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Post by rockynv on Mar 31, 2017 21:12:32 GMT -5
Spandi - I can pick up tomorrow morning a new Piaggio BV350 for a touch over $3,000 thats a fact. And no I won't abuse the relationship and make purchases for others. You won't see the prices published on-line either as you have to form relationships with people at dealerships in-person and not through the vaporous etherial internet to get good prices. If you go in with the attitude you have displayed here the price would probably end up at $4,000 to $4,500 or possibly even full MSRP. I today checked the local prices at the Brick and Mortor Chinese dealers in my area and many have given up on selling scooters over 50cc's however their middle of the road 50cc scooters (not even close to a Linhai) are about $1,500 plus State and Local fees and taxes while the Piaggio (not Vespa) 50cc bikes can be had for $1,799 or $299 more again plus the same State and Local fees and taxes. For what you get for the money if you ride more than a few thousand miles in you scootering lifetime the Piaggio if you shop around are a better deal. Anyways I have enough proof since I have done what I have claimed with the bike being ridden thousands of miles a year and can do so again tomorrow. Yes you do have to be a regular at the dealerships to maintain the connections/relationships with people and occasionally purchase at least some small item such as a bulb or bottle of oil however that pays off greatly over the long run. Again the Rocketa still has to have Florida excise tax, title fees (about $250) and sales tax so out the door prices both migrate up similarly so that is a moot argument and does not work. As a point of law in many juristictions even on an out of state on-line purchase if they do not charge you state and local taxes you are supposed to make a personal declaration to your state/county and pay them by the end of the calendar year. Yes many skirt that somewhat succesfully but technically you are still suppoesed to self declare and pay up. Note that I have not followed your lead and ridiculed you with pithy quotes, etc or lowered the bar of decorum so please stop going down that road. Rocky if you can get a good deal on a piaggio scooter fine, if the local dealership has become your social club, also fine. But please don't sit there and try to make me believe that a Chinese 50cc scooter is going for $1500 samolians (!) it just won't wash. Do I think you you got a fine machine at a very good price? Yep. You did very well for yourself, but a true comparison would be in what you would normally pay for such a machine and not against a Chinese scoot. And that should be enough satisfaction for anyone. What does it hurt to look and be open to possibly picking up what appears to be the impossible deal of a century and be riding a bike so far above and beyond what you thought you could afford in your wildest dreams? People who listen to you won't bother and will never get the chance while those that follow my lead could end up like me riding the bike of their dreams for ridiculasly little out of pocket and final cost. When I got mine it was like this can't be real and there has to be a catch floating around in the back of my mind (maybe a bit more to the front) until they handed me the keys and I rode off. At the time I did not have enough available cash available to purchase a Chinese bike either so you can't say it was because of my great wealth that this appeared affordable to me. It was actually the very first time I had been to that dealership which I had happened upon on a test ride after yet another repair on the Lance. I was riding by Parts For Scooters to touch base on how the repairs with their parts had worked out but they were already closed for the day. I really stopped at the Aprilia Dealership afterwards mainly to make use of their washroom and just fell into the deal when to be polite I checked out their bikes and parts counter to pay back a little something for using their water, soap and paper products. I say take a chance at the brass ring since you have very little to loose, don't be a defeatest. It could happen to anybody however you do have to get out of the chair and away from the keyboard to make it happen. The very positive experience can then stay with you for very many years. Local prices are what they are. I did not cherry pick and just walked into a Chinese clone scooter store. The did have a sign on the 50cc bike warning buyers not to be fooled into thinking a $499 Internet Special was just as good. I did see a $999 loss leader 50cc Chinese bike today however the quality was more on par with the $499 Internet Special with no oil filter, carb instead of fuel injection, lower quality styrene plastics instead or ABS or Polyprypolene, more pot metal instead of cast aluminum, etc, etc, etc. |
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Post by spandi on Apr 1, 2017 2:05:17 GMT -5
Rocky if you can get a good deal on a piaggio scooter fine, if the local dealership has become your social club, also fine. But please don't sit there and try to make me believe that a Chinese 50cc scooter is going for $1500 samolians (!) it just won't wash. Do I think you you got a fine machine at a very good price? Yep. You did very well for yourself, but a true comparison would be in what you would normally pay for such a machine and not against a Chinese scoot. And that should be enough satisfaction for anyone. What does it hurt to look and be open to possibly picking up what appears to be the impossible deal of a century and be riding a bike so far above and beyond what you thought you could afford in your wildest dreams? People who listen to you won't bother and will never get the chance while those that follow my lead could end up like me riding the bike of their dreams for ridiculasly little out of pocket and final cost. When I got mine it was like this can't be real and there has to be a catch floating around in the back of my mind (maybe a bit more to the front) until they handed me the keys and I rode off. At the time I did not have enough available cash available to purchase a Chinese bike either so you can't say it was because of my great wealth that this appeared affordable to me. It was actually the very first time I had been to that dealership which I had happened upon on a test ride after yet another repair on the Lance. I was riding by Parts For Scooters to touch base on how the repairs with their parts had worked out but they were already closed for the day. I really stopped at the Aprilia Dealership afterwards mainly to make use of their washroom and just fell into the deal when to be polite I checked out their bikes and parts counter to pay back a little something for using their water, soap and paper products. I say take a chance at the brass ring since you have very little to loose, don't be a defeatest. It could happen to anybody however you do have to get out of the chair and away from the keyboard to make it happen. The very positive experience can then stay with you for very many years. Local prices are what they are. I did not cherry pick and just walked into a Chinese clone scooter store. The did have a sign on the 50cc bike warning buyers not to be fooled into thinking a $499 Internet Special was just as good. I did see a $999 loss leader 50cc Chinese bike today however the quality was more on par with the $499 Internet Special with no oil filter, carb instead of fuel injection, lower quality styrene plastics instead or ABS or Polyprypolene, more pot metal instead of cast aluminum, etc, etc, etc. Rocky you got a fine machine at an unbelievable price. It will last you for years of trouble free riding pleasure. Anyone who was offered what? 1500-1600 off of MSRP would have been CRAZY not to take the deal. (Who knew that the humble jelly donut could have such an almost hypnotic coercive effect on salesman?) That is not to say someone who buys a Chinese scoot (and knows how to wrench) won't be equally happy. I have a Znen 250, which I (with more than a touch of OCD) rebuilt from the ground up and would not trade for anything. ( I'm still trying to figure out how you ended up with a cylinder head full of hollow spaces from faulty casting) BTW, awhile back I was on my home town of Washington DC when I spotted a very nice Atlantic 500, naturally I went over it with a fine tooth comb.and let me say if what you have is as nice as that was then you should have no problems and be very happy with your (lucky) purchase. |
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Post by rockynv on Apr 6, 2017 0:24:36 GMT -5
Spandi - I just double checked my facts with multiple locals and in Florida between 2010 and 2011 the Honda derived 250cc Chinese bikes sold at Brick and Mortor dealerships when the Piaggio/Aprilia 250's were selling for $2,999 wer indeed $2,599 to $2,799 and the Vog 260 Monoshock Bikes such as the Tank Vog 260 were selling for $3,299 to $3,499. I pays to shop around and not listen to Internet Rhetoric as Chinese bikes are not always the cheapest way to go. My bike was several hundred dollars cheaper than the VOG bikes and equal in cost to less expensive than the Honda derivatives after considering the much larger trade-in value the Piaggio dealers offered compared to the no-existant to $100 from the clone dealers. Again I am only talking about buying at local brick and mortor dealers and not sight unseen from drop shippers with little to no real support after the purchase.
Everyone across the USA was offered the same $2,999 price that I got and then for two years after that everyone in the country could have taken advantage of the $2,599 price on the Aprilia 250cc bikes. It is only since then that I have spent 30 minutes to an hour each year maintaining a few relationships at the local dealerships. Much less time than you have denying this or twisting things around. People who listened to the likes of you missed out on that deal however eveyone on this forum who walked into an Aprilia Dealership or contacted MotoInternational in Seattle during those years not days or moments could have made exactly the same deal.
Today you have to look and work harder for it however its well worth the effort as you usually end up with a vastly superior product and not have to go through the OCD remanufacturing of the bike to make it right. Its like the original poster said, part or the "Trial and Error".
As for the castings being weak and having defects, Lance themselves warned me about the issue with the stock heads along with most replacements being inconsistant in quality as did several local mechanics that worked primarilly on Chinese bikes with problems. The local mechnics usually had a stock pile of bad heads waiting to be stripped down so they could be sold to the local scrap yard for the best price for the low grade aluminum that they were made from. They did turn me to Parts for Scooters as a sorce of better quality heads and Matt over there has more than proven that they are a few step ahead of the competition.
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Post by w650 on Apr 6, 2017 5:24:57 GMT -5
Maybe because Lance was sold through dealers who repaired them I never heard of weak cylinder heads on Scootdawg back then. It was a time when scooters were selling like hotcakes and many manufacturers cut corners on Quality Control to rush scooters here because of rising Gas Prices. Even Piaggio suffered. modernvespa.com/forum/topic152268?highlight=engine+destroyedApparently this was a common problem with the 250 engine and even some of their 150s dropped valves. Heads weren't a problem on most of the online scooters and my Bashan and CF Moto have been solid in that department, knock on wood. |
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Post by cyborg55 on Apr 6, 2017 9:15:26 GMT -5
I've gotten several "leftover" new model bikes for a little better than half price,,,my 2013 one year left over Genuine Stella for $2300 out the door,,msrp was way north of that,,,got a Kawasaki zxr1200 2 year left over for $5000 flat out the door,,again a little more than half price,,,and both were tax tags everything out the door,,,got a Yamaha sx650 demo bike with 300 miles on it tagged out the door $900,,,,and another one just popped in my mind a Suzuki tl1000s leftover for just a tick over half price,,,so the deals are out there,,,it's a matter of right time right place for me anyways,,,I generally by used ,,I have a serious allergy to msrp ,,,
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Post by rockynv on Apr 6, 2017 13:19:00 GMT -5
Maybe because Lance was sold through dealers who repaired them I never heard of weak cylinder heads on Scootdawg back then. It was a time when scooters were selling like hotcakes and many manufacturers cut corners on Quality Control to rush scooters here because of rising Gas Prices. Even Piaggio suffered. modernvespa.com/forum/topic152268?highlight=engine+destroyedApparently this was a common problem with the 250 engine and even some of their 150s dropped valves. Heads weren't a problem on most of the online scooters and my Bashan and CF Moto have been solid in that department, knock on wood. The thread is mostly about Sym and Chinese head failures in comment on one or two Piaggio valves dropping so I am not following your logic here. If I walk into a Piaggio dealer and asked about a bad head for me to experiment with having bigger valves put in, porting etc the answer is that they do not fail that often so we never had one come through here while at the Chinese dealerships they usually have a pile of them so thats what I know as fact verified in person. When I spoke with Lance directly and they told me its a know industry wide problem across the board I had to believe them. All the local scooter mechanics I spoke with agreed with Lance on the recomendation that when you replace a head on a Chinese 150 to go on the low side of the torque settings on the studs and tighten the side cover screws, after applying a very small amount of light duty LocTite, to just barely beyond when they initially seat using a nut runner screw driver and refrain from torquing them or using any kind of wrench on them. When I first got my Lance I found afterwards one of the more common issues was with the Chinese 150 dropping valves and destroing piston tops and with them going lean at high speed and burning holes in the pistons along with toasting valves. I haven't gone so senile yet as to forget the trials folks went though with the Chinese 150cc bikes a few years ago. Anyways with the pollution issues in China and more strick enforcement of environmental regulations they are going to have continue raising prices so now more than ever it will pay to shop around locally in the mainstream as you can find great deals on new and demo European, Japanese and Korean bikes that will be less of a trial with 100% dealer supported warranties that cover parts and labor along with many times provide a loaner bike or at least a curtosy shuttle to and from the dealership. Mind you though that there are some folks who will destroy the best engineered equipment in the world telling you it was defective when it really was their own fault. My stuff usually lasts me a lifetime unless someone else touches it. I had a Jacobsen Lawn Mower that ran perfectly for years and easily had another 10 to 20 years left in it that I let my nephew borrow which he destroyed in a few weeks. The brand new name brand mower he bought after they only lasted one season and turns out that all equipment he touches fails in very short time. Turns out his dad is the same way and will destroy most powered equipement in very short time so we have learned especially not to buy a fairly new used car from him as in few short years he can still wear the best of them out. The only thing that stood out with the nephew was the Stella 125cc 2 stroke which was realatively trouble free as his daily ride for about 10 years which was probably because the oil tank sensor would not let him start the bike unless it had oil in it and it had a manual transmisson with no CVT to service. |
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Post by w650 on Apr 6, 2017 14:05:24 GMT -5
The thread is mostly about Sym and Chinese head failures in comment on one or two Piaggio valves dropping so I am not following your logic here.
Bill Leuthold commented that it's a fairly common problem in the thread. He noted two engines in a warehouse with the blown valves. The OP noted the problem and further on was a picture of valves with different lengths from a person who had the problem two years ago. BUT. Mind you though that there are some folks who will destroy the best engineered equipment in the world telling you it was defective when it really was their own fault.Absolutely. That was always my opinion back then much as it is today. My own experience with China scoots didn't match the overriding opinions. I still have my original fuel and vacuum lines and tire valves to this day, nine years later. My stuff usually lasts me a lifetime unless someone else touches it
Again, Absolutely. My H-1 500cc Kawasaki lasted my just fine in a time when they were supposed to be hand grenades. I expect my Fashion and Bashan to be my last scooters. I know how they're built, what they're really capable of and how to use them. As I said in Modern Vespa,  % of reliability on anything rests in the owners hands.
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Post by spandi on Apr 6, 2017 14:49:33 GMT -5
Spandi - I just double checked my facts with multiple locals and in Florida between 2010 and 2011 the Honda derived 250cc Chinese bikes sold at Brick and Mortor dealerships when the Piaggio/Aprilia 250's were selling for $2,999 wer indeed $2,599 to $2,799 and the Vog 260 Monoshock Bikes such as the Tank Vog 260 were selling for $3,299 to $3,499. I pays to shop around and not listen to Internet Rhetoric as Chinese bikes are not always the cheapest way to go. My bike was several hundred dollars cheaper than the VOG bikes and equal in cost to less expensive than the Honda derivatives after considering the much larger trade-in value the Piaggio dealers offered compared to the no-existant to $100 from the clone dealers. Again I am only talking about buying at local brick and mortor dealers and not sight unseen from drop shippers with little to no real support after the purchase. Everyone across the USA was offered the same $2,999 price that I got and then for two years after that everyone in the country could have taken advantage of the $2,599 price on the Aprilia 250cc bikes. It is only since then that I have spent 30 minutes to an hour each year maintaining a few relationships at the local dealerships. Much less time than you have denying this or twisting things around. People who listened to the likes of you missed out on that deal however eveyone on this forum who walked into an Aprilia Dealership or contacted MotoInternational in Seattle during those years not days or moments could have made exactly the same deal. Today you have to look and work harder for it however its well worth the effort as you usually end up with a vastly superior product and not have to go through the OCD remanufacturing of the bike to make it right. Its like the original poster said, part or the "Trial and Error". As for the castings being weak and having defects, Lance themselves warned me about the issue with the stock heads along with most replacements being inconsistant in quality as did several local mechanics that worked primarilly on Chinese bikes with problems. The local mechnics usually had a stock pile of bad heads waiting to be stripped down so they could be sold to the local scrap yard for the best price for the low grade aluminum that they were made from. They did turn me to Parts for Scooters as a sorce of better quality heads and Matt over there has more than proven that they are a few step ahead of the competition. Oh Rocky, there you go again, nice try but no soap. You're still trying to stack the deck, when you know full well that 99.999 percent of the buying public will make their scooter purchases online (the reason Amazon and eBay are HUGE) and will get that so-called $2600.00 Chinese scooter off the net for $999.99 As for my rebuild, it wasn't really necessary, but I did it as a labor of Love, using such high end components that nether Aprilia or Honda could afford to manufacture it's like and still hope to sell at a profit. So there you have it, my "pithy" judgment has once again been proven infallible...(well, at least 99.9 percent of the time.) |
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Post by SylvreKat on Apr 6, 2017 21:55:31 GMT -5
Mind you though that there are some folks who will destroy the best engineered equipment in the world telling you it was defective when it really was their own fault.Absolutely. That was always my opinion back then much as it is today. My own experience with China scoots didn't match the overriding opinions. I still have my original fuel and vacuum lines and tire valves to this day, nine years later. My stuff usually lasts me a lifetime unless someone else touches it
Again, Absolutely. My H-1 500cc Kawasaki lasted my just fine in a time when they were supposed to be hand grenades. I expect my Fashion and Bashan to be my last scooters. I know how they're built, what they're really capable of and how to use them. As I said in Modern Vespa, % of reliability on anything rests in the owners hands. But sometimes your vehicle fails you, even with the best of care and not letting anyone else use him, and you're forced to replace him with a newish car and sell him to some stranger who you can only hope loves and cares for him like you did. >'Kat  |
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Post by w650 on Apr 7, 2017 0:00:12 GMT -5
You are so right Kat. Generally with scooters that should take a long time in my part of the world. If I lived in the southern part of this Country I might ride enough to put over 10,000 miles a year, every year, on my two wheeled stuff. I've worn out cars. They lasted over 200,000 miles usually before I gave them up. In my life I have had one bike go over 100,000 but I'm too old to see that again. I kept it that long by not beating it up, doing the maintenance and appreciating it for what it was.
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Post by rockynv on Apr 7, 2017 4:06:10 GMT -5
Spandi - Your 99.9% dosen't wash as most of the Chinese bikes I have inquired about that are being sold on Craigs List here in the Tampa to Orlando area down to Nokomis and up to Jacksonville were purchased at local dealerships in Florida not on-line. I am not going to lie to support your warped presentation of how things are where I live. Most folks I know refuse to do business with Ebay Vendors and have a very dim view of internet only shops that sell scooters especially. Too many operations that sell bikes on the internet only seem to change their corporate names every year or so to sidestep prosecution. Today I did a search for 250cc and up Chinese scooters and found few online vendors still selling them. I did not cherry pick to be fair and TxPowerSports was the first one that came up that finally did have a 250 and it was $2,620 (special reduced sale price) with the 300cc at $3,499 however neither of them had anywhere close to the 465 lb carrying capacity of my bike or were even close on the Interstate crusing capacity. www.txpowersports.com/Cougar_Cycle_LEGEND_250cc_Scooter_p/cougar-legend-250cc.htmwww.txpowersports.com/new_icebear_T9_300cc_scooter_PMZ300_T9_p/pmz300-t9.htmWe have 5 or 6 and probably more local dealers of Chinese bikes within 15 miles of where I live and there are many more if you live across the Bay in Tampa proper and their prices seem competative with TxPowerSports so why do business sight unseen over the internet when you can get an easy to register dealer titled bike right here with a temprorary tag on it that you can ride immediatly for the same to less money. |
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Post by w650 on Apr 7, 2017 5:12:08 GMT -5
Yes, dealers are not selling 250 scooters online much since 65% of the market is 50cc. Many B&M dealers don't sell big scooters anymore either. Yamaha and Aprilia for two. They both sell Asian made 50cc scooters though. The market these days seems to be 250cc motorcycles online and I for one would love to try one especially the ones from Bashan. My experience with Bashan has been exemplary as after nine years the 150cc scooter runs like new. I'm sure their motorcycles are even better based on my experience with my 50cc Bashan Cub clone. It has been the equal of Japanese bikes with zero headaches.
Not all online dealers are the Devil either. As I noted elsewhere GS Motorworks is still in business. Their prices are higher than other dealers selling Tao Tao for a reason. One, they don't import bikes with faulty components and Two, they're owned by Tao Tao USA who acquired the company years ago to learn what was the right way to build and support their products.
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Post by spandi on Apr 8, 2017 16:28:42 GMT -5
Spandi - Your 99.9% dosen't wash as most of the Chinese bikes I have inquired about that are being sold on Craigs List here in the Tampa to Orlando area down to Nokomis and up to Jacksonville were purchased at local dealerships in Florida not on-line. I am not going to lie to support your warped presentation of how things are where I live. Most folks I know refuse to do business with Ebay Vendors and have a very dim view of internet only shops that sell scooters especially. Too many operations that sell bikes on the internet only seem to change their corporate names every year or so to sidestep prosecution. Today I did a search for 250cc and up Chinese scooters and found few online vendors still selling them. I did not cherry pick to be fair and TxPowerSports was the first one that came up that finally did have a 250 and it was $2,620 (special reduced sale price) with the 300cc at $3,499 however neither of them had anywhere close to the 465 lb carrying capacity of my bike or were even close on the Interstate crusing capacity. www.txpowersports.com/Cougar_Cycle_LEGEND_250cc_Scooter_p/cougar-legend-250cc.htmwww.txpowersports.com/new_icebear_T9_300cc_scooter_PMZ300_T9_p/pmz300-t9.htmWe have 5 or 6 and probably more local dealers of Chinese bikes within 15 miles of where I live and there are many more if you live across the Bay in Tampa proper and their prices seem competative with TxPowerSports so why do business sight unseen over the internet when you can get an easy to register dealer titled bike right here with a temprorary tag on it that you can ride immediatly for the same to less money. I don't have a "warped" view. You simply failed to negotiate the sale correctly. You need to offer the dealer....A donut (it has the power to cloud men's minds so they cannot see they are selling it to you at far below cost.) Such is the hypnotic power of the humble jelly filled center! (BTW, the white zone is for loading and unloading only, if a you gotta load or unload do it in the the white zone.) |
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Post by rockynv on Apr 11, 2017 4:07:53 GMT -5
Spandi - We already covered that when I purchased my Aprilia it was as an unknown walk in yet you keep bringing networking and sharing a coffed break into the equasion.
It appears that you are not getting it yet that on the 250cc Aprilia deal this was not the case and that deal was not special just for me but rather available to everyone in the USA for over a year and then for two more years the 250cc bikes were available further reduced to $2,599 from the national distributor in Seattle Washington.
Even the forums sponsors sell their 250's in the price ranges that I have indicated Chinese 250cc scooters are selling for.
I am beinging to think your mind is getting lost in a white room some where. Time to change the dosage bud.
For the rest please check local prices at some of your mainstream dealerships for a while first before just assuming that a Chinese scoot will always be the better bargain or you could really loose out.
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Post by w650 on Apr 11, 2017 5:41:50 GMT -5
I'll have to back pedal myself on this too. I recalled late last night that when CF Moto was clearing house back in 2010 a 150,000 mile capable Fashion 250 could be had for $1500. Their equally reliable 150s were going for a mere $1100 with water cooling and fuel injection. Mine was one of those and I picked it up with 1800 miles for $1200. So I guess you can find a bargain under the right circumstances. I got my 250 for the price of a good 50cc China scoot. www.scootersus.com/cfmoto.html |
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% of reliability on anything rests in the owners hands.
