Hey gang,
I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the Bashan Bandit 250cc from my Local dealer in Salt Lake, so I am now officailly a China Rider!
It turns out that the Bashan bikes are the 200 and 229's that have been put out by Roketa here in the past. Here is the only direct link to this bike with the correct info and correct pictures that I have been able to find on the internet:
Roketa DB-07-250
I got the blue version, which you can only see the plastics for by looking at the DB-07-200, but you get the idea. The blue is much nicer in person I must say, though following that, I also must say I did not buy the thing for it's looks!
So far she seems like a nice steed. Fires up every time, sounds pretty nice, a few rattley plastic bushing connections aside (which I should have replaced with real bushings instead of that dry rubber stuff in short order, whether or not I like it).
I will try to get some picture posted up today or tomorrow, but I am at work for the moment...
I already made a boo boo...
This thing has an alarm, and surprise to me, a remote start. Well I was a dumb dumb and pushed said remote start while she was parked outside in gear.... needless to say this caused the bike to tip over. Mostly just a scuff on the handlebars ends and some spilled gas, however I did put two small cracks in the right side rear plastic. Looks like I will be getting out the sand paper, epoxy, and plastidip out sooner than I thought!
I think it might look nicer than it did to start with a nice matte black plastidip on those two stupid white panels anyhow, haha. Trying to look at the positive side on that one.
Other than that... driving it so far it feels really nice. Smooth shifts, pretty great handling actually. I have even popped "off-road" into some gravel and some really small rolling grass hills around here for a few minutes and she feels nice.
I am not going to be taking it off road for real until I have really gone through all of the connections, and am confident that nothing crucial is going to have any serious issues getting bounced around a bit.
From what I can find a few people have had issues with the battery mounted on the left side rear under the plastic, so I am also either going to move, or reinforce that before I drive it off-road.
I am also still of course working on breaking her in and will probably wait until I have gone through the break in oil, to put any kind of off-road stress on the motor or tranny.
The transmission is surprisingly smooth, and this thing does seem like it is keeping up with traffic around here just fine. Once she is broken in a bit I will likely do some modifications to help it run a bit quicker so that 50-60 cruising speed is not such a stress on it ( I have been keeping it pretty much under 50 since I got it yesterday). I feel that it will still likely be tourquey enough off road if I did the intake and exhaust, upgrade the carb, and reduce the rear spocket just a little bit. It is currently at a 50T rear sprocket, and I think with those modifications and a slightly smaller rear that she could really be a nice little commuter. I will see how I feel about losing some tourque to get a nicer cruising speed though once I can take her off-road more.
If i needed to I could always do the big bore on it too...
Right now I have just over 60 miles on her from yesterday alone! I will keep you guys posted with the progress of the bike!
If anyone wants to know any information that I can get off the bike or from the owners manual let me know!
I will keep everyone posted how everything goes! Get some pictures posted when I fix me stupid plastic cracking mistake! See what you guys think of the before and afters.
