It is my first review on mouthshut, so please write your comments to help me improve my style.
I will not go in technical details as it is easily available. I would like to share my views about wind.
First of all I will start with the reasons for selecting Wind125.
1. For me it looks great (although looks are always personal view ’’beauty lies in the eyes of beholder’’).
2. It Is technically sound. It may not generate as much power as discoverer but almost equal to its other competitors. According to the Overdrive’s sep 2004 issue, it is still the fastest for 0-60 kmph in all 125ers, while only discoverer beats it on a 0-80 kmph run.
3. It is not so heavy or wild looking as 150 cc bikes and yamaha fazer. So it’s handling is better suited for a novice like me. (my experience of riding bike is quite limited, just around 60-70 km).
4. last and most important reason is that it is not very common on road. For a person like me it is very important reason. And the news that Bajaj is going to stop it’s sales in INDIA, confirms that it is going to remain as a limited edition model.
I was also looking for Bajaj Discover but it will take at least 3 months to get a Discover (According to the bajaj showroom). According to me a person who wants comfort and drives sainly will love this bike.
I have just bought it today and haven’t used it much so I can’t comment on it’s performance and other details. I will update my review later accordingly.
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My Wind has done around 2000 KMs now(in around 2.5 months). So I think it is time to add my personnel experience.
1.Ride: Very smooth, The ride quality is smooth. I drives in around 25kms daily in heavy traffic of Bangalore through the most congested areas (airport road to Majestic), but never felt any discomfort. Once I have done 170 KMs in a day some of which was in hilly area(nandi hills near bangalore), but still never felt any backpain or tireness.
2.Performance: I would like to tell that I am not a very fast driver. I rarely races at signals(Race that you can mostly see at any traffic light after the traffic light turning from red-yellow-green). I rarely goes above 80 within city limits. The maximum speed that I have tried was between 98-100 on highway with pillion(who told me the reading), after which I ran out of guts and slowed it down. In this criterion (Performance), WIND delivers more than expected from a 125cc machine. I do not have much experience of driving other bikes, so I Can’t compare it with others.
3.Mileage: I have used the tripmeter provided here to its full to check mileage in every condition and have tried different driving styles. Even before first service (when I was learning to drive and used to drive at max 50 in fifth gear) I got 58.5km/l. After 2nd service I have tried different styles and got diff mileage(or kilo metereage if you want to say so). On highway and hilly area combined got 50(fast driving 70-90 most of the time). Fast driving in city(fast acceleration and 75-80 if find emty roads)-got 53kmpl. Controlled driving in city (just 2-3 times went above 65) got 58kmpl. In my normal driving I gets around 55. and keep in mind that in around 25-30% of my commuting due to traffic I can’t go beyond 30-35.
Now some of my experience that doen’t fit into the above categories. Due to unavalability I (and perhaps some other wind riders in bangalore too) havenot yet got the service manuals of the bike. I got my bike’s 1st service done after getting a letter from showroom. One similar problem that I guess may happen in future is about spares because bajaj has already stopped its sales.
FINAL VERDICT: A very good bike. In this imperfect world you have to compromise on some things to get other things right. WIND produces max power at 8500 rpm, so it contains small gear ratios to accelerate properly at low rpms. But these small gear ratios makes an impact on fuel efficiency and you have to compromise on that. Getting max power/torque means that vehicle doesn’t feel breathless at high speeds but that also means at low speeds in high gears (say 30kmph at 5th gear) you feel lack of power, and shifts to a lower gear to accelerate above 40 to again put it in 5th gear.
Somethings can always be improved so I give it 4 stars only.
safe riding.
Atul