Hi All,
My decision to go for TVS CENTRA came without much test-driving and fact-finding analysis (which I usually do before going for any heavy purchase). I got familiarized with CENTRA well before I actually purchased it... my brother-in-law Murali had left the bike with me for over a month, sometime last year. I was driving a HH Splendor then.
This new bike was a WOW in many aspects then... TENNECO suspensions (available in local market under the brand name ARMSTRONG), broad wheel base, good traffic-busting features like pickup, road grip, weight balance, etc., pleasing mileage... on the whole it was a ’’dream-come-true’’ kinda bike.
So when it came to buying a bike for myself, I blindly went for the CENTRA. But unfortunately, I came to realize that TVS had traded-off all those goodie good features for cost effectiveness, esplly since indigenous production started-off. My frustrations with the bike are:
The shock absorbers are no longer from Armstrong. They are from the local manufacturer GABRIEL. Though it’s decent enough, it’s not a WOW feature like it used to be with ARMSTRONG shocks around. My wife used to love pillioning on Murali’s bike, but not on the new one (which was purchased a few months hence).
The electrical system really really sucks. The headlamp doesn’t light-up very easily, like in Splendor. You can’t click it into ON position. You gotta carefully slide it without producing any click sound, in order to get a continuous light-up. The indicator swich is a complete mess. This could be the ’’most-frustrating’’ feature among all, I’d say. I can never be sure of the indicator lamps in heavy traffic. Plus the placement of dip-dim switches is awful. Centra has got the dip-dim switch where the headlamp switch is supposed to be, and vice versa. One accidental touch of the headlamp switch (thinking it’s the dip-dim switch) throws the head lamps off-gear. That is, the head lamps simply go off. Imagine gently adjusting the switch back into ON position while overtaking a speeding lorry, yuk!
The chain starts sagging every now-n-then. It reminds me of my old bicycle days, when I used to ask the repair-wallah to remove a link, and everything becomes Ok thereafter. My mechanic does exactly the same every service!
There’s no decent provision for a side box, like Splendor has. If you remember, the splendor side-box comes with a metal cage which cradles it. Plus the whole assembly sits cozily beside the splendor chassis. Take CENTRA on the other hand... you need coupla ugly rods to secure the side-box PLUS the protrusion it produces is almost double the size of your chassis! In theory, the box dangles amid 4 securing rods. To add to the miseries, the rods break-up so easily that a bad road or speed-breaker could rip it off your chassis!
But sitting back and thinking, I’d say its merits outweigh the de-merits. Foremost of all, the whopping mileage of 75+ is absolutely wonderful. You can dump Splendor for this one very reason! Other features like road-grip, pick-up, stability, etc are very similar to Splendor.
Conclusion: The many MINUS points of this bike can be pushed aside easily, because the few PLUS points are absolutely whopping. Happy biking folks!