Well, I can agree with a lot of what has been writen above, now my HT story.
Myself, yes I read and read before I bought a kit and now realise that if I bolted it in out of the box It would have lasted maybe a few days or a week before either a mounting stud broke or pulled out of the cases and probably wrecked it and if I was lucky would have demounted the chain and threw me off.
I was riding a 2000 buck mountain bike to work and decided I didn't really want to wreck it and a cheap brand new bike wouldn't be up to scratch, so bought a bike, that had good quality frame, wheels etc. under 50 bucks that needed work.
Those of you that have seen pics of my bike will notice that I changed every bolt, all the cover and main case bolts I changed to 316 stainless, the mounts I originally changed to grade 8, they where shorter than the original studs as i wanted to bring the motor further down.
Still after a couple of times taking the motor out the threads pulled out of the cases.
The reason for R&R was trying to reduce vibration, I tried rubber mounting, but that made it worse the best was just mounting it tight.
Then the running, it never ran right from the start, I had pulled the barrel before I fitted it because I read of fileings in the covers and casting flash in the ports, and, badly mated manifold and exhaust.
There was 1 peice of "flash" in the exhaust port that fell off when I touched it with a screw driver.
So the ports where "cleaned up" the head, top of barrel and barrel base on the cases I machined flat and made new barrel/head studs.
Removed the overly thick base gasket, (the piston was sitting about 3 mm down the cylinder) and machined off that ridge on the head.
It was countinually running rich, changed the plug and the lead, tried over and over to get the carb set, one time it hydrauliced, completley filled the engine with fuel, I pulled the bowl and could have my finger holding the needle up in the seat and fuel still passing, yes it was clean.
So I bought a jap carb and could not see how anyone on here could posibly have "ground out my manifold to perfectly match the inlet port" my port "unmodified" is about 1mm from the screw holes, without grinding "in to air" wasn't possible so made a new manifold (still not perfect fit).
Some tuning got it running pretty good, would almost do 60 km/h with the 44 tooth and was at last getting decent mileage, around 140 km a tank.
Then the CDI sh!t itself, no spark, got a new one, put it on and back to stage one, running sh!t again, so got a new mag, still running bad, so bought another CDI and MAG at the same time, still running bad, wet plug and carb seetings unchanged since I lost spark.
Changed the plug lead again, put a stainless wire one on, no differance, droped the needle, solderd the jet and redrilled, lmao made it to lean and broke the bottom ring and scored the bore, now its junk.
At the end of the day this thing has taken all my spare time just to keep it running and half reliable, Yes I have done 6800 km in six months, I know many have done lots of miles but I doubt many have done as many in such a short time.
With proventitive maintanence every single day, repacked all the bearings every 2 weeks with teflon grease, and still it "caned my bearings", 3 sets of wheel bearings, 2 sets of head stem bearings, 1 set BB bearings, then the 1 pair of 38 buck tyres, around (I lost count) 10 normal tubes, ( yeah I'm a dumb C U Next Tuesday, I learnt to fit thorn proofs and fill them with slime) 3 sets of lights (the vibration canes lighting kits) spark plugs, plug leads, cables, paint, chain lube, all them 316 stainless bolts, carb, air filter, automotive fuel hose, fuel filter, hose to mount the carb and air filter, 3 chain tensioners, 2 sets of front brake pads, the last set some d!ck at the bike shop told me "you need these ceramic blocks" cool, hand over 25 bucks, they where good for about a week and then they worse than the worn out ones, thats because they where for Ceramic rims, lol.
Anyway IMO yeah they are what you pay for, cheap and I guess nasty, I have ended up forking out nearlly as much as a brand new elec bike and my time can not even be added to equation.
I guess if you only want one to have a sunday ride and have and love the time for "tinkering and improving" they are "OK" (ok with a pinch of salt) other wise keep your bees and honey in your sky rocket and save for one of them nice 4 stroke kits (gebe, tanaka etc.) or buy a lecy bike.
I'm not disapointed as such, there is good things in the kit, the petrol tank,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,mmmm can't think of any more right now, but at the moment I now have my licence back and can ride my "real motor bike" again and drive my car when its raining, but this forum has given me a new interest, BOARD TRACKERS, I bought a 20 year old racer on the weekend with cotor pin cranks, reckon I can mount a Yamaha KT100 cart motor in there.
