How I broke in my RX3

Gaijin · 06-24-2019, 02:44 PM

Hey all, just got back from picking up my RX3, and thought I'd share the story and some pics for those who may be interested, along with observations made during this 1500+ mile journey. This is going to be long, rambling, and have several pics, some effusive praise, some complaining, and some general nonsense, so -- buckle your seatbelts.

By way of introduction, I've got two bikes now:

This one's a 2018 Harley Fat Bob that I've customized quite a bit...

... and this one's a Benelli TNT 135, which is a Chinese bike. Designed by the Benelli engineers in Italy, and built in China by the Benelli parent company.

Complete opposite ends of the spectrum, I know, and that's what I like about them. The RX3 was intended to fill the hole in the middle, and be somewhat offroad capable. Seeing as I already had a Chinese bike, I hoped that I knew what to expect from the RX3.

First -- I got a 2018 RX3 with 39 miles on it. It was, for all intents and purposes, brand new. Ebay. Never bought a vehicle on ebay before. But the price was decent, he said "like new, excellent condition", and I decided instead of shipping it, I'd fly up there (Denver), inspect it, and ride it back. Spirit had a $67 plane flight, so -- why not? Plus, that way I'd get a chance to inspect it instead of having it shipped and dealing with any issues after the sale; didn't want to do that at all.

We arranged the exchange at the hotel lobby at the Denver airport. When I first saw the bike, I was seriously impressed.

I don't care who you are or what you ride, that's a good-looking bike, especially for the money! I had one guy ask me if it was the F850GS. So major props to Zongshen for making it full-size and good looking.

I inspected it, everything looked great, and it had even fewer miles than the seller said. He had said it had 183 miles on it when he listed it, but apparently he didn't see the decimal point(!), it had 39.3 miles on it.

So why does someone buy a brand new bike, ride it 18 miles and park it, then sell it five months later at a substantial loss? I couldn't see anything wrong with it, not that I'm any sort of Grade A mechanic, but I do know my way a little around a bike (been riding on and off for 40+ years) and I couldn't see anything amiss. I asked to take it around the parking lot for a test ride and he said go ahead. And that's when I discovered the problem.

THE BRAKES. Or lack thereof. This thing had two serious problems. First, the front brake pads, or should I say "pats", because when using the front brake it felt like the brake pads were big pats of butter, trying to get a grip on a disc that seemed about as slick as a Jimmy Dean sausage patty. There was little to no front brake grip at all. Now, fortunately, I knew about this issue going in; CSC had mentioned the issue in their break-in instructions on their website. You have to scrub in those front brakes with a bunch of simulated emergency stops in a parking lot, before you rely on them. CSC actually devotes an entire line to say "Brake early". Yeah, no kidding! If the previous owner didn't know this, he must have thought he was riding on a deathtrap, no wonder he only put 18 miles on it.

The second brake problem was the rear brake, in that ... there was no rear brake. At all. Zero. Stomp on the lever, and absolutely nothing happened. I asked the seller about it, and he said "oh, I never use the rear brake, I just engine brake." Yeah... not buying that. So now it became clear, the seller was dumping this bike because he thought it was fundamentally unsafe (and, in its current condition, it was). His guilt got to him though, he cut the price another $300 for me having to deal with the rear brake, so ... at this point, the price was $2,500 for a brand new bike with two eminently solvable problems, so I decided to go ahead. It's not my first bike, I know my way around issues, and I thought this wouldn't be a problem.

He took my cash quickly and got out of dodge, and I set about installing a battery tender and wiring a USB charger for my phone GPS and installing a phone holder and all that. I took the bike to the local Wal-mart and did a whole bunch of braking runs, squeezing the handle as hard as I could, and the front brake went from greased-butter to adequate. Yanking on the front brake brought about some satisfying fork dive now. With that, I was prepared to find a hotel for the night and start my grand adventure tomorrow.

Except -- it was hotel apocalypse in Denver! There were no hotel rooms available: zero, none, nada, zilch, zip, no room at the inn. Priceline, Hotels.com, Kayak.com, everybody came up blank, and driving down "hotel row" looking for "vacancy" signs was useless. Apparently there were several big events in Denver that night, and every room was sold out. So I decided, "eh, what the heck, I'll just head down to Colorado Springs, it's only an hour away."

Mind you, it's now past midnight, and Colorado gets rather cool after midnight. I had brought my mesh riding gear because I expected to be riding in the daytime summers, not in the 45-degree nighttime. But it was an adventure, so I set out.

Did you know that if you obey the RPM limit in the manual, an RX3 can go an absolute maximum of 45 mph? And that if you're varying the RPMs a lot, that means you're probably going from 35 to 45 constantly? So, at 40 mph, Colorado Springs is not an hour away, it was more like 2.5 hours away, especially because I had to take a circuitous state highway route to avoid being a rolling roadblock on the Interstate.

To paint the picture, my initial ride on the RX3 was with no license plate, no insurance, no rear brake, no sleep, and no hotel, no warm clothing, and nearly 3 hours in pitch black Colorado backroads in 45-degree weather, puttering along at an average of 40 mph. Adventure!

Then the rain started. That was annoying. BUT -- as with so many things in life, it was a blessing in disguise. I pulled on the rainsuit that I had fortunately thought to bring along, and it blocked all the wind getting through the mesh jacket, so I was a lot warmer the rest of the way. So that was good.

Never knew how much I relied on the rear brake until I didn't have a rear brake. I like rear brakes. I don't like not having one.

And the seat -- wow, that's not made for long duration rides, is it? I had some serious ache set in after about an hour, and I was riding for about three...

Eventually, near 3:30 a.m., I pulled into Colorado Springs, found a Super 8, and asked for a room. "Sold out." Really? Yes, they were 100% sold out. So I pulled up Priceline and Hotels.com etc., and found out that they are utterly useless once the clock strikes midnight -- you simply cannot book a room for a night that has already started, they would only allow me to book a room for the next upcoming night. The lady at the Super 8 made a couple of suggestions, which didn't pan out, so I parked my aching rump on the lobby couch, drank in the wonderful heat of the lobby, and set about calling every hotel, fleabag and roach motel that Google Maps brought up. And every one of them was sold out. On about the 30th call, after 4:00 a.m., I found one place that had one room, and I hightailed it over there as quick as I could. Settled in to grab maybe six hours' sleep before beginning the next day's adventure.

To be continued...

06-24-2019, 02:44 PM	#1
Gaijin Join Date: Jun 2019 Posts: 85	How I broke in my RX3 Hey all, just got back from picking up my RX3, and thought I'd share the story and some pics for those who may be interested, along with observations made during this 1500+ mile journey. This is going to be long, rambling, and have several pics, some effusive praise, some complaining, and some general nonsense, so -- buckle your seatbelts. By way of introduction, I've got two bikes now: This one's a 2018 Harley Fat Bob that I've customized quite a bit... ... and this one's a Benelli TNT 135, which is a Chinese bike. Designed by the Benelli engineers in Italy, and built in China by the Benelli parent company. Complete opposite ends of the spectrum, I know, and that's what I like about them. The RX3 was intended to fill the hole in the middle, and be somewhat offroad capable. Seeing as I already had a Chinese bike, I hoped that I knew what to expect from the RX3. First -- I got a 2018 RX3 with 39 miles on it. It was, for all intents and purposes, brand new. Ebay. Never bought a vehicle on ebay before. But the price was decent, he said "like new, excellent condition", and I decided instead of shipping it, I'd fly up there (Denver), inspect it, and ride it back. Spirit had a $67 plane flight, so -- why not? Plus, that way I'd get a chance to inspect it instead of having it shipped and dealing with any issues after the sale; didn't want to do that at all. We arranged the exchange at the hotel lobby at the Denver airport. When I first saw the bike, I was seriously impressed. I don't care who you are or what you ride, that's a good-looking bike, especially for the money! I had one guy ask me if it was the F850GS. So major props to Zongshen for making it full-size and good looking. I inspected it, everything looked great, and it had even fewer miles than the seller said. He had said it had 183 miles on it when he listed it, but apparently he didn't see the decimal point(!), it had 39.3 miles on it. So why does someone buy a brand new bike, ride it 18 miles and park it, then sell it five months later at a substantial loss? I couldn't see anything wrong with it, not that I'm any sort of Grade A mechanic, but I do know my way a little around a bike (been riding on and off for 40+ years) and I couldn't see anything amiss. I asked to take it around the parking lot for a test ride and he said go ahead. And that's when I discovered the problem. THE BRAKES. Or lack thereof. This thing had two serious problems. First, the front brake pads, or should I say "pats", because when using the front brake it felt like the brake pads were big pats of butter, trying to get a grip on a disc that seemed about as slick as a Jimmy Dean sausage patty. There was little to no front brake grip at all. Now, fortunately, I knew about this issue going in; CSC had mentioned the issue in their break-in instructions on their website. You have to scrub in those front brakes with a bunch of simulated emergency stops in a parking lot, before you rely on them. CSC actually devotes an entire line to say "Brake early". Yeah, no kidding! If the previous owner didn't know this, he must have thought he was riding on a deathtrap, no wonder he only put 18 miles on it. The second brake problem was the rear brake, in that ... there was no rear brake. At all. Zero. Stomp on the lever, and absolutely nothing happened. I asked the seller about it, and he said "oh, I never use the rear brake, I just engine brake." Yeah... not buying that. So now it became clear, the seller was dumping this bike because he thought it was fundamentally unsafe (and, in its current condition, it was). His guilt got to him though, he cut the price another $300 for me having to deal with the rear brake, so ... at this point, the price was $2,500 for a brand new bike with two eminently solvable problems, so I decided to go ahead. It's not my first bike, I know my way around issues, and I thought this wouldn't be a problem. He took my cash quickly and got out of dodge, and I set about installing a battery tender and wiring a USB charger for my phone GPS and installing a phone holder and all that. I took the bike to the local Wal-mart and did a whole bunch of braking runs, squeezing the handle as hard as I could, and the front brake went from greased-butter to adequate. Yanking on the front brake brought about some satisfying fork dive now. With that, I was prepared to find a hotel for the night and start my grand adventure tomorrow. Except -- it was hotel apocalypse in Denver! There were no hotel rooms available: zero, none, nada, zilch, zip, no room at the inn. Priceline, Hotels.com, Kayak.com, everybody came up blank, and driving down "hotel row" looking for "vacancy" signs was useless. Apparently there were several big events in Denver that night, and every room was sold out. So I decided, "eh, what the heck, I'll just head down to Colorado Springs, it's only an hour away." Mind you, it's now past midnight, and Colorado gets rather cool after midnight. I had brought my mesh riding gear because I expected to be riding in the daytime summers, not in the 45-degree nighttime. But it was an adventure, so I set out. Did you know that if you obey the RPM limit in the manual, an RX3 can go an absolute maximum of 45 mph? And that if you're varying the RPMs a lot, that means you're probably going from 35 to 45 constantly? So, at 40 mph, Colorado Springs is not an hour away, it was more like 2.5 hours away, especially because I had to take a circuitous state highway route to avoid being a rolling roadblock on the Interstate. To paint the picture, my initial ride on the RX3 was with no license plate, no insurance, no rear brake, no sleep, and no hotel, no warm clothing, and nearly 3 hours in pitch black Colorado backroads in 45-degree weather, puttering along at an average of 40 mph. Adventure! Then the rain started. That was annoying. BUT -- as with so many things in life, it was a blessing in disguise. I pulled on the rainsuit that I had fortunately thought to bring along, and it blocked all the wind getting through the mesh jacket, so I was a lot warmer the rest of the way. So that was good. Never knew how much I relied on the rear brake until I didn't have a rear brake. I like rear brakes. I don't like not having one. And the seat -- wow, that's not made for long duration rides, is it? I had some serious ache set in after about an hour, and I was riding for about three... Eventually, near 3:30 a.m., I pulled into Colorado Springs, found a Super 8, and asked for a room. "Sold out." Really? Yes, they were 100% sold out. So I pulled up Priceline and Hotels.com etc., and found out that they are utterly useless once the clock strikes midnight -- you simply cannot book a room for a night that has already started, they would only allow me to book a room for the next upcoming night. The lady at the Super 8 made a couple of suggestions, which didn't pan out, so I parked my aching rump on the lobby couch, drank in the wonderful heat of the lobby, and set about calling every hotel, fleabag and roach motel that Google Maps brought up. And every one of them was sold out. On about the 30th call, after 4:00 a.m., I found one place that had one room, and I hightailed it over there as quick as I could. Settled in to grab maybe six hours' sleep before beginning the next day's adventure. To be continued...
	4