[dsh]

They analyzed first-service oil samples from bikes from 12 manufacturers, including a Yin Xiang. The Yin Xiang's results were, quite frankly, awful.



"The Chinese motor was so full of shit it broke the fancy microscope... Seriously, these are just the contaminants from a quarter of our sample. The lab software couldn't analyze any more, so they tested 25 milliliters and multiplied by four. Remember that we're talking about carbon and metal shavings but also cloth fibers, sand from molds, plastic from packaging--all things you'd find in an assembly area but not things you'd want in a cleanly- and precisely-built motor. While most samples play in the hundreds of thousands, Yin Xiang hits 11,880,000 particles. The only other bikes in the millions, unsurprisingly, are Italian: Aprilia and Ducati.... The small particles mean grinding, blasting, abrasion, premature wear; medium particulate will cause actual mechanical alterations like scratching and imprinting, while the biggest stuff can lead to clogging and engine failure--all bad. We tried to count particles even larger than that, but our results were skewed because the Chinese and Italian motors are so grubby, their particles clump together and fool our microscope into seeing one big contaminant."

I generally like Fortnine's content, but I think the fact that he's using Yin Xiang and then implying that it's representative of all Chinese motorcycles is...not great. From what I can tell, they're not top-tier even among Chinese manufacturers.

I'd love to see a test like this done on some CSC (Zongshen) and Lifan motorcycles.

Thoughts?