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Chinese made bikes

Shinyribs said:
In all fairness to the Chinese in regards to electrical issues mentioned above, the most unreliable bikes I owned were '80's Honda's due to fussy ignition components and shit charging systems.

So maybe they're just cloning '80's Honda tech for now? 🤔


😁
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The chinese are not great on electrical components but my main issues were the wiring itself, the connectors were poor quality and water ingress ate away the terminals and shorted fused and add to this the brittle thin wires you just could not be sure a wire had not fractured internaly on any length of wire and strangely not just where they had been flexing like on handlebar switch wiring etc, the whole switch gear layout was sort of serviceable but i never striped and say repaied a handlebar switch sucsesfully, it would work but then it just wouldnt and when you stripped it again the busbar or spring tab had distroyed itsel in the strain of simply doing what it was made to do,
Solenoids cdi units etc are super cheap and i would say reliable same with the coils etc , just the wiring and switch gear really. the wiring always seemed to be hard and britle insulation which cracked and then snaped the thin wires at the point of the crack. And due to the poor quality often compromised conection blocks it was not unusual to find wires that were black due to the poor conections causing resistance. And the wiring was simply not worth trying to repair with say soldered sheathed bulet conectors the wire itself was so crap. I just stripped old car looms and made them from scratch it worked well for me.
 
My light mod ct70 clone hammers! Yes eventually the shift drum needs some attention. I basically street raced the bike for 3 yrs. Groms didnt exist until yrs after my purchase. A 17 tooth sprocket and some intake port matching with a reworked carb holds 65mph easily. 3rd gear winds past 55mph! Kinda confused why groms dont unlock as easy. My ct70 clone has shut down many bikes. Yanks the front wheel banging 2nd with me trying my best to keep the front end down. Funny... my 125cc clone is faster than my tw200 that costs over 4x as much. I will probably drop a 90cc race kickstart and neutral on the bottom engine. The long stroke 125cc engines did have some shift problems. Well known issue. Like anything else..good and bad year parts. My 100mpg clone got me to work. And that isnt a bad thing.

I might buy a gorilla clone while it exists....z50 stuff..mix match honda parts. Easy game. And so is gx clone stuff. I have not messed with cg engines...yet
 
The Zonchen 200 cc top ends are a bolt on with i think minimal mods if any at all to the 125 yamaha engines in the xt125s etc , i saw it done by my lads mate when he was 17 and on a learners, ( Learners can only ride 125s here these days in my day it was 250s).
His XT200 was a quick enough thing with just a pipe and pumper carb.
 
matty said:
The chinese are not great on electrical components but my main issues were the wiring itself, the connectors were poor quality and water ingress ate away the terminals and shorted fused and add to this the brittle thin wires you just could not be sure a wire had not fractured internaly on any length of wire and strangely not just where they had been flexing like on handlebar switch wiring etc, the whole switch gear layout was sort of serviceable but i never striped and say repaied a handlebar switch sucsesfully, it would work but then it just wouldnt and when you stripped it again the busbar or spring tab had distroyed itsel in the strain of simply doing what it was made to do,
Solenoids cdi units etc are super cheap and i would say reliable same with the coils etc , just the wiring and switch gear really. the wiring always seemed to be hard and britle insulation which cracked and then snaped the thin wires at the point of the crack. And due to the poor quality often compromised conection blocks it was not unusual to find wires that were black due to the poor conections causing resistance. And the wiring was simply not worth trying to repair with say soldered sheathed bulet conectors the wire itself was so crap. I just stripped old car looms and made them from scratch it worked well for me.
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Switches,wiring and connectors on my CFMOTO 800MT are excellent and so much better than any of the Suzukis I've owned
 
RowBust said:
Switches,wiring and connectors on my CFMOTO 800MT are excellent and so much better than any of the Suzukis I've owned
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KTM isn't known for great wiring longevity, maybe CFMoto is teaching them 😁

Just kidding. KTM switchgear is pretty fancy. If CFMoto is using the same switches it probably is pretty nice. Or CFMoto just does nice electrical on their own accord. I don't know.

A neighbor bought a CFMoto four wheeler. He's happy with it, but they made the bodywork out of the wrong types of plastics. Parts that need to be flexible are made from stiff plastic that can't handle bumps and vibration, so it's cracking. Stuff that needs to be rigid is made from flimsy plastics that sag and make things hard to line up. It gives the impression that whoever designed the four wheeler never rode a four wheeler before and had no idea what to plan for.
 
Good to Know. We have been looking for a sxs for the ranch, and Ricky swears by the CFMOTO 1000. Says is it on par with Kawi Mules, and light years ahead of Polaris and BRP in the SXS markets. they all have a CVT.

Of Course we all know Honda is the best build quality, mainly because the wiring that sweet DCT.
But, it also costs $30K when kitted out. :fpalm
 
Light years ahead of Polaris and Canam is BIG claim. I can't speak to sxs's, but our Polaris and Canam quads were all flawless and outperformed all our Japanese quads. And I'm a huge softie for a Japanese bike.

It could depend on perspective. Maybe the CFMoto has all the cool TFT gadgets where the others don't, and that puts it "ahead"? That's akin to saying a Tacoma is lightyears ahead of a K30. Maybe so if you want an infotainment system, but not much of a truck if you're the guy needing to move a loaded equipment trailer
 
RowBust said:
Suzuki, broken wires, burnt out and corroded connectors, failed stators. CFMOTO no problems at all
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Credit to CFMOTO if they have improved quality of such components to the extent they are superior to the typical Suzuki parts i am used to seeing, and i can confirm first hand that these same components on 2014 lifans are simply not in the CFMOTO class at all.
I Was rightly or wrongly under the impression that CFMOTO products were simply WK BIkes / CFMOTO products of the same vein as Garry Johnson campaigned in the Lightweight/ Supertwins class IOM TT racing with a few placings but no wins i remember .
The way i distinctly remember it was that despite Garrys best efforts and admittedly a promising initial flury of activity, when the chips were down the WK Bikes twin with the best tune and mods they could impart were indeed down on performance comparative to the typical Equivulent Kawasaki offerings of steadfast super twin tuner Ryan farquar . I am not implying for one moment here the Kawaskis never fail, but as is the way of such things the New Kid in Town has to be Exceptionally good to oust the established mainstays in the field.
And again from memory even with Garrys Best efforts the WK bikes offering ended its challenge in mechanical failure.
Here it is in the heady days of practice with Garry and craig.
.
 
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Shinyribs said:
Light years ahead of Polaris and Canam is BIG claim. I can't speak to sxs's, but our Polaris and Canam quads were all flawless and outperformed all our Japanese quads. And I'm a huge softie for a Japanese bike.

It could depend on perspective. Maybe the CFMoto has all the cool TFT gadgets where the others don't, and that puts it "ahead"? That's akin to saying a Tacoma is lightyears ahead of a K30. Maybe so if you want an infotainment system, but not much of a truck if you're the guy needing to move a loaded equipment trailer
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I take it all with a grain of Salt, and was not the one who made the claim.
I'm talking to folks asking about their sxs experiances, CF vs Kawi vs Pol vs BRP vs Honda, etc
So Far, tghe CFmoto bikes and SxS seem to be pretty good build quality.

I have spent 10+ years driving a Kawi Mule during hunting season. Nice enough but the CVT is noisy. I've fried a couple of Polaris belts in the sand dunes at Little Sahara too.
That is what is pushing me to the Honda as the next hunting rig.

As Far as trucks go, I do prefer my 3/4 GMC over a Toyota.

ScreenHunter_2161 Oct. 04 09.33.jpg
 
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Picked this one up a few months ago to use as a small light duty dualsport when on RV trips. It has so far been excellent. It's a 250cc, air cooled, 6 speed, counterbalanced motor in a reasonably light package with fully adjustable suspension front and rear. I had planned to pick up a crf250l/300 but that didn't work out. This was cheap enough to say what the hell lets see how it goes.
 

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Mikd said:
Picked this one up a few months ago to use as a small light duty dualsport when on RV trips. It has so far been excellent. It's a 250cc, air cooled, 6 speed, counterbalanced motor in a reasonably light package with fully adjustable suspension front and rear. I had planned to pick up a crf250l/300 but that didn't work out. This was cheap enough to say what the hell lets see how it goes.
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Some of the new clones are high tech and swap parts with big brands. I cant buy a modern air cooled bike from the big 4...well the klx230l is as close as it gets. Enjoy the ride
 
The dealer markups were what brought me to this purchase. The Honda I wanted was $5300 and that was fine until the dealer wanted to add their nonsense fees and market adjustments bringing it to over $8000 otd. The ride quality on this little bike has actually had me increasing the scope of what I initially intended to use it for.
 
Mikd said:
Picked this one up a few months ago to use as a small light duty dualsport when on RV trips. It has so far been excellent. It's a 250cc, air cooled, 6 speed, counterbalanced motor in a reasonably light package with fully adjustable suspension front and rear. I had planned to pick up a crf250l/300 but that didn't work out. This was cheap enough to say what the hell lets see how it goes.
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Certainly cheap at <$1800.

TEMPLAR X 250cc Dirt Bike with All Lights

www.powersportsmax.com

 
Yes, and powersportsmax was excellent to deal with, no bs. I paid 1799 plus 319 shipping all clearly stated up front. I did pick up a 30mm Nibbi carb as an upgrade and that made quite a noticeable difference, also added a better headlight as the stocker was quite poor.
 
Yup the wife got a 150 scoot from powersport max. The body is kinda honda elite 50cc clone. The small size with standard gy6 150cc engine is a hoot. I wont ride her scoot because it wheelies so easy...The hot rod scooter shipped to the house for around $1000. The gy6 scooter does not have the ride quality of our vino125. But the gy6 will stomp on the vino 0-30mph. And is the only 4 stroke scoot I have ridden that has the fun factor of the old 2 stroke 50cc scoots.

I offered to buy an adv150 or pcx. I tried to persuade the wife towards a big 4 machine. She didn't want to deal with dealers hrs away

Dealer markups has been ridiculous. The dealer fees can buy a tbr7 and a week at the beach. I have talked to sales at several dealers...basically $2500 is expected on every sale. I like the drop shipped bikes because of upfront set costs. Who the heck has time to email/text 20 dealers. Then drive 1500 miles round trip. The 2 bikes(yami and kawi) I purchased in 2022 was a hassle. Both had a sloppy impact driven pdi. I pdi over 300 bikes and never wizzed bikes together with an impact. The tw had forklift fork marks on the cowl. This happens when the bike tilts back being lifted as quick as possible to install the front wheel. Fortunately there was 2 tw200 to pick from. But my confidence was shot by then. Nobody noticed a smashed cowl?
 
Buddy of mine has a CRF45Ol, his son was offered a nice XR400 hand me down. Nope , he went out and bought this 2 years ago

gokartsusa.com

A17 RS 300cc Dirt Bike, 6-Speed Manual, (21/18) Wheels - GoKarts USA®

300cc Dirt Bike, 6-Speed: 1,N,2,3,4,5, Manual Clutch, Kick Start, Wheels (21/18), Dual Disc Brakes, Inverted Forks,
gokartsusa.com gokartsusa.com

So Far, it has been trouble free, and very well built as a chinese bike.

GO KART USA is a short drive over to Dallas for me, I might head over there and have a look in person.



A cheap 300 might make a nice Guest Bike for when folks visit and want to ride RRMC

Home | RRMT

www.redrivermotorcycletrails.com www.redrivermotorcycletrails.com
 
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