Saturday, August 16, 2008

New Bajaj XCD 125

In today's scenario every young human want to ride fashionable and super bikes.Recently the india's topmost auto company launched an average and fashionable bike-Bajaj XCD 125.
How does it work:

Basics about what goes on inside the DTS-Si engine:

Every engine runs on a fuel-air mixture. What Bajaj has done is, they have made the mixture to go around the spark plug in a swirling manner and hence the name 'swirl'. Now, this is actually a good thing, as it leads to turbulence (sort of breaking up of the mixture) when the piston comes up during the compression stroke. So, actually, Swirling is a smooth process, and it later leads to turbulence, which is good as it removes the opportunity for the mixture to separate out, thus leading to a complete efficient combustion. The Swirl and Turbulence process leads to lot of good things : complete combustion, clean combustion.
It is also of good use at lower rpms (Swirl helps for better punch at higher rpms - coz to get a high-rev engine, one needs to work towards a greater flow rather than turbulence)
here are some performance results of this bike by Bajaj-
0-40km/h ------------ 3.51s
0-60km/h ------------ 7.09s
0-80km/h ------------ 13.56s
Top speed:----------- 94.0km/h
City Fuel economy: -- 58kmpl
Highway Fuel economy: 60.2kmpl
Overall rating: ----- 9.0/10

OVERDRIVE FIGURES: Bajaj XCD 125 performance figures from Overdrive

0-40km/h ------------ 3.31s
0-60km/h ------------ 6.94s
0-80km/h ------------ 12.38s
Top speed:----------- 93.97km/h
City Fuel economy: -- 73.6kmpl
Highway Fuel economy: 65.3kmpl
Overall rating: ----- 4.5/5

These figures are completely different than those given by Bike India magazine! Shocking.. for example, according to Overdrive magazine, the bike reaches 80km/h in 12.38s, where as Bike India says it reaches in 17.24s! Ditto for city fuel econony figures, where according to Bike India, the XCD goes only 64kms to a litre, but according to Overdrive, the bike goes 73.6!!
For a 125cc bike, the performance figures arent that impressive. And all those 109kmpl claims have gone for a big toss. The bike manages 64kmpl in city.

Comparing Results with other 125 CC bikes:

HH Glamour : 0-60 in 7.44, 67.5kmpl in city
Discover 125 : 0-60 in 6.4, 64.5kmpl in city
Honda Shine : 0-60 in 7.04, 77kmpl in city
Suzuki Zeus : 0-60 in 8.01, 62kmpl in city
TVS VictorGLX:0-60 in 8.0, 48.2kmpl in city

So, what does it mean? The XCD is slow, and cant match up with the fuel economy figs of the 125cc segment. Where it does win are the Pricing and the looks/features department. Will this be enough?
As you see, the XCD does develop more power (15.7% more), but then it also has a 11.6% advantage in the cubic-capacity department.
Whats interesting is the Torque graph here. The XCD with 11.6% more capacity, churns out 34.7% more torque! But if you remember, the Discover 125 made more power, and just a lil less torque (10.8 Nm) , albeit at 1500rpm higher at 6500rpm. Hmmm..All this means that XCD will have a great low end punch. Also, the engine weighs less than even the Platina's small engine, giving the XCD a respectable power to ratio as well.