Lifan X-pect 200 arrived, unboxing, first impressions

[ProDigit]

350 mile review:

After the valve adjustment, I did an oil change. The valve tapping is now almost gone, but is still a little audible. It's a bit more pronounced when the bike is between cold and hot. At cold and hot, I can barely hear the valves.

I also increased the psi from 35 to 38 (as max psi is 40).

I did a top speed run with the 36t, tucking, and got 74-75mph indicated both ways. GPS showed 71mph.
Once seated upright, the speed goes down to 60mph indicated, 57mph GPS. At 6'4” I'm catching a lot of wind. I also padded the seat with 2" of foam, which makes me sit higher than normal. I got a 34" inseam, and with the padded seat can't flatfoot.
The bike now effectively coasts in 5th between 3-7k rpm (a 4k band), and accelerated best between 3.5-4k rpm and 6.5-7k rpm.
Even in a lower gear, it's obvious that the engine start losing acceleration above 6.5k rpm, and really starts lowering after 7k rpm, to the point where it makes more sense to upshift to a higher gear than rev the bike past 7k rpm.
I definitely feel that the 17/36t setup is ideal for my riding style, as the bike makes peak power at top speed (7k rpm at 70mph).
I'm fairly sure a 37t rear will be similar to a 35t in top speed, but may be better for those who want to get a slightly lower top speed tucked, but a higher top speed when sitting upright.
The bike now accelerates fine from a stop, and gets quite quickly up to 50-55mph, and in traffic up to 60 without issues. In traffic I can maintain 65mph with ease, but no faster than that.

After that, I adjusted the spokes. Something I should have done on day 1; but I was waiting for the spoke adjuster tool.
Unfortunately, the tool didn't fit the spokes, so I ended up using an adjustable wrench.
While I don't know the exact spoke tension, I used a small screwdriver to tap the spokes, and try to tune them based on the sound they made; just like a string on a guitar.
Some spokes sounded like they had a higher pitch than the majority, and some had a lower pitch.
I only adjusted the ones that had an either too high, or too low pitch, to get them more approximately the same pitch.
I noticed, looking at the rim, I had to loosen the copper ends, to tighten the string, and tighten them, to loosen the string. A bit counter intuitive.

One I finished that, I took my can of Rust-Oleum, and started addressing some of the rust specks on my bike. I know the Rust-Oleum black paint is kind of a matte paint, which is visible on the more gloss, deeper black paint used on the bike. Some of the welds on the tank had some rust specks. Some specks on the exhaust, some specks on the frame.

Lastly I read up on corrosion on the rim, where the spokes meet up with the rim. Ideally I would need to use plastidip there, but my plastidip is a dark black, that would be very visible, so I used the Rust-Oleum paint, which happen to be almost the same color dried as the powder coated rims.
I sprayed all copper spoke ends at the rim, which made it look like the spokes kind of blend in with the rims at the end.
The Rust-Oleum didn't really stick to the brass pieces that still looked new. But once there was corrosion, it stuck quite well.

The Rust-Oleum paint won't prevent rust formation at the rim, as it doesn't fully seal the area where the spokes meet the rim, but hopefully will be able to somewhat slow down the formation of rust.

Other than that, my mpg run was 81mpg. This however was also including the top speed highway run I did, and daily commuting to and back from work, which includes many stop lights.