Modern Vespa

Here's the other part that piques my interest.

US CARB (California Air Resources Board) APPROVED

That isn't cheap to do.

It's not much more money than the Benelli for a full sized bike.

Discuss.

Bill x

How about the new Sinnis Akuma?

£1999

https://www.sinnismotorcycles.com/product/sinnis-akuma/

I saw one at my local Sinnis dealer and the red lattice frame work doesn't actually do anything.

It's decoration only sadly.

My point was more that it's not much more to pay for a full sized bike so why settle for a compact ?

Bill x

Yeh yeh I wasn't joining in on that sorry, just sharing with you in case you'd missed it's launch.

Like the triple exit exhaust?

My new MP3 only has a double exit exhaust.

Someone's gonna have to make a quadruple exit exhaust.

This is getting silly. The next thing you know they'll be selling five-bladed razors.

They make 5 blade razors ?

Wow !

Bill x

Yes, Gillette Fusion Proshield but i prefer those with three blades.
I have a doubt ... are those made in China too? It's possible...

Irony is lost on our Italian friends.

Lost in translation I believe.

Bill x

Oooops ... was perhaps an ironic consideration but the meaning was lost in the translation? Ouch! Your way of expressing yourself is really too complicated (subtle?) for my culture but pleasant as "very english style".
Is that what you want to tell me? In that case, i apologize but the five-blade razors remain.
With sympathy
Attilio

If I saw Wow ! They make razors with five blades I already know that they make razors with five blades so my surprise is totally fake as I'm already informed.

It's like saying The sun will come up tomorrow ? As I already know that the sun WILL come up tomorrow.

Fake surprise.

All good ?

Bill x

Strokes beard

Too late. Honda and BMW have already done a 6 pipe or exit exhaust.

One per cylinder is perfectly acceptable.

And I think that this is the problem with Chinese built bikes.

They are in general copying other bikes rather than coming out with something that's original and when they do try, like the 3 exhaust pipe on a one cylinder engine it's a bit naff.

Now I appreciate that it's difficult to do anything that's totally original these days so I can see this trend continuing for a while at least.

In general they are small displacement units that are cheap to build and therefore cheap to sell but I look forward to a day when they'll invest more so they can build bigger and better bikes.

Bill x

I'm in bed with the flu, and in a few days I have to start pulling down the kiwis:

You're wrong, the first was Benelli ... first of all to build a six-cylinder series with six exhausts.

He's not wrong on any level because he's not suggesting that they were first at all.

They all made 6 port exhausts at different times.

Bill x

Ouch! There was a translation / interpretation error ...

Some early Chinese scooters came with an mp3 player with a button that you could push to make motorcycle noises. That was original.

Yeah but it's naff.

Hey, everyone loves a tryer.

Bill x

Did they sounds like a Chinese motorcycle? Or could you choose between HD, BMW, Triumph etc? Oh now a vintage 2-stroke Lambretta sound would be cool! Maybe they could even program the scoot to break down every so many hundred miles for the real Lambretta experience;-)

Badoom Toosh.

Well done that man.

Bill x

Back in the late 90s Mrs Capitano had a Honda Rebel 125. Lovely little bike and very friendly to ride and own, perfect for learners in fact. It did have its faults. The chrome wasn't fantastic and the wheel rims particularly needed lots of TLC including a tyre/tube removal and clean up inside the rims at least once annually. After a few years Mrs Capitano decided she didn't want to ride it any longer and we moved it on for around £900 with about 8000 miles on it.

Fast forward 10 years and my lad reached 17 and inevitably wanted his first motorbike. As the Honda Rebel had been discontinued for many a year all the examples up for sale had been in the hands of multiple un-mechanically-sympathetic learners and were, putting it bluntly, sh*gged!

A scan of ebay and a bit of googling revealed that a Chinese bike company Jinlun , were importing and selling a 125 Rebel copy. More encouraging news was that they seemed to drop value dramatically in the used market. On the downside nobody had much of a good word to say about them. General opinion was that all Chinese bikes were rubbish, made of monkey metal, slow, unreliable and likely to rot like over-ripe pears in a British Winter.

A plan was hatched. I'd buy the lad a cheap low mileage Jinlun and he could learn to maintain it himself as it was likely to be breaking down frequently. Once he'd got his hands dirty and a bit more experience I'd buy him something decent to take his test on.

So, a week later I took the train up to Kent to pick up a 1200 mile 1 year old Jinlun 125-13 that had been through its first Winter and was kept under a plastic sheet in the seller's back garden. It didn't look that bad. £600 changed hands and I rode it home. It wasn't bad, in fact it seemed better than I remembered the Rebel being. They'd even binned the horrid wheels for chunky cast ones. Spanners were primed and ready for the first of the inevitable jobs it needed.

10 months later, it had an extra 12,000 miles under its tyres (yes twelve thousand,) had been crashed 3 times and had cost £35 in total to repair despite sliding down the road. The only parts replaced were the gearshift linkage, one mirror and one brake lever. The crashbars were patched up with silver appliance enamel.

The little Jinlun never went wrong! As in never ever! We changed the oil every 1500 miles and it had a heavy duty chain and sprockets fitted (at a cost of £30 for the whole kit) which reduced chain adjustment from weekly to once every couple of months. It wasn't exactly cared for either. It spent its second Winter without seeing a sponge and cleaning was restricted to a hose off if it was salty followed by a spray of WD40. After that mileage the valve clearances were still within tolerance and the original Chinese plugs were still fitted!

During that 10 months the lad had massively exceeded the mileage I predicted he'd do and passed his test on it....but still hadn't learned that much about fixing things! With a 250 now in the garage I Mr Sheened the Jinlun and stuck it on ebay with a realistic £1 start and a wildly optimistic £550 buy-it-now. It was on for less than 5 minutes when someone clicked the buy-it-now. The buyer was a dealer who sold Jinluns. He didn't intend to sell this one straight away, but was instead going to stand it in the showroom with the mileage proudly displayed.

Quite honestly, having had the experience of looking after the two bikes I'd be hard pressed to state where the Honda was visibly better.

In conclusion, although I see the odd Rebel still being ridden around I'd probably take a newer Jinlun in preference if offered the choice, ending perhaps on heresy rather than hearsay.

So that's a thumbs up then I'm guessing ?

Bill x

..."were rubbish, made of monkey metal, slow, unreliable and likely to rot like over-ripe pears in a British Winter"...
Superb definition, i laughed a lot.
You know what they say when you have "preconceptions", it's true Capitano, you're absolutely right; to believe it is not enough to see, you must also try.

Still wouldn't buy a Chinese bike but what an anecdote! Can relate as I learned to ride on a dinky rebel. Also, good on you for letting the kid ride. My wife already told me hell-to-the-know cause she doesn't want dead 16YO after keeping him alive for so long. He's currently 8.

... my mother always said the same thing to me and she continues to say it even today that she is 82 years old ... uffff ..!

... ish ... Thanks, yes, and we also tried the Korean brand Hyosung after that ... with far less pleasing results! We always took the view that we could only influence them so far, and if they wanted to do something enough they would do it anyway. So, if they chose to do something we supported them to do it properly.

That included heaps of training and the purchase of so much new, expensive motorcycle clothing that the shop threw in a £200 jacket for me for a charity cash donation of £5 because my credit card bill had probably met their monthly sales figures on its own!

That's a story I can also repeat regarding the Chinese made Jailing range of motorcycles. They made Honda bikes and scooters under license in China before branching out on their own. My neighbours had several of them over a 6 year period. I say several because he has 3 sons who all motorcycled. They had Jailing dirt bikes and moved on to the road bike range. They never had any issue with them and I serviced them. No problems with parts or reliability. Can't remember what the biggest mileages were but it was in excess of 6-7,000 miles a year. All the lads went to our local university on their bikes.

I think that Kymco went down the same route.

Made stuff for Hodna and then went their own way.

Maybe a pattern is developing ?

Bill x

Yeah, that's correct Bill. Sym were also involved with making genuine Honda bikes too. Taiwanese companies Sym and Kymco were in fact one company at one time making Honda bikes and scooters. Chinese jailing was another company also making genuine Honda's under licence. IT probably explains why they currently make very good bikes, especially Kymco and Sym. Sym gives a 5 year warranty on all their bikes over 125cc and 3 years on all 125cc bikes and under. Kymco gives a 3 yr warranty on all bikes I believe.

Kymco now has 90% standards equal to the japanese ... or, for comparison, the same as italian scooters (... don't kill me ...)

They still make a lot of parts for Honda, and from the looks of it, Yamaha now, as well as BMW. I think making their own vehicles is an addition to, and not a replacement for, their original business.

Kymco build the engines for the BMW 'C' range of scooters...the C600/650. At the design stage they even advised BMW to change the design because the engine was flawed. BMW didn't listen and as a result ended up having to fix thousands of those flawed engines, also replacing many engines that just grenades. It cost them a considerable sum of money and loss of reputation. Kymco came to the rescue, fixing everything. Only then did BMW realise that Kymco really knew their stuff.

Same thing is happening with Mercedes, BMW and some VW models; to keep up with competitive prices they must necessarily go down in quality or rely more and more on external suppliers. For example, Mercedes uses some models of low-end Renault engines. One of these is giving serious lubrication problems (it is true, it is not chatter) but the manufacturer does not recognize the defect and does not accept it as a congenital problem (we are talking about about 400,000 engines mounted on various brands).
A nice bang ... no doubt about it.
----> https://www.sicurauto.it/news/attualita-e-curiosita/le-auto-mercedes-dacia-nissan-e-renault-con-i-motori-h5ft-1-2-difettosi /

This type of thing is unfortunately not too uncommon. The VAG group has suffered similar issues in the past affecting Skoda, VW, Audi and SEAT. This was mainly affecting it's twin charger 1.4ltr unit. It took a while for the company to admit there was an issue and it's cost them millions to put the issue right. Then there's a whole load of other things that the VAG group has suffered from, and to some extent still does.

I have a friend who works for the Warranty Dept at a local VW dealership and he's been kept quite busy recently.

I think that the issue with the Kymco/BMW engines was the cam chain tensioner or at least the location of it.

Kymco said it's a bad idea to build it like that and BMW said build it like that.

I'd still have a Kymco over a BMW scooter.

Bill x