Royal Enfield Chain Failure

[Threewheelbonnie]

Details here

https://sites.google.com/site/hrpvin.../chain-failure

My 5 month old chain broke after pretty light UK road use. Its easy enough to fix, but this is my first chain problem in 25 years of riding. I decided to borrow a vernier and find out why. Basically the chain is ****. Such huge variation in the process that 2 out of 204 pins were held in by friction alone, not riveted over.

I like the bike but would seriously encourage fellow riders to dump the Indian made chain ASAP.

Andy

[mollydog]

IMO, you're risking your life running an Indian made chain on motorways.

The Japanese dominate the MC chain world and have for 40 years ... no one else really comes close.

If you're serious about chains and plan to keep that bike ... buy a nice DID X ring chain and NEW sprockets. Use a proper Rivet link. This chain is nearly maintenance free!

On that low power bike I'm guessing that DID chain will out last your engine!
Change your front sprocket every 8K miles to extend chain life even further.

[Walkabout]

RE are not the only bike manuf who fit poor quality chains and sprockets as OEM.
The cost accountants require this to maintain a competitive initial pricing.

The same goes for suspension components of course - these are not aspects that the customer buying a new bike tends to consider alongside the shiny new plastics and the other features that contribute to the overall bling effect.

But, you know this with your background in transportation engineering.

[backofbeyond]

Thank God it happened at low speeds Andy. I don't want to go off on a rant about RE as I promised I wouldn't but some things you just have to take on trust and while I accept that a low cost chain may wear out faster than a top of the range one I'd never expect to find the side plates falling off. The split link clip failing maybe but not the riveted ones. I always assumed that the riveting process would be carried out by some kind of standardised industrial process so variability would be minimal. What kind of manufacturing procedure would give rise to such a wide range of head sizes (other than someone doing it manually with a hammer )

The only other times I've ever seen side plates failing have been traced back to the battery breather pipe "spraying" acid over the chain. Those failures though are usually a clean break in the narrow "waist" part of the side link.

[Threewheelbonnie]

The head is peened over. A short tube or over large head on the other side produces an undersize.

A good process would have a tool that won't allow short pins to be loaded into the press and would measure the force used to peen over each link. Before Demming and load cells you'd employ inspectors to measure so many in each batch to meet British or EU standards.

This is India though. Standards are just rubber stamps you buy and if fate dictates a **** product it'll happen anyway, so just load the machine and ship what comes out!

What RE sell you is just a semi-assembled kit. If you know that they are great fun.

Andy

[mollydog]

Originally Posted by Threewheelbonnie

What RE sell you is just a semi-assembled kit. If you know that they are great fun.Andy

The real Enfield India experts that I know (just one!) would agree with that.
My late buddy Bill was riding around India for YEARS starting in mid 1980's.

After a few trips he figured it all out: He would just buy the best bike he could find ... then totally strip everything off it and rebuild or replace every piece.

He told me about the literally hundreds of little shops in the Dehli motorcycle
shop Ghetto. Every part had an up grade and you could really find high quality, custom engine parts.

This was true for just about everything on the bike ... and anything else you could have custom made from scratch for Peanuts. Every year he learned more, and over time would find more Enfield Experts in and around Dehli. Win Win!

He ended up an Enfield expert himself ... you should have seen the parts stock he packed on his bike! As time went on his bike became quite reliable ... and one thing he liked back then, was that every village would have a shop of some kind to work on Enfields. Not many Japanese bikes in India back then.

Bill had incredible India stories ... but his demons were too much and he took his own life about 15 years ago. A huge loss to his many loyal friends.