Round-up review: Spending 2020 with Royal Enfield's Interceptor 650 | MCN's long-term test verdict

Welcome to MCN and the Royal Enfield Interceptor 650. Now this is one of our favourite bikes at MCN. It's won a couple of awards over the years and it's one of my personal favourite Retros. So the reason being is because I don't think a Retro needs to do 200 mile an hour, have loads of electronics to be good. It's all about sort of the riding experience at normal speeds and this Royal Enfield ticks that box beautifully and as we stand here today in November 2020 it only costs £5,899. So it kind of gives thrills to everybody from experienced riders to new riders. This is A2 licence friendly which is really good as well. So I can tell you what this bike is like to ride with my road testers hat on. It's really good, really easy to ride, handles really well, it's got enough poke for normal riding. But what I can't tell you is what this bike is like to live with and that's a job that gets done by the MCN staff all of whom run long-term test bikes and you'll see periodical reports in MCN in print and also online and you might have seen a couple of videos that we've done in the past. So I've recently done a Ducati Streetfighter V4 post-it pad review with Adam behind the camera there holding the camera. Hello mate, how's it going? Hi, hello. So talking of the internet, this is Gareth. Gareth looks after the online side of MCN and Gareth has been running this bike in 2020. So my first question to you is would you agree with what us road testers say about the bike? Well yeah, from my position as a relatively new rider I've been riding since September 2019 so not a huge amount of time. Just over a year. Just over a year yeah and it hasn't been a full year's riding due to a little thing called Covid. I've done about two and a half thousand miles on this bike and actually it's been a superb first big bike for me. You know it's been approachable, it's been friendly to ride, it's not too fast. I wasn't interested in having to hang on for dear life every time. It's just a really enjoyable thing for me and at that price you know. Exactly. So you hadn't ridden before at all before last year? I had a very small amount of experience. I had a little bit of you know twist and go experience in my teens. Also a little bit of dirt bike riding around fields when I was much younger but other than that I was pretty green when it comes to motorcycling. So you're kind of target audience for this bike in a lot of ways? I think so yeah. But you're no stranger to testing because you've done a lot of testing on four wheels haven't you? I have indeed yeah. I spent a decade testing all types of cars but now I've moved over to the dark side and I'm trying to see what life's like on two wheels. The dark side of two wheels eh? Well so unfortunately for all of us really in the MCN team haven't really been able to ride as much as we'd like this year but it hasn't stopped us from tinkering has it? So perhaps you can run through. I can see the bike isn't completely standard but there's a few Royal Enfield accessories I can spot so maybe you can point them out for us. So the most important one as far as I'm concerned is this seat. A lot of Royal Enfield owners, it's a very vibrant community for Royal Enfield in the UK, particularly online. The Interceptor owners almost unanimously say the standard seat is a little bit too hard. This isn't the standard seat, this is Royal Enfield's Touring seat. It's about £135 in November 2020 to buy this on top of the bike's very low list price but it's made a massive difference. I mean as a new rider I'm doing 150 mile days on this bike absolutely fine. It's not tiring, it's a very pleasant thing. Looks pretty snazzy as well if I may say so. It's you know this lovely quilted effect, it's retro isn't it? It's all harking back to 50s, 60s, 70s and actually that's what really resonates with the people that buy these bikes. So seat, what else? Other options that we have, we've got these optional touring mirrors. I'm not really in a position to comment on how good or otherwise these mirrors are compared to the standard ones but what I can tell you is I can see perfectly well out of them and that's all that really matters. And they look pretty cool? Absolutely, yeah. You've got this shorter screen here as well just to deflect a little bit of the wind which you know makes it a little bit nicer when you're riding at 60, 70 miles an hour, that sort of thing. It's not as tall as some of the aftermarket screens though, quite a few people... It looks nice doesn't it? It does look nice but by all accounts an aftermarket screen would... But you're not running around 100 miles an hour everywhere, you don't really need mega wind protection do you? Well no, that's the beauty of this bike is how approachable it is at lower speeds so yeah. So that's the official accessories but what I can see you've done which I really like and I'd probably do exactly the same things, you've kept the bike looking standard but you've got some really nice little well chosen modifications that's going to make the bike feel a lot better on the road. So just run us through some of the proper aftermarket stuff you've got. Yeah so the suspension is probably the biggest change that I made so I went over to Derbyshire and saw K-Tech, they sorted me out with some razor rear shocks here that feature a lot more adjustment than the standard shocks but also the way they perform is completely different so even from my sort of novice amount of experience I can tell that the rear wheel is moving a lot more accurately and you don't feel so much like the rear end is bumping around underneath you, it's a much more pleasant riding experience. I also got some cartridges on the front forks, same company from K-Tech, these forks are called tracker forks or the cartridges are called tracker cartridges, they feature far more adjustment as well so yeah. I'd love to ride this before it goes back because I think this bike handles very well, the reason I say that because it's very very balanced and I think that's kind of a result of the fact it's being designed by a lot of ex-Triumph staff, sorry Roydenfield, but yeah the bike's balanced but it's built down to a price and it's got to work for everybody and so you know the modifications you made to it I think would probably make it a little bit crisper, just a little bit more controlled so I'd love to have a bash on it. The tyres don't look standard, what we got here? No so we've got Continental tyres on there, they're actually a type of classic racing tyre but I took some advice on this and I don't know what your experience with these tyres is like but from my point of view they're brilliant in all conditions on the road so that's what I was really looking for, while we talk about classic racing I'm not racing a classic but what I am is enjoying the extra handling and the extra grip that I've got from these tyres. I've raced on these tyres actually and probably the best thing about them is the fact that in classic racing you're not allowed to use tyre warmers so they just work from the off when cold, they're decent in the wet because classic racing is not allowed to use wets either and they just give you a lot more confidence and for the road that means you've got more safety margin. So what was standard on these? It came with Pirelli Phantoms, again like you said about suspension, I suspect it's a case of being able to sell this bike at a certain price but allowing you the flexibility to make your own choice on tyres, it can be a very personal thing I believe for bikers the choice of tyres so it's one of those, I noticed almost night and day difference when I changed from the Pirellis to these, especially particularly in terms of that initial kind of turning, you know when you're just going into a corner the bike feels like it's a lot more linear in the way it leans over. Very nice, so the tyres and suspension are going to make a massive difference. So what about the way the bike performs, I can see some different end cans here. Yes, so I have stuck some breathing modifications onto the bike so what we've got is it's all S&S kit, S&S from the USA, better known for tuning Harleys, Indians and all that sort of stuff. So we've got some S&S end cans here accompanied by a high flow air filter and a air filter restrictor removal kit, so all of that together I'm told means 95% better airflow into the engine. I'm not cynical enough to think that this is going to give me extra horsepower as such what I do absolutely agree with is the massively improved throttle response that S&S claims from this kit. It really does feel almost telepathic in terms of throttle response, which is a huge improvement, it's made a big difference to the way this bike rides, it's a very rewarding thing now. I can imagine because again when they sell this bike it's got to go through all the regulations and everything and it's going to be kind of strangled in some way so once you can let it breathe better I'm sure it's much more responsive. Can you start it up? Well absolutely, it does sound better. Let's have a little listen. Very nice, so not offensively loud but just a nice bit of a fruit to it. Well at the moment I'm under the impression that my neighbours still like me, so early morning starts with loud pipes, it's not a good look is it? I'm keeping the baffles in, they do have removable baffles, I'm keeping them in, you know I'm happy kind of flying under the radar a little bit and just spending some time learning the bike. So that's all your aftermarket, so handles better, grips better, more responsive, you've got some nice sort of cosmetic parts on there as well, so have you had any problems with it? I've had two problems, one fairly major and one fairly minor. The fairly major one was I had a puncture on the rear wheel, I think that I'm almost positive the reason for this is because it's got spoked wheels which means it has to use tubed tyres and that means the inner tube can get quite a lot of abuse, it can get folded over, it can get pinched, it can rub against the inside of the wheel and actually it's quite common to get punctures on tubed tyres as far as I understand. If I was going to be doing some more modifications to this bike I'd definitely think about getting some tubeless tyres with some different wheels, just less for the handling improvements and more just for the resilience of not getting flat tyres. And the second more minor thing is the gear lever, sometimes I struggle to find neutral whether that's me or whether that is the bike and I could potentially, there is some adjustment on the lever so maybe I need to do that, haven't worked that out yet, haven't got to the bottom of it, isn't the end of the world though. Everything else, no leaks, no leaks in the engine, no oil, no water? No, one of the things I absolutely adore about this thing is how accessible it is to work on, even from a complete novice mechanic really. Royal Enfield have got a lineup of brilliant how-to videos on their website, it's clear that they want people to work on their own bikes. That's a really good idea, no one else does that do they? Not that I've seen, no. Not actually by the manufacturer? Yeah exactly, it's a really neat innovation but actually you also know that you're doing it exactly right because from my experience there's quite a lot of discussion over the different methods of doing different things within biking. It comes from the horse's mouth. Precisely, so I've actually had the rear wheel off myself, it's the first time I'd ever done that on a motorcycle, got it back on, I've tensioned the chain properly and re-terminated all the brakes and all that sort of stuff, I have no clue but actually it's all been done by me in the garage. Good idea isn't it, madden. And of course there's no electronics to worry, it's got ABS obviously which is a no-brainer for the Rover, there's no traction control or rider modes or wheelie control, doesn't need any of it does it? No it's just me and the bike which I really love and one of the modifications I didn't mention that's actually made quite a big difference to how much I enjoy riding is these levers. So these are TEC levers, TEC bike parts. That's the name of the company. So they make parts for Royal Enfields and Triumphs and a variety of other manufacturers but these are adjustable, they're adjustable for reach unlike the standard ones. I've got weird shaped gorilla hands and basically these have allowed me to really customise the position of my hands. Makes a big difference doesn't it? It does, it's one of those things, it's a touch point on the bike and it makes a big difference when you can customise it to your own personal tastes. Do you know what I like most about this bike is how well you've kept it. I mean the chain is fantastic, it looks immaculate, it looks like an eight or nine grand bike not a five grand bike. You could easily pass it off as a more expensive bike, I can't really see why you'd want anything else. I mean there are other retros that cost twice the amount of this, it's got more power that you don't need, it's got more electronics that you don't need, this is just real simple meat and potatoes thrills isn't it? I really, really love it. Interestingly you could see it as a blank canvas as well. More power, there's an 865cc kit for this which actually then you're talking about quite a few more cubic centimetres, it's going to add quite a little bit more power. Royal Enfield actually have got a couple of race bikes as well, I saw them at the Lydden bike shed event with Paul Young riding one, they look fantastic. Yeah, I'm really pleased with life with the bike basically, it's been great in all respects. So the big question is, would you recommend it? Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. Yeah, I'm not the most experienced but I do know how to look at my monthly outgoings and figure out that this bike is properly reasonable, it really is. It's reasonable to buy but then the riding costs aren't that high either because it's not too highly strung, you can ride it very lazily, you can potter around the country and it's just a lovely thing. It really is lovely as well. Brilliant, well I think Adam will be pleased that we're almost at the end now, how's your arms, all right? So all that leaves for me to say is thank you very much Gareth and to look out for more of these style long-term test videos coming up on our YouTube channel in the future. So this year we're running bikes like the 2020 Honda Fireblade SP, the Kawasaki ZH2, so it'll be really interesting to talk to those owners to see what they've been like to live with. So that's us for now, thanks very much for watching and we'll see you soon.