1) Uncrate / Front Wheel:
- Uncrate. Remove plastic wrap, plastic shipping straps, and cardboard.
- Disassemble steel shipping case by unscrewing and removing nuts.
- Open the parts box, identify the panels, sort and organize. Read Owner’s Manual.
- Install the cable retention brackets to both front forks before installing the front tire.
- Remove front axle from shipping case by loosening the axle nut and then tap out the
axle bolt from the retention bracket on the steel shipping case.
- Jack up the front and install the front tire. Remove the shunt from between the front
brake pads. Add the speedometer connection to the right hub. There is an arrow for
proper orientation that points up. There is a point on the right fork – the cable should be
routed below this. On the left side, install the additional bearing that is included with
the speedometer connection. The front rotor should line up with the front break pads.
- Lightly grease the front axle bolt and then install through the fork, speedometer, tire,
bearing, fork. You may have to adjust the pinch bolts for one or both forks to get things
to line up correct or to make installation easier.
- Loctite to the thread of the bolt, tighten front axle nut to torque as specified in
owner’s manual (45ft/lbs).
- The front forks should be adjusted to an introductory level, an inch or two at the top;
final adjustment and setting the pinch bolts will be done later.
2) Controls:
- Now that it’s up on two wheels, jack it up and install the rear shock bolt. I lightly
greased this bolt as well, then loctite and torqued the nut to 33ft/lbs. That wasn’t
specified in the owner’s manual, but seemed to be a pretty common value for other
similar bikes.
- At this point, I inflated the tires to the pressures in the owner’s manual, 40lbs front,
32lbs rear.
- Installed the kick stand spring. (PITA – needed vice grips and someone else to hold the
motorcycle why I pulled it into place.)
- The handle bar went on next. I centered it, aligned it vertically and set the caps and the
4 bolts that go with them. Just hand tightened at this point – strong enough to push it
around, but not set in case they need to be adjusted.
- Installed the clutch control. Again, just hand tightened, final adjustment later.
- Installed rear brake pedal. Lighty greased and installed, capped with washer and cotter
pin. Pulled the pin from the hydraulic connection, then reinstalled through the hole at
the end of the pedal bracket. Added brake spring, and spring for the brake light switch.
Trimmed the cotter pins.
- Install and loctite the rear turn signals.
- At this point, I made sure it was in neutral and gave the brakes a quick test. First
stationary, then on my driveway which provided a slight slope. All good.
3) Panels/Battery:
- Now on to the panels, but before that, it’s a good time to remove and charge the
battery from under the left body panel. The left side panel was the only one installed
when shipped. The battery is “some assembly required” as in the acid is in a separate
container. You should look up how to do this as the initial charge of a lead-acid battery
is a special case, and it will determine its long term behavior. Reinstall when correctly
charged.
- The screws should have a metal washer on the head of the screw and a rubber washer
on the panel side. Loctite all of them:
- I used 3 mid-length screws for the plastic assembly over the muffler. This was a
weird fit, and I had to twist the plastic a bit, but it worked. Don’t tighten the
screws down all the way until all three are installed, it’ll allow for some twisting.
- The front tank panels used 2 short-length screws. There is also a bracket that
ties them together, this also took 2 short-length screws where the bracket
connects to the two panels, and a longer screw where it connects to the frame at
a rubber mount point to hold it all together.
- The two body panels both used longer-length screws, and I did have to bend
the right side bracket where it mounted to get it aligned. The right side bracket
has a tight fit under the back part of the seat, a large flat head screw driver
works well to press the rear tab into place under the muffler panel.
- There were 4 rubber grommets included that go with the front fender. Install
them first into the holes in the fender then use the 8mm bolts and washers to
mount above the front wheel.
4) Electrical / Cabling:
- At this point, I jacked up the bike and set the front forks. There are 6 pinch bolts, set
them to 16ft/lbs per the owner’s manual.
- The front break cable had a rubber grommet and a plastic ring to help guide. The
rubber grommet fit into the left cable retention bracket. The plastic ring needed some
help, but I was able to squeeze it into the other loop retention bracket farther up on the
fork. I did have to remove the retention bracket and shape it a bit to snap the ring into
it.
- Install the speedometer. This has three bolts that fit through pre-installed rubber
mounts. Use the nuts provided (and loctite) to bolt down.
- The speedometer cable is pretty stiff, and now is the right time to start looking at how
the cables and wiring should optimized. There are several cables: clutch, throttle, front
brake, speedometer, and various wiring connections that all have to be made
immediately behind the headlight. The headlight itself needs room to fit above the
wiring harness. With a little adjustment most of the cabling falls into place, and the
speedometer cable sits to the outside and somewhat retains the others. Loctite it to the
speedometer.
- The various electrical connections can now be made from the handle bars and
speedometer. These are pretty much just matching up colors and shapes.
- Install/loctite the front turn signals and connect the wires.
- Final electrical and body connection is the headlight. Connect the electrical connector
and the two additional wires. There are two small rubber mount points that accept
plastic pins on the bottom of the headlight assembly, line these up and rotate the
headlight into place. If the cabling and electrical connections were done correctly, there
should be a space to accept it, then line up the screw positions – I used the remain two
small screws with loctite.
- Last thing I did was realign and secure the handlebars, loctite and torque to 16ft/lbs,
same as pinch bolt specification and similar to what I saw for other bikes. Added the
stylish “Hawk” bar protector, and it was done!
At this point, I went over everything I did, and double checked all the connections,
screws, bolts, nuts, electrical, etc. Made sure I had added loctite, double checked that I
had torqued things correctly, especially the values that were listed in the owner’s
manual, and just gave it an all around inspection.
5) Starting for the 1st time:
- Change the oil before starting it up. I expected this to be some type of cheap mineral
oil from some of the comments, but what they had in there looked to be a decent
viscosity. However, the real problem that made me glad I did this was that there was
only half the recommended amount. I put in 1.6qt of 15W-40 per the owner’s manual.
- Put gas in the fuel tank (duh) and set the fuel valve.
- Find the choke on the carburetor. There are three settings on the stock Sheng Wey
PW30 (open, half, closed). For me, I had to set the choke to half to get it firing.
MAKE SURE TO START OUTSIDE. An open garage door will not suffice. Hopefully there’s
a light breeze.
- Set the choke as needed, turn on, confirm neutral, set kill switch, and start it up. After
it warms up a bit, make sure to open the choke. It should idle, but adjust with the idle
adjustment on the carb if needed.
- However, before you calmly adjust the idle setting, if your bike is like mine, you will
briefly think it’s on fire or you have a serious oil leak. This is probably the paint, or more
likely a light coat of oil that they sprayed things with to prevent corrosion during
shipping, but it will burn off when it first gets up to temperature. Try not to be alarmed.
- Once your bike stops sending out smoke signals, put it in gear and away you go.