• NEW USERS: If you haven't received your Confirmation Email: There has been an ongoing issue with the forum's send mail function and many new users haven't received the email to confirm their registration. I've done my best to manually process these, so there's a good chance if you've signed up in the past 30 days that you've already been validated and can proceed with posting on the forum (don't forget to introduce yourself!). If you still can't get in, please use the Contact Us link on the bottom of any page to send me a message and I'll process you manually. Thanks for your patience! ~Jerk

I'm on the fence about doing my own break-in service but it appears too easy for me to justify paying a dealer $600.

m1ckDELTA

Well travelled
I've done my own oil changes, chain adjustments, emergency tire changes, replacing cables, etc., but I've never adjusted the valves on any of my motorbikes. I think all but my first two have been self-adjusting IIRC. The break-in service on the Himalayan isn't terribly extensive overall (interesting, that "free service" column):

6761
 
Last edited:

Grandland

Well travelled
Location
Kingswinford
I do my own servicing, I know the warranty will be null & void but I just won't pay the extotionate prices and I have no way of knowing if the service has been carried out correctly.
if you have done zero miles in the 12 months between services then the tappets still have to be adjusted, warrantees are a rip off.
 

m1ckDELTA

Well travelled
I do my own servicing, I know the warranty will be null & void but I just won't pay the extotionate prices and I have no way of knowing if the service has been carried out correctly.
if you have done zero miles in the 12 months between services then the tappets still have to be adjusted, warrantees are a rip off.
I'm in the US so the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act covers me for doing my own maintenance as long as I keep good records. As for warranties, I've had to use them in the past and I had no troubles. Everyone's experience is different, though.
 
Last edited:

JSP

Well travelled
Location
Texas
I've done my own oil changes, chain adjustments, emergency tire changes, replacing cables, etc., but I've never adjusted the valves on any of my motorbikes. I think all but my first two have been self-adjusting IIRC. The break-in service on the Himalayan isn't terribly extensive overall (interesting, that "free service" column):
If your question is/or if you're concerned about the valve adjustment. The adjustment procedure in itself is really straight forward - the challenging part is the access to the intake valve - by challenging I mean its a game of patience just because the work area is small and tight - the exhaust valve no worries. The first time I did mine it took me longer to adjust just the 2 valves of the Himmy than it takes me to adjust the 8 of my BMW.

My Himmy or I haven't seen the dealer since I picked it up..... My experience with dealerships some are good and some leave a lot to be desired. Some riders only enjoy the ridding aspect of motorcycling others enjoy the mechanics and "tinkering" as well as the ride. If your in the latter group then doing the service yourself is part of the thrill of getting a new bike. My first service I used to sort all the over tight zip ties, wires ran "funky", and all kind of other little things that makes you shake your head. To some that would put them off on a Royal Enfield Himalayan to me it was just more fun tinkering. That's the simple pleasure of such a simple machine.

Here's a screen shot of a list of the factory recommended services and intervals I put togetter.Royal Enfield Himy Master.jpg
 

m1ckDELTA

Well travelled
If your question is/or if you're concerned about the valve adjustment. The adjustment procedure in itself is really straight forward - the challenging part is the access to the intake valve - by challenging I mean its a game of patience just because the work area is small and tight - the exhaust valve no worries. The first time I did mine it took me longer to adjust just the 2 valves of the Himmy than it takes me to adjust the 8 of my BMW.

My Himmy or I haven't seen the dealer since I picked it up..... My experience with dealerships some are good and some leave a lot to be desired. Some riders only enjoy the ridding aspect of motorcycling others enjoy the mechanics and "tinkering" as well as the ride. If your in the latter group then doing the service yourself is part of the thrill of getting a new bike. My first service I used to sort all the over tight zip ties, wires ran "funky", and all kind of other little things that makes you shake your head. To some that would put them off on a Royal Enfield Himalayan to me it was just more fun tinkering. That's the simple pleasure of such a simple machine.

Here's a screen shot of a list of the factory recommended services and intervals I put togetter.View attachment 6775
Thanks for sharing that list.

One of the main reasons I chose the Himalayan over the KLR and other more modern motorbikes is its simplicity; to that end, I almost wish it was carbureted (the roads of the zombie apocalypse will be littered with EFI vehicles). It appears, though, that even the EFI is simpler than most "modern" motorbikes (until the aforementioned zombie apocalypse). Royal Enfield appears to be one of the few manufacturers, if not the only one, producing new motorbikes that are completely user-serviceable. It harkens back to the era of riding motorbikes that precluded the non-mechanically inclined.

As the times keep getting tougher, the demand for simple vehicles that are inexpensive to maintain and user-serviceable is going to grow. The cost for vehicle repairs has gone off the rails; "mechanics" have been replaced by technicians, and keeping a modern vehicle on the road for 30+ years is not possible. Keeping a vehicle well maintained and running for decades has become accepted as a "thing of the past" and the very idea mocked; "Who would want to, anyway". It's possible that RE doesn't see it that way.
 

Eatmore Mudd

Moderator
Staff member
I do my own servicing, I know the warranty will be null & void but I just won't pay the extotionate prices and I have no way of knowing if the service has been carried out correctly.
if you have done zero miles in the 12 months between services then the tappets still have to be adjusted, warrantees are a rip off.
If your in the USA your warranty is not void if: the service is performed in accordance with the factory service manual and genuine or OE equivalent parts are used. It helps a lot if the work is documented and receipts for the service items are kept.
 

JSP

Well travelled
Location
Texas
"The cost for vehicle repairs has gone off the rails; "mechanics" have been replaced by technicians, and keeping a modern vehicle on the road for 30+ years is not possible. Keeping a vehicle well maintained and running for decades has become accepted as a "thing of the past" and the very idea mocked; "Who would want to, anyway". It's possible that RE doesn't see it that way."

Total agree with your statement.
 

johnny42

Well travelled
Location
NY State
Perhaps not on the Himalayan, but on other bikes they just swap parts vs. getting to the bottom of things and repairing them. Why fix/troubleshoot something when you can toss it in the dumpster and buy a new one? (sarcasm mode: off).

Also, many current bikes have a ton of plastic (Tupperware) to remove and risk breaking tabs and such. My 2020 Goldwing is such an animal. The air filter access is ridiculous. Just google it. It took me literally 3 days to replace it, although I only worked on it a few, 3-4 hours each day. And it needs to be replaced every 16k miles. Virtually every piece of plastic needs to be removed to access it, and there's a lot of plastic. Dealer quotes for the air filter replacement go as high as $600!!

Working on my Himalayan couldn't be easier!!
 

MikeM

Well travelled
Location
So Cal USA
I'm in CA and everything seems/is more expensive here.
Worse than the cost was the 3 week wait. LOL I bought the bike to ride not for it to sit in someones shop. I have never used a dealer for anything but parts and bike purchases anyway so no big deal. I feel bad for folks who cant do their own work. $650 for an oil change and to check two valves (if they ever check the valves), thats just nuts.
 
Last edited:

Overdrive

Well travelled
Staff member
Location
Southern UK
That price is complete madness, there’s more than enough info on here to successfully do the first service, and any subsequent ones.
Personally I’d use genuine RE filters etc, and keep receipts. A few photos maybe helpful in the event of any warranty arguments.
Don’t forget to change the relays, they’re a common cause of issues.
Have fun 🙃
 

Laserman

Well travelled
Staff member
Location
Yuba City, CA
$600 for the first service?🤯 That’s stupid prices! I paid less then half of that for my first service on my Himmy.
Yeah and when was that? 4 years ago for your '18 Himmie? A lot has changed since then, economy-wise. Dollar is down, pay is up and therefore so are costs! Big cities are hit harder. Your mechanics out there must have worked cheap, even back then. Shop rates have been at least $100 an hour here for 10 years.

Worse than the cost was the 3 week wait. LOL I bought the bike to ride not for it to sit in someones shop. I have never used a dealer for anything but parts and bike purchases anyway so no big deal. I feel bad for folks who cant do their own work. $650 for an oil change and to check two valves (if they ever check the valves), thats just nuts.
Yeah, a 3-week wait would be a dealbreaker for a 4 hour service for someone depending on their bike! However, the first service is more than just an oil change and valve adjustment - they have a checklist of everything they have to inspect. If it's a good dealer they'll go through the bike with a fine-toothed comb and give you the results of everything they checked. It's a lot of stuff! Also you have to realize that the valve adjustment has to be done cold and the engine oil is changed when hot. 4 hours is only enough time consecutively if the job starts when the engine is already cold. My own bike had to stay overnight because of that - I rode it in to the service.

It's hard to stomach a service that costs 10% or more as much as the bike, but those guys have to make a living too. I do my own services, but I did pay for the first one and I might pay for the 12K mile one, too. My dealer is expensive, but their techs are quite good. Took me a few months and some questions to realize how good they really are.
 

m1ckDELTA

Well travelled
That price is complete madness, there’s more than enough info on here to successfully do the first service, and any subsequent ones.
Personally I’d use genuine RE filters etc, and keep receipts. A few photos maybe helpful in the event of any warranty arguments.
Don’t forget to change the relays, they’re a common cause of issues.
Have fun 🙃

Thanks for the insight. Do you have a link to where I can find al the parts I need, including the relay? I've already ordered a waterproof logbook for maintenance and repairs.
 

m1ckDELTA

Well travelled
Yeah and when was that? 4 years ago for your '18 Himmie? A lot has changed since then, economy-wise. Dollar is down, pay is up and therefore so are costs! Big cities are hit harder. Your mechanics out there must have worked cheap, even back then. Shop rates have been at least $100 an hour here for 10 years.



Yeah, a 3-week wait would be a dealbreaker for a 4 hour service for someone depending on their bike! However, the first service is more than just an oil change and valve adjustment - they have a checklist of everything they have to inspect. If it's a good dealer they'll go through the bike with a fine-toothed comb and give you the results of everything they checked. It's a lot of stuff! Also you have to realize that the valve adjustment has to be done cold and the engine oil is changed when hot. 4 hours is only enough time consecutively if the job starts when the engine is already cold. My own bike had to stay overnight because of that - I rode it in to the service.

It's hard to stomach a service that costs 10% or more as much as the bike, but those guys have to make a living too. I do my own services, but I did pay for the first one and I might pay for the 12K mile one, too. My dealer is expensive, but their techs are quite good. Took me a few months and some questions to realize how good they really are.
My concern about budget motorbikes is the amount of attention to detail applied during services. In California there is more elitism among within the riding "community" than I've ever encountered anywhere else. Royal Enfiled is usually something of a "red headed stepchild" inside high-end dealerships, relegated to a small corner away from the $30,000 eurobikes. I can't help but wonder if the aforementioned elitism seeps into the service departments of these places, going from working on a $30,000 motorbike to a $5000 motorbike could be attitudinally problematic.

Another thing not to be discounted is that these bikes are more mechanical than computational and most cats working in dealership service departments these days are "technicians".

Lastly, RE is still new to the US market so there aren't going to be a lot of technicians with years of experience working on them; most are probably going to be repeatedly referring to the service manual just like I would.


LOL, I'm pretty much talking myself into doing the first service myself.
 

m1ckDELTA

Well travelled
There's a few more items on the initial service than just the valves and oil change...it's a brand new bike and I was glad to have a more experienced eye to check things out before ending up possibly stranded out here. The desert is a harsh mistress...
I don't think RE's official presence in the US market is more than 10 years old. Even now, there's only about 120 dealership in the US. There aren't a lot of shops with a lot of experience servicing and maintaining these motorbikes. As far as "experienced mechanics", most cats working in service departments are "technicians", not mechanics, and the REs are old school mechanical machines.
 

RotorWrench

Well travelled
Location
USA
Yeah and when was that? 4 years ago for your '18 Himmie? A lot has changed since then, economy-wise. Dollar is down, pay is up and therefore so are costs! Big cities are hit harder. Your mechanics out there must have worked cheap, even back then. Shop rates have been at least $100 an hour here for 10 years.



Yeah, a 3-week wait would be a dealbreaker for a 4 hour service for someone depending on their bike! However, the first service is more than just an oil change and valve adjustment - they have a checklist of everything they have to inspect. If it's a good dealer they'll go through the bike with a fine-toothed comb and give you the results of everything they checked. It's a lot of stuff! Also you have to realize that the valve adjustment has to be done cold and the engine oil is changed when hot. 4 hours is only enough time consecutively if the job starts when the engine is already cold. My own bike had to stay overnight because of that - I rode it in to the service.

It's hard to stomach a service that costs 10% or more as much as the bike, but those guys have to make a living too. I do my own services, but I did pay for the first one and I might pay for the 12K mile one, too. My dealer is expensive, but their techs are quite good. Took me a few months and some questions to realize how good they really are.
+1 Exactly. Go down the 30+ items of the 300 mile service schedule and I'll tell you as a mechanic myself, most anyone would be hard pressed to accomplish that checklist, if done properly and in totality, in under 6hrs.

Now I know in the real world that there are shops and techs that probably pencil whip or skimp on the checklist, but many good and ethical ones don't.

I actually spent much longer myself doing it. It's my bike and I went down that list and added more, because it's MY bike. It wasn't a chore but an opportunity, to get to know the bike better and even corrected some things I preferred my way over RE's or the bike's assembler.

I know many owners look at these maintenance schedules as an inconvenience or even an annoyance, preferring to ride rather than wrench, but believe me, it's not just for warranty compliance but rider safety and the reliability of the bike. That's why it's classed as Preventive Maintenance.

If you don't have the time, patience or inclination to do it yourself, and do it RIGHT, then definitely take it to the shop and don't complain. If you can't afford to have outside maintenance done and you don't want to service it yourself, you shouldn't have bought the bike.

I look at it this way, if I'm going to be taking the bike apart, pulling the tank, rear wheel... etc.. for a service schedule, then I might as well take advantage of the time and access to look at additional items I normally wouldn't see or have access to, and not on the checklist, like potential problem areas I hear of on this forum, like wire runs, wire and hose chafing or pinching, loose connections, unsecured or improperly routed cables; hoses, lines or cables contacting sharp edges or metal that might cut through 1000 miles down the road.. etc..

Like has been said previously, there's a lot more to the service schedules, especially the first one, than an oil change and tappet adjustment. Look at it as insurance 😉
 

Eatmore Mudd

Moderator
Staff member
I don't think RE's official presence in the US market is more than 10 years old. Even now, there's only about 120 dealership in the US. There aren't a lot of shops with a lot of experience servicing and maintaining these motorbikes. As far as "experienced mechanics", most cats working in service departments are "technicians", not mechanics, and the REs are old school mechanical machines.
Enfield was totally absent here from 1970 to 1995.
Since 1995 there have been three importers. The latest and current one is RENA which took over import & distribution in 2015. They are a wholey owned subsidiary of RE corporate.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom