bike was functional again!!!

I paid him the following day and rode my bike back home, the very same day I headed out towards Noida to meet Akash and show him the machine.

The 9 months I spent in recovery paired with the 2 weeks of Hawker being rebuilt was a wait that was absolutely worth it. If not me, at least she was back better than ever. The accident goes down as a part of my “Rider Lore” with all the stitch marks that bear my resilience in the face of one of the worst accidents one could be in. I hope the story about my recovery encourages those recovering from a mishap or the story about Hawker’s rebuild helps those who face the same problems as I did during the build. I thank this forum for giving me an outlet to get my story out to all those who read it.

Below are all the images throughout Hawker's breaking and building.

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