+1 I agree!

Think before speaking , the 220 has tubeless tires that wont leave you stranded on the middle of the highway pushing your bike ,it has projector so the cows and buffalos on road are better illuminated , it does not suffer from severe power loss that Zma gets at high altitute , more stable on highway with crosswinds , is more fuel efficient and so has a better range .
So its obvious who is the better touring machine .

+2 Me too agreeing.

I agree.

N dude I will never bet my ZMA for anyhting on this planet, I love her!

Yeh! Watever bike, only that should matter...

Whatever you wrote here is I think CRAP! I guess me n all other are mature enough to understand what I or anyone wrote, or you can simply ask!
I never ever had ever meant to offence people or places.
I wrote it in a sense: ke anything can happen to anyone (that can be a bike or human), & I was simply talking about there fate after launch! Obviously am no one to predict, but that was just an opinion, personal opinion!
I respect India as any common Indian! Jai Hind.

If Bajaj is discontinuing Fi on its flagship product, does this spell the beginning of the end of Fi on bikes in this category?

TVS has dropped Fi on its RTR180 and now Bajaj has dropped it on its upcoming 220. Is the honeymoon finished? Besides costs, are there other issues that have led to these decisions?

if yamaha had engineered the R15 for low-to-mid-power like you say the pulsar has been designed, do you think it would have been any less technologically advanced and revolutionary than it is right now, or do you think that refinement levels would be the same ??

not trying to be argumentative here, but i think when joel said that "you need to open up the R15 engine to really know what yamaha has done", he was talking of the technological leaps and engineering wizardry the product stands for, and not just its track perfromance, for which it has been designed.

at least thats my sense of the discussion.

peace.

is that really an accurate statement ?? maybe its just not ready yet. obviously, there will be some tweaking etc to be made to the FI unit for the new engine. so it may be further down on their roadmap.

Discounting the FI on newer versions of their flagship models(Bajaj n TVS).
Seems i am missing something here... Maybe there's more to it than the cost...
But lets hope this turns out to be the best of the pulsar lot like the new P180 has
pinned our hopes high....until then lets wait for the real facts until its launched..

Let's put it this way - Why do you need a FI?

(1) Better Efficiency ? - Yes, but what if the Carb is better tuned?
(2) Power ? - Carb can do that as well
(3) Better Throttle Response ? - Not exactly, in city riding FI jerks are present, and Carbs after all are fail safe
(4) Fuel Mixture Settings - Yes, very helpful in high altitude but Carb takes the cake for easy tuning.
(5) Emission Norms ? - Doesn't help a common man, who differentiate for 2000 bucks while choosing a bike for 80K!

If possible add here.

Now let's look the reasons for moving to Carb from FI

(1) Cost Factor.
(2) Easy tuning, and no need to ask Delphi to help!

So how exactly a FI helps a common rider, apart from "geeky" feeling in day to day life? Why ZMA hasn't launched the FI till now? And after all addition of FI unit still puts a question mark on reliability!

Just my thoughts, no offence to current FI owners?

Add to that.. what ever technology our bikes, have, even liquid cool engine, what if another bike can outperform it with all the basic stuff? My 180 never got punctured during 11K Km trip, no cold start problem even at -10, so do we really need FI at this point?

FI basically boosts fuel efficiency. We never ride at a steady pace. We need to accelerate and de-accelerate constantly. During these transition periods, carb fuelling goes for a toss - petrol is a liquid and has inertia (much more than air) - it does not just like to suddenly flow or suddenly stop. Thus, air fuel ratio goes for a toss. And, FI helps in this case.

+1 Spot on!!!

+1 True we need a separate thread for all this. That apart very well said!

Okay, now this was interesting and factual bit of info ! Very Well said Joel!


+1 Finally someone understands what Joel put across!

In P220 the 'dud' factor is with respect to the engine design which incapacitates it from achieving higher speeds, or power output at high rpms, rather accomplishing it at a lower range.

Whereas in the R15/ZMA/RTR the engine design itself allows further tweaks. For eg. Joel's R15 in its former state of tune, an optimized engine (current setup is WAYY faster) had a very good low end, easily noticeable compared to a stock R15 almost giving it a character of its own, no fueling tweaks at that point in time either. Implying, that the engine has potential to be tweaked/exploited further, which the current p220 engine design apparently lacks, atleast to a large extent owing to its design.

Engine Designed as opposed to tuned is a more appropriate term here as It has not much to do with the carbs. Carbs aid in fueling and a well designed engine setup can benefit from a bigger carb & jets etc but plonking a bigger carb into a stock p220 setup will most likely make it drink more fuel without much gains, at the most a very Rich AFR.

They will in all probability have to re-engineer the cylinder head itself. Carbs and fueling wont help it much if the cylinder head is flawed Eg. doesn't have high flow ports required at higher rpms which the bike lacks in its current state. Joel can illustrate this better. It would probably need better mechanicals as well, to produce more power. Basically the flaw is in the design, which if has been improved, hopefully in the new bike (perhaps a new cylinder head itself) could solve the problem and really make it tweak worthy, apart from making it a good bike in stock form.

Oh, they are surely ready. The RTR180 has been in the making for a while now and TVS is a pretty savvy company, that couldn't by any stretch of the imagination be the reason. Fact is, the RTR180 was launched a couple of days ago sans Fi. Sure, they can always add Fi later - but why did they drop it in the first place?

You have pretty much summed it up.

It does seem like a volumes game. The existing P220 hasn't exactly set the sales charts afire and Bajaj (and TVS) are playing the volumes game. Or are they?

Honda has publicly stated that they wont be providing upgrades to HH for ZMA. And in all probability make launches of their own in cubic capacities of over 223-250cc+. I'm sure One can dig this up on the news websites. This could be one of the reasons, as to why we havnt seen the Fi unit on the ZMA also the engine is that of the CRF230F and i doubt there is a FI unit for the engine for a direct transplant for our ZMA after all the cylinder head is a detuned version of the same and the costs involved in developing an Fi zma probably doesn't make sense to the company. Fi unit on the R15 unit is reliable.

If they price the new P220 near 70k ex-showroom, Bajaj is sure looking at volumes; after all, Bajaj needs volumes badly.

Maybe their cost cutting might prove to be a good move for the company and the customers as they company gets the volumes and the customers get a total VFM product at a very good price!!!




Does anyone have stats as to what is the current sales of the BAL as opposed to the rest??