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

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.

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.

__________________
Dave

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.

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

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.

Best chains are the German Iwis. Talk to Andy 'The Chain Man' "The Chain Man" - High Quality Motorcycle and Automotive Chains
He has shares in Renold chain, but doesn't recommend them as for the last 20 years to so they have been made in the Far East and Asia and are not the same quality as they once were. Iwis make a budget chain range called 'Elite', but they too are made in the East.
He has been at it for around 40+ years now and knows his stuff, he can sometimes be persuaded to give talks to clubs if you are in the Midlands. At our recent club talk he handed round some different split links, including the latest Japanese ones. Interestingly the more robust Japanese OEM one was the weak link (groan) as the design has an extra contact point in the middle that could prevent the link remaining tight. Difficult to explain without a drawing.
He attends 'jumbles around the country all year. Take a look at his site and read what he has to say.

Not sure I'd trust so called "knowledge" from a Vintage Bike guy. The fact is, low power vintage bikes have such low HP that they will rarely test a modern motorcycle chain. Chains today are another world from the bad old days of Vintage bikes ... and good riddance!

If he was running Hyabusa's, top speed testing, that would be more credible. How many Race teams use Iris? DID chains are used by several TOP MotoGP and WSB teams and are the biggest seller in USA ... by far.
Now, why is that?

The Japanese have built a whole industry around manufacturing chain ... and they compete fiercely with one another. At the moment ... and for at least 15 years, DID have dominated the motorcycle side of this industry.

In USA we do see some activity from RK chain and EK. EK is a lesser known Japanese chain manufacturer, RK have been around decades. You also have Tsubaki and Regina struggling to hang on.

Most Japanese OEM's now use a DID chain from the factory. The DID chains put on bikes at the factory are NOT DID's best chains ... they are simply mid level O ring chains for the most part. It's fact that X ring chains give longer service life and rarely ever need adjustment. With 250K miles of experience with these ... I have empirical evidence.

I've never heard of Iris ... I would want to know which OEM's use Iris chains on their bikes from the factory?

When Triumph was reborn in the UK in around 1993, they started out using
Regina chains. Somewhere around late 1990's they had a run of serious failures in the form of multiple warranty claims.
Many of these Japanese made Regina chains were failing within 5000 miles or less. Obvious flaw.

Lots of British riders blamed Triumph for this and tried to say the whole bike was crap ... (total BS of course) Triumph reacted quickly and made things right.

Triumph discontinued use of Regina and have gone with DID chain ever since.
I've owned 3 Triumphs ... the first a 1995 885 Tiger. It's Regina chain needed replacement at around 6K miles. My next Tiger (1999) had a DID. When I replaced its chain (I was in UK at the time) all I could find quickly was an EK chain.

That EK chain did OK, I put 20K miles on it and it still had life left in it. Not bad.
My last Tiger (2007) was new generation 1050. Of course it uses a big 530
DID O ring chain. It lasted well, was still OK at 22K miles.

But my DID chain experience goes back to the 90's and adds up to about
250K miles of use, primarily using DID 525 VM2 X ring chains (the VM2 was top of the line DID chain at the time). These VM2 X ring chains are no longer made but the ZVM X ring is it's replacement and hopefully is as good. I've got one on my DR650 now.

I got 25K miles on average on my VM2 525 sized DID chains. Over 100K riding my Vstrom 1000, more miles on TDM 850, Triumphs and several DR650's. Current DR650 is up over 60k miles.

Vintage "knowledge" can be a laugh. I have to stay off the RE forums, too many old boys who think my FI, Hydraulic valved, disc braked ABS bike would benefit from an Anal Monoblock, Samrat rockers and moving the lever splines round one on the front hub!

The OE chain was pure Indian **** quality. It had O-rings, so probably an attempt to stop owners saying they are out of date without an increase in costs. RE did get in touch and wanted to take a look. Having spoken to them I decided they were going to take the bike away for two days, offer me more Indian quality parts and let their grease monkey put too much oil in again. By the time they got moving I'd fixed it, so politely declined, but a less self sufficient or more cost sensitive owner might have taken up the offer.

Andy

Quite clearly neither of you read his website properly.
His 'vintage bike chain' business came about by accident and he considers it almost a side line in his later semi-retired life, (yes I admit the website is slightly misleading and a little out of date).
His main business was supplying chain to race teams.You'll see in the 'about me' page.
I wouldn't consider someone who supplied Cosworth, Aston Martin, Prodrive and Nicholson Mclaren as not qualified.
And he does supply final drive chains to drag bike racers.
Iwis is the chain, Iris are sprockets.
It's fine, everyone uses what they are most comfortable with.

And OEM is about cost as much as quality. As you say, DID are huge, do the job and at a price the manufacturers are happy with.
IWIS are a very large company (take a look at their website) and the motorcycle part of the business is fairly inconsequential, so I do not think they would bother to chase that.
Anyway, like I say, we all use what we're happy with.

Andy, Hitchcocks were selling the budget Elite chain and claimed it was made in Europe. Andy Fosdick had to put them right about where it was made. So they changed their website to read 'made to European standards'.

You are correct, I never took much time reading the site. And all due respect to the fellow in question. If he is working with F1 Race teams and such then no question his qualifications are world class. Chances are fair that 30 years ago
the Japanese COPIED his chain manufacturing techniques? Who knows? They copied everyone.

Thing about the Japanese ... after they steal a design they continue to improve it ... this certainly true with thousands of motorcycles they make and internal engine parts too.

But it's a specialized world now. Even Suzuki and others buy main engine components from specialist companies (Like ART Japan). ART also supply Triumph with ALL their internal engine parts. I've been there, seen boxes of Pistons and such ... all said ART of Japan. Turns out they also do stuff for F1.

Changing world!

As a traveler I have to go with components that I know and I've tested. With a chain, you are not gonna find anything decent in Bolivia ... so you better start out with a GOOD ONE! For me, DID has filled that gap.

Several times when chains were around 22K to 25K they still looked just fine and did NOT need adjustment. But often a long trip was coming up ... and just in the interest of preventative maintenance ... I put on a new chain and sprockets ... just because. In Africa or Mexico my old chains would have done another 20K miles! (nothing thrown away there!)

Interesting stuff about ART, so much for being a 'British' bike ! A world away from the 20's and 30's when several of the larger manufacturers even had their own foundries.
It's refreshing to talk on a forum about different points of view without things descending into a flame war.

Brands are just marketing. Triumph is assembled in Thailand using Chinese, Turkish, Indian, Japanese, German even the odd British component (tyres?). The design team is in Hinckley. RE are the same except assembly is in India and only part of the design team is in Leicestershire. The steel for those pistons is probably Chinese regardless.

The difference is management and priority. RE are cost sensitive and tax sensitive for the home market, hence they used the ****y Indian chain supplier. Indian management (I work in the automotive sector) only started seriously copying what the Japanese did in the 1950's in the 2000's. Triumph started in the 1980's.

Before buying the Enfield I looked at Chinese bikes. They have the same issues, a mix of good "international" parts and poor "traditional source" parts but are harder to identify. I can source a better quality RE part quicker than RE UK can get stuff from India (seriously bunged up with admin IMHO). A chain for a MASH is probably available from Suzuki but I couldn't ID which.

Andy