Recently ive been looking at getting a motorbike 125 only for fun on weekends and days off as such.

Ive been looking at Chinese ones . Are they any good, the one im looking at is £1500 otr and is from a company in scotland who are willing to ship it to me. Its a road legal trial bike.

What are your opinions on them ?

Fiatpuntomk2b said:

Recently ive been looking at getting a motorbike 125 only for fun on weekends and days off as such.

Ive been looking at Chinese ones . Are they any good, the one im looking at is £1500 otr and is from a company in scotland who are willing to ship it to me. Its a road legal trial bike.

What are your opinions on them ?

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general advice.., don't bother..

SOME are copies of the ancient Honda Xl 125 engines, others are just junk,
the "cycle parts" are generally VERY poor quality,

look at it another way, WHY is a brand new with free delivery chinese bike, still cheaper than a 3 year old Honda,

I'm actually NOT a Honda fan.,
rather have my Italian Bikes..,

only advice - IF you want REAL budget fun.., buy one of the "accident damaged" Chinese bikes for a couple of hundred, and then you'll be Much better of,
Charlie

There are lots about, especially scooters, but tend to be cheaply made. As Charlie says, copies of old Hondas, many use old design Honda engines, so should be reliable, but sourcing any spare parts can be difficult or impossible. Honda dealers may have difficulty recognising which engine you have, so that route may not be possible. However, it is the cycle parts most likely needed, and spares backup can be very poor.

If there is a local bike dealer near you, selling Chinese bikes, and has been doing so for several years, then might be worth a try. Any further away than an easy car journey will prove very difficult whenever you need service or repair parts.

Price isn't everything. Could be considered disposable.

as said above forget them and save your money a majority of the chinese jobbie's are poor copy's (as like everything from china) that use inferior weaker metals , if it's a small 125 trial bike you want ,go for a yamaha dt they've been going from the year dot , cheap spares , reliable and for a small learner legal 125 are pretty capable to a certain extent

To offer balance, have you been to China?
These bikes must be tough to cope with the roads or lack of!
Yes it will be a copy, but if it's that cheap it's just a throw away thing to get from A to B.

neilwill said:

These bikes must be tough to cope with the roads or lack of!

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no mate that's not the case , after riding bikes for nearly 30yrs everything from 50cc to 1300 plus a couple of turbo gixxer 11's , i can tell you it's false economy....unless you can get one for next to nothing but for £1500 there's loads of other options available

ok then they must send the rejects out of China then.
Having said that my father in laws Chinese built VW police car was a shed and it was 5 years old - made my MG seem faultless.... hehehe

don't get me wrong mate when they're new they're ok-ish , but after a year or two and a few thousand miles they virtually fall apart........come to think about it a bit like the poxy peugeot's i've had

Some are junk and the others are crap. My friendly M.O.T centre have never passed one. So buy new, get as many miles as you can in the first three years and scrap it.

Slightly off piste but I deal in used mowers, most of the budget ones these days have an appalling copy of a Honda engine which is lucky to last a year. I generally buy these and re-engine them with a Briggs.

Copying a Honda is no guarantee of quality and longevity if the steel and alloys used are inferior to the original. Having said that, if you can find an established local dealer (as has already been mentioned) it might be worth a punt.

Early copies of Hondas (Hongads, Hongdus) had really crap chrome on the exhausts and bars and within the space of one winter the finish would be peeling off and total corrosion was only a short time away.

Having said that, most scooters are so similar you'd think they were just clones and many of the Chinese brands are actually Taiwanese and virtually as good as the Japanese. Equally, if you have a good look around you'll find low mileage, second hand, good quality Jap bikes for not a lot more than you're thinking of.

http://usedbikes.honda.co.uk/bike/ll10abn

Lad at work had one in 6 months it was wrecked..

Gear shift lever sheared off at the clamp on the spline and was so poor quality it wouldn't weld properly even with a decent mig set

He was plagued with electrical issues

Managed a new engine on warrenty

Needed a new chain and sprockets with in 3 month s

As for warrenty bar the engine everything else was wear and tear

It finally died as the brake pads came loose and fell out and put him under a HGV....

Andy Monty said:

Lad at work had one in 6 months it was wrecked..



Gear shift lever sheared off at the clamp on the spline and was so poor quality it wouldn't weld properly even with a decent mig set



He was plagued with electrical issues



Managed a new engine on warrenty



Needed a new chain and sprockets with in 3 month s



As for warrenty bar the engine everything else was wear and tear



It finally died as the brake pads came loose and fell out and put him under a HGV....

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Good god was he alright?

he was battered and bruised fortunately the HGV driver was slowing for the bend and came to a complete stop as he came out of the bend on his bike laid down sliding...

A boot load of rear (the only working brake) in the bend might not have helped his plight....


luckily with the bike laid down the bike slid under the cab and he was just under the front bumper...

Had the silly sod not been wearing trackies and a like a biker but not jacket and a pair of decent gloves he would have been unscathed flesh tends not to like sliding on tarmac :bang: