Might jump off the fence

[hitechluddite]

Been thinking about picking up a Chinese 250 of some flavor for a couple years now. Forgiven1 has a video here that is very informative and I'm sure with some reading many of my questions will be answered. I am thinking about getting this for my soon to be 16yr old son that has went from Honda 50 to 70 to 80 to Kawasaki KE100. My first question is there any dealers that offer pickup of properly assembled bikes? I think to many it would be worth a couple hundred bucks for somebody to finish assembly and work out the bugs.

[franque]

It's better for you, or him to do it yourselves. The tips of people that get hired to work at a Chinese dealership aren't the type that I'd want setting up a popcorn machine, much less a motorcycle. Plus, you'll get to see how everything works, and you'll go over it with 100x more thoroughness.

[JerryHawk250]

I thoroughly agree with franque. Assemble it yourself and with the help of members on here, we can help you with anything you need help with.

[Bruces]

I think CSC is the only one worth trusting to properly assemble a bike ,but like the others said just do it yourself .

[Ol,fart]

I agree with everyone else. The bike would only take a couple hours to assemble, but I spent a couple of days redoing things I didn't like about the way China did it.
P.S. Red locktite everything.

[wmgeorge]

Originally Posted by Ol,fart

I agree with everyone else. The bike would only take a couple hours to assemble, but I spent a couple of days redoing things I didn't like about the way China did it.
P.S. Red locktite everything.

Please not Red, it requires heat to loosen. Blue is the right stuff.

[hitechluddite]

Thanks everybody! I'm certainly capable, it's the access to needed parts that I'm most concerned with. Do these bikes use any "Universal" parts i.e. do the sprockets cross to any Japanese bikes?

[Bruces]

Some do ,some don’t ,which bike are you looking at ?

[hitechluddite]

Tao Tao TBR7 but that's just because it came up first in Search
Really the availability of off the shelf parts is a big deal. If most of the parts can be sourced from a Japanese OEM you can easily fill lots of quality gaps as time goes by.

[Emerikol]

Originally Posted by hitechluddite

Tao Tao TBR7 but that's just because it came up first in Search
Really the availability of off the shelf parts is a big deal. If most of the parts can be sourced from a Japanese OEM you can easily fill lots of quality gaps as time goes by.

I've had a Hawk 250 for about five or six years now. The Hawks are a little lower on the Chinesium spectrum, but I don't have any complaints about mine at all. Do your homework and make sure you won't have any issues registering it, though. That seems to be the biggest hang-up that anyone who's purchased one has had. Other than that, all the upgrades and farkles are well documented and very easy to do, and Amazon has everything you could ever need (and a whole lot of stuff you won't ever need). My Hawk has been on multiple desert scrambles, and has quite a few miles on it. All in all, if I could do it all over knowing what I know now, I would still buy a Hawk and go down that same road again. For what you're describing, I think a Hawk would probably be a really good fit for your son's first bike. I would recommend the carb model over the EFI model, though. It just seems simpler and less likely to have any 'harder to overcome' issues. That's my two cents' worth though. YMMV.

[buzz]

Check out TBR7,like a hawk but I thinks it’s better. 1300 miles and no problems