Chinese motorbike.
You know the saying, 'as crap as a chinese motorbike'?

Well, I bought one. A Kymco Stryker.


I should have been warned by the fact it was virtually brand new and being sold second hand, but I was swayed by the looks which at the time I thought were cool, and the 12year old chavs in the motorbike shop who thought it the most awesome bike in the universe and were impressed by me thinking about buying it.

So, don't buy a chinese motorbike or try to impress 12 year old chavs.

Anyway, the plus points were it was actually super reliable and always started. It had a kickstart if you forgotten to turn the lights off and run the battery down. It was as big as a 400 despite being a 125 so had lots of road prescence.

The downside...oh man.

The exhaust rusted out wihtin 6 months.

The tyres appear to be made from soap and are lethal in the wet.

The kill switch actually makes the rev counter go off the scale (not the actual engine revs, just the rev counter dial) but had no effect other than that.

See all those plastic fairings? If you want to replace the headlight bulb, you have to take ALL those off - they're put together in a weird overlapping way so they're all attached to each other working your way back to the tail light. You can't get to the headlight any other way.

That groovy aggresive pout above the headlights? It casts a shadow on your headlight beam meaning you can't actually see anything directly ahead of you.

God it was rubbish.

Sold it and bought a Yamaha - bombproof.
(inflateable, Tue 8 Jan 2008, 20:49, 3 replies)

I had a similar experience
I agree, I bought a Sanya 125 last year.

In the space of 6 months until I sold it, it had 3 seperate oil leaks, the exhaust rusted, the welds on the rack broke, the chain kept coming loose, the bolts on the chain tensioner were stripped on first use and had to be replaced, the chain wore out, the tyres also had no grip, especially when wet and a metal cover on the engine just snapped and fell of at about 50mph.
(Masterb3ta, Tue 8 Jan 2008, 21:35, closed)

the thing about bikes is....
chains do stretch and wear out, its just what they do, god knows how many times ive adjusted and tightened chains over the many many years ive been riding (well apart from none in the last 3, ok so buells arent the fastest things out there but hell belt drive has its advantages, no oiling / adjusting the chain, and no chainlube splattered all over your and the bikes back end)

as for the fairing thing, yep faired bikes are like that, the easiest thing to do if you were servicing the zx6 i used to have was strip it down entirely before you started, that way you didnt find you had toremove something whilst midway through mremoving something else!

bikes, you have to love tham (well i do)
(pogo_it, Wed 9 Jan 2008, 10:36, closed)

There is only one make of Motorbike...
... and it is called "Honda"

XR650... Thumping down a road somewhere in Sweden.....

*ducks for cover*

Buells... Sadly the only people I know who've bought Buells are tossers. A shame really, otherwise I'd have been tempted. Their cute "just ran into a wall" styling is nice when you dim the lights enough... ;o)
( Humpty Dumpty was Pushed Is unaware of having any limits., Wed 9 Jan 2008, 11:04, closed)