Buccaneer SRT250 Classic or Cafe Purchase

[Azhule]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Gee, Chuck, I don't know. It has NGK stamped in the metal base and on the insulator. Maybe you should look into this.

Works fine, looks very good so far. I see no need for iridium in a motor like this one. But whatever floats your boat. Are you an engine design professional?

Passing on "talk" without sourcing it, and perhaps talk that had no source when you heard it, is of no help, at least no help to me.

Buck

Charles was most likely passing on what I have stated several times on this site... "Watch out for fake spark plugs, wheel bearings, etc."

I had a fake NGK plug slapped in my Bashan with a Lifan engine... had the "NGK Stamps in the metal", but the Blue colors they used and the weak spark was an easy give away that it was a FAKE

Source - Over 25 years in the auto repair trade (ASE certified to repair gasoline engines), I have only recommended using NGK and or Denso spark plugs to family/friends/customers so I have seen thousands of both brands over the years... it was fairly easy to "spot the fake NGK" when I did a "color comparison and spark test" with a real NGK copper core I picked up from the auto parts store

PS... Iridium plugs are the way to go... it's only a few $$ more for a lifetime plug, you can easily get 50 to 100 thousand miles or 10 years (average life) out of an Iridium plug in a Motorcycle engine... go ahead, try taking a step forward into the modern age... PCV's and Iridium Spark plugs for a gasoline fueled engine is the way of the future

On a serious note... Denso Iridium spark plugs are proven to lower emissions while slightly increasing horse power/torque, acceleration, and miles per gallon/fuel consumption (even at idle) when compared to copper spark plugs.

https://www.denso.com/global/en/prod.../iridiumpower/

https://www.denso.com/global/en/prod...lug/iridiumtt/

[ChopperCharles]

Originally Posted by 1cylinderwonder

Are any of you owners & riders of the Buccaneer, 6 feet tall, or taller? I’m concerned about my leg room on the Buccaneer Classic. And I’ve never been able to see or sit on a Buccaneer bike. I was able to try the SG250 for size and found it too cramped and restricted for my riding comfort.
I’d appreciate receiving opinions about the comfort of riding the Buccaneer from riders 6 feet and taller.
Thanks
1CW

Sit on an SR400. The Buccaneer feels a little bit bigger than the SR400, and the buck has a slightly more aggressive seating position (feet further backwards and a slight forward lean), but it's a pretty close comparison IMO.

Charles.

[ChopperCharles]

Aight, so some new info, changes, and whatnot.

I thought my steering lock was broken, or super stiff. The label says to push and turn to engage the steering lock. Yeah.... no. Just turn it to engage the steering lock.

The bike is super easy to pivot on the side stand. Just lift behind the seat with a hand on the left handlebar pushing down and the bike comes right up, and can easily pivot 180 degrees to get out of a parking spot. It takes just a moment or two to practice in your driveway, and then it's easy to do whenever you need to. And looks cool too.

I replaced the headlight today. I put in another 5 3/4 housing I had, and a 55/60 watt bulb. With this bulb the bike still makes 14.86 volts at idle... but with the high beam on and my heated gear, the voltage drops to 12.65 volts at idle. It goes back up above 14v by 3500 rpm, but at idle there's not really enough juice to run the heated gear. Anything below 13 volts at the battery is discharging.

There is NOT enough room to fit one of the daymaker bulbs in the housing. The ring is a little too small to fit the daymaker, but even if it did fit, the heat sink is too large to fit in the housing with all the wiring back there.

Likewise, an ADVMonster H4 R2 bulb does not fit either. The ballast is too large and the braided heat sink is too bulky to fit in the housing. It simply won't go together.

I'm going to try an Evitek F2 bulb next. I'm thinking if I cut the H4 connector off of the ballast and solder on the 3-prong connector for the headlight cable, I might be able to route the ballast outside the shell and still fit the fan and heat sink in the bucket. It will be extremely tight, if it's even possible.

The stock plastic housing is abymally bad, by the way. It doesn't even keep the H4 bulb centered in the housing. I was noticing my headlight was pointed off to the left when I rode it last night, and today I confirmed that the bulb can move about 3mm left, right, up, or down in the stock reflector. H4 filament location is critical for aim and focus - We're talking down to fractions of a millimeter ideally. The stock reflector is just junk. It can't precisely locate the bulb, and it's made of melt-prone plastic.

I fortunately had a spare 5.75 reflector laying around from a project bike, and it went in with only a little cursing.

Hrm, what next. Oh... the bike seems to run better on warmer days. It seemed to struggle to maintain 65mph indicated, where the other day it was handling it no problem. The only real difference is the temperature.... it's cold and rainy today. When it was almost 70 outside it seemed to have a little more oomph.

I like the stock tires. I purposefully went out in the rain today and I couldn't get the front to lock up, even when dropping anchor on wet roads. The bike stopped on a dime with no drama. I could make the rear lock up if I tried, but not the front. When the rear did lock up, the slide was predictable and easy to recover from. No sideways drama, even when trying to lock it when crossed-up on purpose. Accelerating hard on wet painted crosswalks and the white lines at stop lights never broke the rear wheel loose. The only time it did break loose was on a wet manhole cover, and even then it was only for an instant. I could carry speed in turns on a wet road just as easily as on a bone dry road, and I felt quite confident. There was no sliding, no squirrely handling, the bike performed flawlessly. I think the stock tires are quite good, and I will likely replace them with the same tires from SSR when they wear out.

Charles.

[ChopperCharles]

One last thing. The headlight was my first mod. My second mod is the rear brake pedal. I removed the 12mm nut on the shaft and adjusted the 10mm nut all the way down to seat on the little clevis that is attached to the back of the brake pedal. I had to take a bastard file and remove just a little bit of material from the brake pedal so the shaft didn't contact it. This puts the brake pedal at the perfect location for me -- below my foot. I didn't like having to reach my toes up and slide them over to engage the rear brake. I like to hover on top of or right next to the brake pedal without having to lift my foot up to put it on the brake. I find it gives me more control, and I'm less likely to STOMP the brake by accident. The only way to adjust it down enough was to remove the nut.

Charles.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Azhule

Charles was most likely passing on what I have stated several times on this site...

OK. Thanks for stepping up!

I followed the links you gave and wasn't particularly persuaded. For example, this graph from the first Denso link:



First, the "0.7 seconds faster!" caption is laughable. It reminded me of an old ad for a Morris Minor (a car I once owned) claiming "Zero to sixty in under 30 seconds!"

But more seriously, look at the graph on the left. It claims to compare acceleration with and without the miracle from 50kph to 150kph, yet if we take its labeling at face value, comparing that distance labeled 0.7 seconds to the whole x axis implies the 250cc test vehicle took about 2.5 seconds to accelerate from 50 to 150kph! I don't think so! This graph is clearly distorted to misrepresent the tiny claimed gain in performance. An accurate graph would show almost indistinguishable lines.

This is marketing, not scientific reporting. Whether or not 0.7 seconds is gained, the difference is too small to matter in practice I believe.

As for fake NGK spark plugs, I tried to educate myself on that too, and went out to my freezing garage to take another look. I didn't see any of the stigmata that NGK warns about on its "how to identify fake NGK spark plugs" page:

http://www.ngk-sparkplugs.jp/english...ake/index.html

The one thing that seemed suspicious at first was the absence of "JAPAN" stamped into the metal base. But it turns out that NGK makes spark plugs other places, too. Thinking about it a bit more, I decided that the absence of "JAPAN" probably means that it is an NGK, since a counterfeiter would be stamping "JAPAN" on the base alongside the other markings.

I really don't want to get involved this kind of discussion. So, though it was somewhat interesting to look over my plugs (twice), I think I should abstain from this topic. I do appreciate Azhule's presentation of his thoughts and evidence. Reasonable people may differ on what's worth worrying about.

I do agree that inferior bearings are a major problem, not just in Chinese bikes.

Buc

[Buccaneer]

Charles,

One great accessory to consider is a paddock stand. You will see a red one in a photo on the SSR website. Though it was listed in Poland as a Buccaneer part, the parts person at my dealer couldn't find an entry for it.

The swing arm is drilled and threaded to take paddock stand spools. I wound up getting a pretty cheap, very light stand called the "Club," from an Italian maker, Lightech:



It is available from motosport.com for $59. I got it after returning one of the cheapo, bolt-together Amazon/ebay stands in disgust. (Interestingly, Lightech mostly sells really expensive gear that is apparently very popular among professional racers including MotoGP.)

Buc

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by ChopperCharles

... The stock plastic housing is abymally bad, by the way. It doesn't even keep the H4 bulb centered in the housing. I was noticing my headlight was pointed off to the left when I rode it last night, and today I confirmed that the bulb can move about 3mm left, right, up, or down in the stock reflector. H4 filament location is critical for aim and focus - We're talking down to fractions of a millimeter ideally. The stock reflector is just junk. It can't precisely locate the bulb, and it's made of melt-prone plastic. ...

Well, maybe. Mine is perfectly centered and tightly focussed on the road ahead, so much so that I marvel at it. Compared to the old, simple parabolic H4 reflectors of my youth, it is astonishingly good, I find. Its lack of wattage is a problem, but what is has, it uses very well.

Buc

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by ChopperCharles

... the bike seems to run better on warmer days. It seemed to struggle to maintain 65mph indicated, where the other day it was handling it no problem. The only real difference is the temperature.... it's cold and rainy today. When it was almost 70 outside it seemed to have a little more oomph.

Mine was a bit reluctant on cold days until I replaced the defective rear O2 sensor. I hope lightning isn't striking twice here.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by ChopperCharles

I replaced the headlight today. I put in another 5 3/4 housing I had, and a 55/60 watt bulb. With this bulb the bike still makes 14.86 volts at idle... but with the high beam on and my heated gear, the voltage drops to 12.65 volts at idle. It goes back up above 14v by 3500 rpm, but at idle there's not really enough juice to run the heated gear. Anything below 13 volts at the battery is discharging.
Charles.

That's consistent with my experience running 70 additional watts of auxiliary lighting. It makes me think the alternator is inferior to the Nippon Denso unit Yamaha fitted. I hope you follow through with your bulb experiments!

Buc

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by ChopperCharles

Sit on an SR400. The Buccaneer feels a little bit bigger than the SR400, and the buck has a slightly more aggressive seating position (feet further backwards and a slight forward lean), but it's a pretty close comparison IMO.

Charles.

That's a good comparison. But one thing to remember is that the claimed weights differ by 101 lbs! And the MSRP's by $2400!

Below is another of those comparos I made up to the same scale, using published wheelbase measurements. You can see the unusual-size wheels of the SSR make it look a good deal different from the SR400 in profile.

Also, take note of that full-sized seat on the SR400. The "dual" seat for the Buccaneer is about 1/2" shorter than the cafe seat, if the cowling on the latter is included.

EDIT: I added an ergonomic triangle in orange dotted lines to help compare the seat-handlebar-footpeg relationships. You can more clearly see that the Buccaneer is midway between the SR400 and the Royal Enfield cafe racer in that respect.

Buc

[ChopperCharles]

Have you ridden your Buccaneer until it's completely out of gas? If so, what was the total range?

Charles.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by ChopperCharles

Have you ridden your Buccaneer until it's completely out of gas?.

No.

[ChopperCharles]

Do you check and adjust the valves every 2600 miles as per the maintenance schedule? Change the oil every 1200? This seems awfully frequent.

Charles.

[Buccaneer]

Yes. It's little trouble or expense, and keeps the warranty in force. After the warranty expires I'll evaluate how stable the tappets seem to be.

[culcune]

Originally Posted by ChopperCharles

Do you check and adjust the valves every 2600 miles as per the maintenance schedule? Change the oil every 1200? This seems awfully frequent.

Charles.

Not as frequent as scooters or dual sports, but I do imagine dealers, knowing it has to do with keeping the warranty intact, might charge dearly for such maintenance items.