[franque]

To belabor a point, because it's important (especially considering $10 for one oil change vs the price for a new engine, that she (?) would be paying to replace), it is standard procedure, even with 'name-brand' bikes to do an oil change within the first 100 miles or 10 hours of run time, give or take. I'm a professional mechanic, and I've done this more times than I care to count.

I'm not advocating 3 oil changes before 500 miles, I agree that that is generally unnecessary. The oil they ship with for the cheaper brands might as well be canola oil, that's the point that I'm trying to make. If you've verified that it's good oil, no worries, but if its just cheap corrosion preventative, you're unnecessarily shortening the life of the engine, and doing your friend a disservice. It doesn't matter if the engine is relatively cheap, it's around 1/3 the price of the bike for what could be something easily prevented.

With this specific family of engines (Honda CB, OHC, and CG, which are pushrod) , short of adding an oil cooler to manage oil temperature and increase oil capacity, the design brief is for 1l of oil every 1000km, so if it shipped with junk oil, I could easily see changing the oil before the first start, then second oil change at 100 miles, and the third at 700 (100 miles + 1000km).

Their oil filtration system is not a conventional filter, but a slinger, like older British bikes and pre /5 BMWs, and with a small amount of oil circulating, they tend to need the oil changed more often.

I have a Honda CB and I notice a huge difference in shifting when I change the oil at the 1000km mark, in some ways it seems excessive, but it makes a huge difference. I'm just trying to spare you and your friend a headache that could be solved with a $10 investment.

On to other stuff though, make sure to use plenty of locktite on anything subject to vibration, and for stuff like the fork pinch bolts, I would drill through, replace the bolt with a higher quality bolt, and put a nut on the back side. Many of the fasteners found on the cheaper stuff tend to be bargain basement quality, so for something like that, I would just switch to something stronger.

Glad to hear about the Halcyon, I think they're really interesting, they're just unfortunately out of my budget, but I'd love to own one one day! You should post up some pictures, and maybe start up a thread about it, I for one would be interested, but I think that there would be more people on here who would like to see it/hear your in depth impressions on it.