China Bike Bashing

[GypsyR]

57? I did that on my Templar the other day with my wife on the back. I've had it up over 60 myself with more to go but it's not yet broken in. Something wrong with that bike.

There may be some issue with the way folks these days consider motor vehicles like household appliances. No tweaking, tuning, or even maintenance required. Or so they think anyway. The Chinese bikes remind me of the old days when most riders were at least halfway mechanics. Like fans of old British bikes, if you can't work on one you need to sell it to the next guy. I was born and raised on all kinds of machinery that needed and responded nicely to some regular human attention.

I had zero expectation that my new Chinese bike wouldn't need a bit of adjusting and tweaking right out of the crate. Not so much because what I expected for quality but knowing there's no way the folks at the factory could have dialed it all in and tuned it exactly how I wanted it.

[Boatguy]

Originally Posted by GypsyR

57? I did that on my Templar the other day with my wife on the back. I've had it up over 60 myself with more to go but it's not yet broken in. Something wrong with that bike.

There may be some issue with the way folks these days consider motor vehicles like household appliances. No tweaking, tuning, or even maintenance required. Or so they think anyway. The Chinese bikes remind me of the old days when most riders were at least halfway mechanics. Like fans of old British bikes, if you can't work on one you need to sell it to the next guy. I was born and raised on all kinds of machinery that needed and responded nicely to some regular human attention.

I had zero expectation that my new Chinese bike wouldn't need a bit of adjusting and tweaking right out of the crate. Not so much because what I expected for quality but knowing there's no way the folks at the factory could have dialed it all in and tuned it exactly how I wanted it.

Mostly. But here’s something funny.

I treated mine like an appliance and it turned out to be an absolute unit!

not kidding. I got about 6000 miles before I did a stitch of maintenance. Nothing. Just tightening the chain and changing oil as needed. I didn’t even do the valves until the 5000 mile maintenance that I did at 6000 miles.

I did have one electrical problem because the factory put together some wiring wrong and abrasion made it short out. This was only on my year x-pect. The year after they fixed the problem with a proper conduit which is how I fixed it also.

But I did nothing. I didn’t even get a new chain until about 6000 miles. Stock chain. Stock tires. No adjustments to the bike. No maintenance. I just rode and rode everywhere. In those 6000 miles, I rode:

*Florida sugar sand over a foot deep
*Part of the Colorado TAT and over some crazy high passes
*Rampart Range in Colorado
*Aspen
*Ohio
*Kansas
*Catskills NY
*Rural Georgia

I'm probably forgetting a few.

I treated it as an appliance and rode all of that. With no problems.

My x-pect took all that riding and plenty of drops without incident or adjustments.

I had a thread going on here to keep track of all of this riding with no maintenance. I wanted to see how far I could go. But I stopped updating the thread because all I kept doing was putting down a new mileage and "all is well." It got kind of boring.

Everything is still just fine. I haven’t been riding as much lately which kind of sucks. But nothing wrong with the bike.

I’m really not sure why mine worked as well as it did. Or why it was put together so well. It came from X pro on Amazon.

[Bikenut]

I bought my 2021 Lifan KPR 200 from a dealer in the beginning of May last year. I didn't check any bolts or do anything but ride the snot out of it. I have over 7000 miles so far with nothing more than 1 valve adjustment, several chain adjustments, a couple of oil changes, and a new rear tire.