Ok, I realise the last few posts have been a bit of a rambling storyline, so I thought I’d put together one post that summed up just what was done as part of the Royal Enfield 865 conversion for all those contemplating doing something similar. Here goes nothing…
mark.drechsler
Project 865 – the final result, really this time…
Well, my last post was meant to be the final one for Project 865 – all that was needed was some final dyno tuning and a before and after HP chart…
…until I got the call from the tuner, which went along the lines of ‘we can’t adjust the ignition timing with a Power Commander ECU, and if we tune it to make the most of the mods you risk blowing your engine, so yeah, maybe you should swap to a Powertronic ECU which allows us to tune both the air/fuel mix AND your ignition timing…‘
Project 865 – the end result
In my last post I went over the goals of the 865cc conversion on my 2022 Royal Enfield Continental GT and how the project should ‘in theory’ happen. I’m very happy to say that things went more or less exactly how they were meant to, and the bike is back on the road and through … Read more
Project 865
Royal Enfield have undergone quite a stunning renaissance in the past few years. As the oldest continuously operating motorcycle brand in the world (one year older than Harley Davidson, just for the record, and there is probably some debate about Indian and Peugeot as well in terms of who did what at the beginning of the 20th century and who has been in continuous operation since) there has been plenty of time for ups and downs, but the transition they have driven in the last five years has been impressive.
Metamorphosis
It’s hard to know where to start in explaining the eleven months since my last post. For now I think I’ll leave it as saying I’ve had a career change, and I’m now working where I probably should have been a long time ago – in a motorcycle dealership. There’s of course plenty more to it than that, but to write about it isn’t something I can do just yet – there are too many tangled threads to pull together into a post that wouldn’t help me as the narrator or you as the reader to gain anything from it. Perhaps my brain, which had for so long worked to wrap structured models around complex scenarios, has finally accepted defeat in a war that it was never going to win anyway.
Enough crypticism.