No Chinese big bore bikes-explained

[wheelbender6]

According to this Canadian magazine, the day of the XL650, DR 650, KLR 650, S40-Savage and others is coming to an end.
China doesn't want to invest in developing big bore bikes when they may soon be rendered unprofitable by tightening emissions standards. Bummer.
canadamotoguide.com/2016/09/19/the-end-of-big-single-cylinder-thumpers/

[Azhule]

Sad day when someone kills off the king of all the Dinosaurs, the heavy and slow T-Rex known to everyone as the KLR650 (I love my KLR650 too )

Oh well, a few high end companies are still going to be around producing some 124cc (~15hp in that small displacement) to just shy of 600cc (most are well over 50hp) bikes will still be around (and 50 state legal)... all made by Beta, KTM, and Husky... nice and expensive dual sports from now on

A "Sub $5,000 Beta 125 RR-S" is coming out soon, supposed to have a Trail Tech Voyager GPS as a stock Dash and a 50 state legal, about ~14 to ~15 hp from a 124cc liquid cooled bike, it also weighs just over 200lbs if I remember right

I kind of want one to putz around on

[BARLOW]

imo, it is not a bigger cc engine we need from china ... 25-30 hp from 250cc would be good for the highway, with a 6th gear that is taller than the 5th we have now ... a little more compression and better cam and air flow, we would be golden ... i would have paid a bit more for extra hp, and i would think as many honda clones sold now, someone would make some better aftermarket power parts by now ... maybe it has to do with head size, not much room for bigger valves

[culcune]

Originally Posted by BARLOW

imo, it is not a bigger cc engine we need from china ... 25-30 hp from 250cc would be good for the highway, with a 6th gear that is taller than the 5th we have now ... a little more compression and better cam and air flow, we would be golden ... i would have paid a bit more for extra hp, and i would think as many honda clones sold now, someone would make some better aftermarket power parts by now ... maybe it has to do with head size, not much room for bigger valves

We have had a few bikes here and there. Pitster Pro had a liquid-cooled enduro a few years back with about that many horsepower (engine made by Loncin), with a few owners here and there, but then nothing mentioned and the bike wasn't imported anymore.

The Zongshen liquid-cooled engine made popular in RX3's, is also found in SSR's off-road MX bike, GasGas uses it in one of their models, as well as AJP. It would take a brave manufacturer to step up and put this engine in a 'plain, old' enduro (although they would probably have to engineer it from the ground up to be able to handle the extra power).

[2LZ]

As I recall, China was only building 150's and smaller, then got up to the 200 and 230. Reason being (that's I've read somewhere and was also told by my CB guy here in Sac, I could very well be incorrect on this) is that originally the Chinese government wouldn't allow anything larger to be built. Something about fuel consumption.
Humanbeing or culcune can straighten us out on this.....but that's what I understood the reason for no 400cc or larger bikes.

As culcune mentioned, The Pitster Pro 400 motor was the first attempt at a larger displacement bike and it was a complete failure.

[Krasi_BG]

I have a "medium"-sized China bike - Puzey XTR4, which is with a 300cc engine, manufactured by Loncin and based on the KLX300 power unit, and so far it's been fine (albeit it's only a few thousand miles).

I've no idea why nobody else uses this engine (not even Puzey anymore), but as far as I can tell, they're missing big time for not using it!

Btw, a few years back Puzey offered another XTR4 version - one with a 500cc air-cooled thumper. Again, no idea why this engine is also gone, even from the Puzey lineup.

I haven't read any horror stories about any of these bikes and their engines in particular, but yet they were sold in very small numbers.

If I had to make a guess, I'd say some heavy politics and "management decisions" set the technical arguments aside. I've seen this happening time and again in many non-bike aspects of life, so I wouldn't be one bit surprised if that's the case.

[culcune]

The Pitster Pro was the same bike as the Puzey--same engine, too (250cc, not 300). We never did get them anymore once they 'ran out.' No 300 or bigger.

2LZ reminded me of Pitster's 400 engine fiasco--the 400 bike was made by Xingyue, completely different than the bike Krasi has ( the XTR 250 was light-years ahead of the rest of the Chinese enduros we had up to that time, but then were no more). It (the Xingyue 400) was teased several times to us US members under the Xingyue name and a few others, such as Pitster, and was sold here, but seemed to have a fatal flaw. They actually had 4 bikes, two were dual sports, and two were 'adventure' bikes with the same engine. My friends at Excalibur still have a photo on their site (which they have not updated for quite a while) of the 'adventure' bike when they sold them and had horrible luck with them. Xingyue still sells large(r) scooters here in the US, and I have seen their scooters on the EPA/DOT certification list, but I have not seen them try to EPA/DOT certify their 400s for a few years now. Their Chinese site still shows the bikes. http://en.xingyue.com/Motorcycle.html Shame they could not engineer a fix as they were the perfect blend of 'cheap' bike with a large (for Chinese standards) engine.

This was the Pitster 400 bike (rebadged Xingyue)