Royal Enfield Continental GT650 – TG's Custom Bike Build

We’re back in Urban Rider’s workshop this month tightening up the slack thanks to Max at Vanoni Moto Officina and HEL Performance.

Unless you’re a paid-up member of the Performance Fluid-Transfer members club you may not know that HEL is a world-class braided brake line and parts manufacturer from good ol’ Devon.

Why have we enlisted the help of HEL? Well, given Royal Enfield can get a standard Continental GT’s starting price down to £6k, you can’t blame them that the levers are a bit ugly and loose. But HEL’s here to fix that.

To improve the brake and clutch feel, HEL fabricated new, braided brake and clutch lines. They’re beautiful, ooze quality and motorsport prowess. Capable of manufacturing pretty much anything you need with regards to brakes, HEL has helped tidy up the line lengths and made the fixings cleaner to look at and easier to work on.

HEL’s system – the first fully swaged brake line in the UK market – uses only stainless steel and titanium. Admittedly, stainless steel fittings cost more to manufacture, and to buy, but HEL are all about quality you can quite literally feel.

See, as we wanted to change the standard levers for something a bit sturdier, we’ve also binned the cheap, standard axial master cylinder and replaced it with HEL’s radial version. This should give a lot more braking power for a lot less effort needed through the lever. With one finger you get a lot more bite, which gives more confidence on the bike as it’s reacting a lot more positively.   

Once Max had fitted the levers and bled the brakes, the final thing to do was to check if the new reservoir didn’t foul the fairing. Which it didn’t. So we’ve now got racy, black and beautiful levers to match our racy bike. Ace.