Royal Enfield’s Classic 500 EFI issues

.

Indian Royal Enfield Classic 500 EFI owners, especially in the northern parts of the country have been stuck up with a problem of sorts. That, of their Classic 500 UCE motorcycles running very rich causing plugs to foul and many other issues. While the fouling of the plugs was solved partially by replacing Bosch spark plugs with NGK units, rich running still remains an unsolved issue in many cases.  Now why does this happen on a fuel injected motorcycle you may ask.

We say, it is because of the lack of the O2 sensor in the exhaust of the Classic 500 UCE, which ostensibly has been dumped by Royal Enfield for it’s India specific models to keep costs low. For starters, Royal Enfield saves anywhere between INR 15-25 thousand due to it not using the O2 sensor on it’s Indian models and this much money saved translates into a cheaper Classic 500 for the Indian customer.

The same classic 500 selling in the export markets, notably the United States and the United Kingdom have O2 sensors and report no such issues. Obviously, the emission of such a crucial part makes the Electronic Fuel Injection system of the Royal Enfield Classic 500 an open loop system, which in other words means that the motorcycle has a fixed set of maps in it to adjust it’s air-fuel ratio based on various parameters like altitude, relative humidity, etc.

While an open loop system is cheaper, it is also less self-adjusting as conditions that are not simulated in the existing fuel maps could potentially make the fuel injection go awry. This exactly seems to be the case in the northern parts of India, where many owners have reported fouled plugs and rich running. So, what does Royal Enfield decide to do?

It does by pulling out the fuel injection option off it’s Classic 500 and instead going for the tried and tested carburetor for it’s Indian models of the Classic 500 UCE. 

So, in case Royal Enfield indeed launched a carburetted UCE500 engine, it will make the UCE500 engined Enfield cheaper by at least INR 20,000 which is actually great news for Bullet fans across the country. All said, it still remains unknown as to which model of the Bullet will get the carbureted UCE500 engine.