Royal Enfield recently launched ints Meteor 350 and the cruiser seems to have lived up to everybody’s expectation. Such has been its craze as per our last update within the first ten days, the Chennai-based bikemaker has received over 8000 bookings for the new generation cruiser.
Since its launch, there have been lots of content available online which have been dissecting Meteor 350’s every attribute against Honda H’Ness CB350 which is also relatively new in the market. Another major aspect of both the bikes which needs to be scrutinised are the service costs of the two retro bikes.
We have already discussed H’Ness CB350’s first service cost details in our previous report. Now, we have details of the first service of Royal Enfield Meteor 350 which might give us an insight which motorcycle is easier and less expensive to maintain and repair. In a video uploaded by Abhinav Bhatt on YouTube, he discusses each and every little detail of all the procedures and costs incurred at Meteor’s first servicing.
Royal Enfield had earlier claimed that Meteor 350 will be much easier and cheaper to maintain as compared to the older generation bikes. The service schedule of Meteor is similar to that of Interceptor 650. The first service is scheduled at 500 km or 6 months whoever comes earlier. The second and third services are scheduled at 5000 km or 6 months and at 10000 km or next 6 months respectively whichever comes earlier.
In its first service, Royal Enfield replaces the engine oil. The company also recommends the owner to get his/her tappings adjusted. However, due to shortage of time, the vlogger in this video chooses to skip it.
The second service is just a normal check-up where the engine-oil is refilled in case it has been burnt up. The third one is a full service where the air filter and engine oil are replaced. Hence the engine oil and air filter are replaced every one year which helps in bringing down the cost.
One thing to point out is that Royal Enfield only dry washes the motorcycles in Delhi whereas Honda’s Big Wing’s service station does a wet wash. Interestingly, RE did not monitor the tyre pressure in the first service whereas Honda did in the case of CB350. The engine oil used by Royal Enfield is a semi-synthetic one from Liquid Gun made by Total for RE and its grade is 10W50 whereas Honda uses a semi-synthetic engine oil.
Coming to service costs, since this was a free service there was no labour charge involved, however, it does cost you for the change in engine oil, air filter and other replacements. RE offers four such free services for Meteor 350 whereas Honda is offering only three for CB350. The cost of labour in Royal Enfield is Rs 850 while for Honda it is Rs 700.
The cost of Royal Enfield’s semi-synthetic engine oil for 1.7-litre capacity is Rs 576. The air filter and oil filter cost Rs 150 and Rs 95 respectively. Finally, there is the cost of the lube/cleaning kit which is Rs. 232. The service team also cleans the air filter, spark plug chain and lube the chain also.
Thus total service cost for Meteor 350 turns out to be Rs 904 excluding the labour charge. This is substantially less than CB350’s first service cost of Rs 1,469 excluding labour. On comparison of the service costs for the first two years, CB350 is much more expensive at Rs 6,607 than Meteor’s Rs 2,424 thanks to an extra free service. Therefore, we can see for ourselves that Meteor 350 is a much cheaper bike to maintain.