"Bruce L. Bergman" wrote:

Enfield motorcycles, now made in India, have a diesel powered one
lunger

Yeah, but would you want to stake your life on it's reliability?

Thought not. ;-)

-- Bruce --

Two things immediately spring to mind.

First is that it's sorta like buying from HF or Grizzly. The Enfield
India bikes are a "kit" rather than a ready to run machine. They still
represent a pretty good value for the dollar spent if you are a fan of
that style of bike (which I will admit to liking)

Second, it's not exactly airplane or space tech, it's a modern copy of
50's technology. Sometimes ya gotta walk, but failure mode tends not to
be catastrophic.

I have seen a few writeups on the diesel Enfield. They are using a
single cyl farm engine. Dead nuts reliable, exceptional mileage,
acceleration that requires a calender to plot. Not enough power to wear
itself out. All good attributes for a bike for use in an economy where
there may not be a lot of cash on hand. Not surprisingly, they had no
plans to export any of the diesel bikes.

From my perspective the dealer network is where these really fall flat.
Dealers are expected to buy the bikes for cash up front then resell. Not
so bad but delivery is by guess and by golly, from what I have heard
while I was looking into these. Sorta like an HF lathe, they should be
gone through before they go out the door, but often are not.
They are a complete shock to someone that thinks all bikes should be as
close to maintenence free as a generic Japanese bike is.

Cheers
Trevor Jones