New To Riding

[LowBrewTow]

Hello, I am brand new to bikes and will be purchasing a dual sport dirt bike next month. I recently moved and now have tons of OHV trails right down the street from my neighborhood (live next to a federal forest). I’m a bigger guy at 6’4 240 so I was leaning towards a more “powerful” Chinese bike like a Templar X or Trailmaster 300cc but now that Xpro just released their new 300cc Paladin I may jump on that instead. Either way I’m looking forward to some new adventures soon!

[Do©Hawk]

Welcome aboard. As a new rider, you should look into the Motorcycle Safety Foundation and the basic rider courses that they offer. The course was free for me in PA. It was an invaluable learning experience. I was new to motorcycles last year when I bought my Hawk DLX.

[LowBrewTow]

Thank you. It’s a 2 day course in my state I believe it’s around $50.will be well worth it.

[Bruces]

Since you’re new to bikes ,how are you at wrenching on them ? That new bike is full of unknown things ,so tweaking ,repairing and figuring out those problems will be totally up to you .

[LowBrewTow]

I think you answered your own question. I was going to pay the extra $250 for powersports to assemble it. Shipping costs the same. It hopefully won’t need anything other than oil and chain tightening after that. If not then there’s only one way to learn.

[LowBrewTow]

There’s also a YouTube tutorial on how to assemble the bike that just posted last night so maybe if I’m in the mood to grow some grey hairs I’ll give it a go myself. Lol

[Bruces]

There are very very few sellers that can be trusted to assemble a bike correctly (Venom and CSC ) ,so do it yourself and do it right ,because you will have to re-do it correctly anyway .Put the assembly money into tools and supplies .

[XLsior]

You're going to need tools and supplies at some point, So might as well get started on the learning part...

[Thumper]

Even when you do your own assembly, you will want to disassemble and reassemble many things to check for cross-threading and applying blue or sometimes red loctite.
Some things need adjustment anyway, like mirror mounts, controls.
This reassembly work has the side effect that you learn about the bike and discover what tools you will need for maintenance.

[LowBrewTow]

I consider myself “handy” and have a garage full of tools. I just don’t have very much mechanical experience yet. Anyways I placed my order on the paladin, unassembled, will update you guys when it arrives. Pretty excited.

[GypsyR]

Bonus to assembling yourself is that you get a good close up view of everything about the bike. Then later on you can say stuff like: "Wait, that doesn't look the way it used to." That is why I always wash my own bikes. Washing is time to get up close and personal with eyes on about everything, on alert for issues or anything different. Loose/missing bolts, cables rubbing, exhaust heat melting something, etc.