Time to get serious: Lifan X-Pect vs CSC TT250

[XLsior]

Dual sports are inherently a compromise they will do everything 50/50 to a degree but never excel in a single task.

If you're ok with the compromise and accept the limitations they can achieve things single focus bikes can't.

Play bikes are better off lighter...especially if you expect to pick them up often.

Freeway/highway commuting...You'll thank yourself for fairings and some hefty poke to not get buffeted around like a plastic bag in a breeze.

For back roads and maybe the odd overnight adventure off the beaten track Dual sports find their foothold.

[ExMxer]

Originally Posted by Megadan

I do it all the time on my Hawk, did it on the last one. The piston acceleration at those RPM's with such a small stroke is well within safe limits. As long as the fueling is dialed in and not too lean, you could run all day without much issue. Even if it may cause an "early grave" you would be looking at a new top end, which is just a couple hundred bucks and can be done in a few hours. Thousands of miles with no issue to report so far though, and I am far from the only one. Patrick Choi did a huge tour of the US on a Hawk, mostly highway for several weeks and several thousand miles with no trouble whatsoever.

You are not wrong….. I’ll say that up front. My fear at continued rpm’s that high for a prolonged amount of time, the top end is the least of my worries. I start fearing a rod snapping (it has, and does happen), or crank issues with bearings and what ever else down there says it’s had enough. Either of those, and a man is fucked. I’ve been in the cockpit enough on a motocross track when that stuff happened, and it’s bad. I’d hate to go through that on the highway, all from excessive strain on a little engine that could, becomes the little engine that thought it could……
When in doubt, more CC’s please.
No disrespect to you Mega at all, I’m learning tons from your posts here. I’m just gun-shy on straining little engines to their limits is all.

[Boatguy]

Originally Posted by olds_cool63

All good points...thanks, y’all. Yeah..the KPM 200 is one of the bikes I really like. Moreso than the CSC SG250. I don’t mind doing the work on a bike, it's kind of my thing. But, yeah...it will need to sustain at least 70 mph. I could always get the dual sport for play....and something bigger/better for occasional commuting. I'll just get rid of the Bandit and the Kymco, if necessary. Trying to keep the 2 wheelers just to 2 vehicles due to garage space. I'm 5'11", 215 btw. Adventure bikes are on my list, too. So, we'll see....

That’s what I was going to say. Maybe those RX-3 or RX-4 bikes.

I’m a smaller guy. Even at my 150lbs, I don’t think my xpect could sustain 70 even with gearing changes.

[Boatguy]

Originally Posted by ExMxer

You are not wrong….. I’ll say that up front. My fear at continued rpm’s that high for a prolonged amount of time, the top end is the least of my worries. I start fearing a rod snapping (it has, and does happen), or crank issues with bearings and what ever else down there says it’s had enough. Either of those, and a man is fucked. I’ve been in the cockpit enough on a motocross track when that stuff happened, and it’s bad. I’d hate to go through that on the highway, all from excessive strain on a little engine that could, becomes the little engine that thought it could……
When in doubt, more CC’s please.
No disrespect to you Mega at all, I’m learning tons from your posts here. I’m just gun-shy on straining little engines to their limits is all.

And what’s your opinion on 7200 for hours and hours on end? That’s how you go 55 on an xpect. Lol

I’ve been using the bike on road while gas is high to do errands. 55 is under the speed limit but seems like a reasonable speed.

The first Chinese small engine I bought threw a rod which is why it took my this long to try again. I had a yanmar diesel generator knockoff. Well over a decade ago. It ran great for about 20 hours, threw a rod and that was the end of that. No parts.

[ExMxer]

Originally Posted by Boatguy

And what’s your opinion on 7200 for hours and hours on end? That’s how you go 55 on an xpect. Lol

I’ve been using the bike on road while gas is high to do errands. 55 is under the speed limit but seems like a reasonable speed.

The first Chinese small engine I bought threw a rod which is why it took my this long to try again. I had a yanmar diesel generator knockoff. Well over a decade ago. It ran great for about 20 hours, threw a rod and that was the end of that. No parts.

Truth? If I were gonna run mine at 55mph for hours, and 7200 was the magic tach number, I’d start doing some gearing changes to lighten the load as much as I could. 7200 is up there…. You damn sure wouldn’t do that to your car or truck with multiple cylinders, why scream the piss out of one? Especially when it’s the only one you have to rely on……
Start losing unneeded work as I call it. If you can gear your bike to do the same exact job, minus 800 rpm, or more? Wouldn’t you make that a goal?
Take the bike out of the equation……. Take a laboring task you perform on the regular. If you could find, or discover, a way to do the very same thing with 20% less effort, and getting the exact same results, would you do it? Of course you would……. These little bikes are just that, little. Find all the breaks you can to help them serve you better, and they will reward you long after most folks said they would never last. Gearing is a magical thing….

Last note….. My Dad has an old Farmall tractor. It’s restored, chugs with a sound like no other. It was initially built to maintain a small family farm, something our country was full of when it was new. It could plow, bail, cut, pull, anything they needed for the work day. It has a 4 cyl engine, produces 26 horsepower, and weighs 3000 lbs. It does have “highway” gear added, to produce an additional 4 mph to get from place to place quicker, putting you at a blistering 21mph top speed on level ground. 26 hp moves all that, plus can lug anything man could get himself into back in the day……. With all that said, I asked Daddy just how in the hell can it do all that with essentially no power? His answer solves the riddle…….
Gearing Son. This is all the proof you’ll ever need. Gearing changes everything.

[Boatguy]

Originally Posted by ExMxer

Truth? If I were gonna run mine at 55mph for hours, and 7200 was the magic tach number, I’d start doing some gearing changes to lighten the load as much as I could. 7200 is up there…. You damn sure wouldn’t do that to your car or truck with multiple cylinders, why scream the piss out of one? Especially when it’s the only one you have to rely on……
Start losing unneeded work as I call it. If you can gear your bike to do the same exact job, minus 800 rpm, or more? Wouldn’t you make that a goal?
Take the bike out of the equation……. Take a laboring task you perform on the regular. If you could find, or discover, a way to do the very same thing with 20% less effort, and getting the exact same results, would you do it? Of course you would……. These little bikes are just that, little. Find all the breaks you can to help them serve you better, and they will reward you long after most folks said they would never last. Gearing is a magical thing….

Last note….. My Dad has an old Farmall tractor. It’s restored, chugs with a sound like no other. It was initially built to maintain a small family farm, something our country was full of when it was new. It could plow, bail, cut, pull, anything they needed for the work day. It has a 4 cyl engine, produces 26 horsepower, and weighs 3000 lbs. It does have “highway” gear added, to produce an additional 4 mph to get from place to place quicker, putting you at a blistering 21mph top speed on level ground. 26 hp moves all that, plus can lug anything man could get himself into back in the day……. With all that said, I asked Daddy just how in the hell can it do all that with essentially no power? His answer solves the riddle…….
Gearing Son. This is all the proof you’ll ever need. Gearing changes everything.

Damn.

So that’s the downside of my bike. It’s a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation.

The gearing is good in 1st. It’s just missing a 6th gear.

Trouble is my riding chances a lot. It’s why I got an enduro to begin with. I ride small trails and need 1st gear like it is to avoid frying the clutch and making the riding no fun with lots of clutch slipping. Then other times I use the bike to go far away. That’s 7200 and 55.

[Megadan]

Originally Posted by ExMxer

I start fearing a rod snapping (it has, and does happen), or crank issues with bearings and what ever else down there says it’s had enough. Either of those, and a man is fucked. I’ve been in the cockpit enough on a motocross track when that stuff happened, and it’s bad. I’d hate to go through that on the highway, all from excessive strain on a little engine that could, becomes the little engine that thought it could……
When in doubt, more CC’s please.
No disrespect to you Mega at all, I’m learning tons from your posts here. I’m just gun-shy on straining little engines to their limits is all.

Yeah, but to boil it down to just RPM's is way over simplified as well, as you said about me, you aren't really wrong here, but to over generalize things is also riddled with faults.

The CG engine design as a whole was designed with abuse in mind. Not light weight components to try and extract every bit of power and reduced mass for fast revs. For a 229cc engine, the crank and rod are quite stout little things. The piston acceleration (and deceleration) plays a big role in conjunction with the piston weight in that strain on the rod, which while at a higher throttle position the strain is actually not very high thanks to the high cylinder pressures. Rods handle compressive loads very well. That is why many factory rods can make a lot of power under boost. What tends to do more damage in terms of fatigue to rods is deceleration loading, or high cylinder vacuum conditions at high rpm, which is a very common stress induced on race engines.

Considering I have seen more than one CG250 engine in a TT250 and a Hawk, that lived a majority of their lives at 6500-7000rpm for tens of thousands of miles (one over 36k used almost exclusively for highway commuting). I tend to trust the data I have on hand. Plus, I know what I have put my own bikes through, and I know I have never once seen a single person here who pushes their bikes as hard as I push mine who had a rod or piston failure. This is an engine designed to be practically indestructible at the expense of refinement or power. As one of my favorite expressions goes, barn door engineering. Honestly, the biggest killer of these engines tends to just be material quality issues, and most of those engine failures happen fairly fast, especially the string of Hawks that were breaking off valve heads, just as an example.

Just so we are clear, running these little engines at these RPM's with the throttle open past 3/4 of the way will reduce the engine life, even if just in terms of compression, etc. I won't deny that for a minute. Any engine pushed past 80% all the time will. That aspect of it just doesn't bug me as much when a whole brand new engine is a few hundred dollars, or you can do a full rebuild of one of these for about 300 bucks. That is why I am not too concerned. Even with that, as mentioned previously in this post, there are quite a few examples with thousands upon thousands of miles on them out there. Regular maintenance and a good state of tune make a difference.

Doing things like I have done, cam, higher compression, etc, will also accelerate that as well. All things I admit freely. Want a long lived Hawk, de-cat the exhaust, tune the carb, pick the right sprockets, and ride at 55mph everywhere you go at half throttle. I don't expect my Hawk to last that long, and even if it somehow does, it was a $1200 machine brand new. Not going to shed too many tears over it at the end of the day. Hawks, and most of these cheap Chinabikes, are like a dishwasher or a fridge.

[XLsior]

If you want to know the real grit of the CG engine just look at places they were Originally designed to be abused, South America and SE Asia you will see these engines basically everywhere in the developing world doing all manner of mind boggling things in some absolutely appalling road conditions.

It was never really an open road thoroughbred.

More of a pothole and ditch skipping pack mule/little donkey

[Thumper]

Dishwasher or refrigerator! Yup these bikes are more like heavy steel appliances than sports cars! Perfect analogy. And yes, these engines have millions of miles in all sorts of conditions in rural conditions all over the world. I think 14hp is an ambitious number for the initial setup on my Storm. Maybe it was more than 12 hp at 7000 rpm out of the box, but I ride off road more than 50% of engine hours. I will break this motorcycle before the engine dies, and most of those issues will probably be broken parts or welding jobs!
The torque and hp come in sooner now that I have rejet and opened up the exhaust, But...I spend most of the time dodging trees, mudpits, brambles and big rocks! These are low/mid rpm maneuvers.

Highways in the Kansas City area are filled with large vehicles driving faster than my bike can go, and changing lanes abruptly and often dangerously. I avoid those places.

[Dusman]

In regards to the durability of these CG250 motors, I have 10,000 miles on mine without any problems. Granted, I check the valves every 1500-2000 miles and I check the plug every once in a while to make sure the carb is tuned where it needs to be so that it's just right. I also change the oil religiously every 500 miles.

I run a 17/40 sprocket set-up, and so my RPMs generally stay very, very low and I'm usually running 5500-6000 RPMs at most on most days with that 2.35 ratio.

I personally know Patrick Choi, and the last I spoke with him, he had near 20,000 miles on his Hawk and it's doing just fine.

I also have interacted with a fellah on the TT250/Hawk250 Facebook group that has over 35,000 confirmed miles on his Hawk 250 and it's still chugging along just fine.

[zero_dgz]

Originally Posted by ExMxer

You are not wrong….. I’ll say that up front. My fear at continued rpm’s that high for a prolonged amount of time, the top end is the least of my worries. I start fearing a rod snapping (it has, and does happen), or crank issues with bearings and what ever else down there says it’s had enough. Either of those, and a man is fucked.

Yeah, but... a crate motor for one of these is like $200-350. And you can slap it in your frame yourself in an afternoon. I found the same Zongshen FZ172FMM as is in my Orion on Alibaba yesterday for $378. Hell, I'm tempted to weld together a go-kart frame...