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Post by bnc on Aug 18, 2014 15:00:05 GMT -5
I disagree that a 400 cc bike is in general safer than a 100 cc. There are circumstances where it might be true.
My recollection at MSF was that the most common single vehicle bike accident was excess speed into a corner and losing control while the most common two vehicle accident was having a car unexpectedly pull out in front of the bike.
In both these types of accidents being able to go faster is more of a problem than not being able to go fast enough. There was no discussion about needing more power to get of the way if you think you are going to be rear ended though.
There was some discussion that the impact energy of an accident goes up as the square of the speed. So if you hit and object at 30 mph, the impact energy at 60 mph is four times as great.
A mitigating factor is that larger bikes tend to have better brakes, disks front and rear and sometimes dual disks up front but that is partly offset due to the bikes being a lot heavier. My 125 was only about 200 lbs but my 250 is 375 lbs.
In my opinion the best reason for having a larger scooter is that ABS brakes are available for larger bikes but I don't know of any 100 cc that has them.
I have ABS and it is a different experience to be able hit the brakes as hard as you can but continue to maneuver just like you normally would. Plus my insurance rate dropped about 20%.
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Post by bnc on Aug 16, 2014 14:01:09 GMT -5
Make sure that it is currently registered or registered no operation. I made the mistake with the first scooter I bought of not realizing that. DMV wanted nearly $600 to register it because it was expired and not registered no op.
I have a friend who has a Burgman 400. He says Suzuki parts prices are way higher than Honda parts. Other than that he likes it.
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Post by bnc on Aug 14, 2014 15:26:46 GMT -5
Chip sealed roads as mentioned above might explain the huge difference. No chip sealed roads near me but a search of the Internet says chip seal can wear out your tires twice as fast or even faster.
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Post by bnc on Aug 14, 2014 1:12:38 GMT -5
I agree with shalomdawg. I also have a Reflex but I have 10,000 miles on the rear Bridgestone HOOP and still no where near the wear indicators. I mostly ride freeways at 65-70 mph.
If I were only getting 4,000 miles per tire, I might be looking at other options too but so far it is more like triple that.
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Post by bnc on Jul 30, 2014 15:54:31 GMT -5
I would be concerned too if I got that low mpg. I am about 160 lbs. but I get 68 mpg on average. The lowest I have ever gotten is 62 mpg. My Reflex has 29K miles on it so I am not far behind you. I would check all the fuel lines to make sure you don't have a slow leak.
That happened on my old Yamaha 125 when the hose to the fuel filter got hard and developed a tiny leak. The fuel evaporated quickly enough so I never saw any on the garage floor but I knew something was wrong because the 125 could get 92 mpg and it suddenly got worse.
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Post by bnc on Jul 3, 2014 23:17:51 GMT -5
Mine is off as much as yours according to my GPS. Because I have a tachometer, I tend to ignore the speedometer altogether since I know 7,000 rpm is about 65 mph and every additional 500 rpm is about 5 mph more.
I have looked into the problem but for a mechanical speedometer run by a spinning magnet and a hair spring which works against the magnet there is no easy solution. The spring is too weak so it does not work against the spinning magnet enough causing the high readings. Replacing the spring would not be unlike fixing a pocket watch. It is not a job for the faint of heart.
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Post by bnc on Jun 26, 2014 14:06:16 GMT -5
Is it an OEM belt. Some aftermarket belts are almost fits.
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Post by bnc on Jun 21, 2014 12:44:09 GMT -5
I replaced the festoon, incandescent light in the trunk with an LED light from eBay. Now I can leave the trunk open overnight with no problems.
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Post by bnc on Jun 7, 2014 2:52:00 GMT -5
Don't use the K&N filter. Over at the yahoo reflex group, they don't recommend it because it is a higher air flow filter that will lean out your mixture. Can you see the idle speed adjustment knob? Follow the brass colored mounting bracket for the idle speed knob to where it mounts on the carburetor body. The idle mixture adjustment is in the carburetor body just above where the bracket mounts. It requires a special D shaped tool to adjust it. I just carefully used needle nose pliers to remove it and used a Dremel to cut a slot in it so a regular flat blade screwdriver will now work. Others have bought a piece of brass tubing from a hobby store and put a flat on one side. That seems to work too.
That shudder at take off is pretty normal from what I learned at the yahoo group. Mine does it too. Now has 27,000 miles on it.
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Post by bnc on Jun 2, 2014 22:21:55 GMT -5
I grew up next to a shop and know there is truth to this but at the same time those shop guys and gals treated us kids well. When I have a few extra bucks I sometimes just let them do the job even if I can do it myself because I don't think they are getting rich more like getting by.
There are several used Honda motors on ebay right now for less than $300 and as long as you pay US labor rates the cost to put it in will about the same.
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Post by bnc on Jun 2, 2014 21:29:53 GMT -5
My point was the Chinese bike dealer quoted $280 + parts to rebuild my carburetor and the Kawasaki/Honda dealer quoted $300 + parts. The cost is all in US labor not material. The Chinese dealer's shop works on other brands too.
In both cases, the quote included the shop taking carburetor out of the bike although with the Chinese bike dealer I offered to supply him with shop manual because he didn't have one.
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Post by bnc on Jun 2, 2014 20:45:44 GMT -5
When I was shopping for a Chinese scooter, they told me their shop rate was $100/hour. As I was waiting, the person in front of me was quoted $175 just to determine what was wrong. The Kawasaki/Honda dealer's shop rate was $110/hour. I was quoted $350 for a carburetor rebuild but the parts were less than $50 of the total. No matter where the bike came from, here we have to pay US labor rates.
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Post by bnc on Jun 2, 2014 16:45:48 GMT -5
Here is some food for thought. My first job out of school was with a manufacturer that produced a product so unreliable that it was guaranteed to fail within its warranty period. The company was not very happy to have to absorb all those warranty repairs costs.
I was part of the team working on the replacement product. There was tremendous effort and concern that this chapter in the companies history not be repeated.
One big problem we found was that it was not possible to simply assembly a product and have it be reliable. There was the issue of infant mortality. These were failures caused by parts that were weak but were able to pass incoming inspection tests. If they were assembled into the product and the entire product burned in for several days at elevated temperature most of the infant mortality failures were caught before the product left the plant.
For those who want to save money with a crated or kit product, one of the consequences will be that the reliability can never be as high as an assembled product that has undergone final test and inspection no matter who manufactures it.
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Post by bnc on Jun 1, 2014 17:51:34 GMT -5
I never really considered a crate scooter. I was looking at them at dealers and was planning on paying their prep charges but I never got any further when I found out about the "pseudo" ABS. That creeped me out so much that I abandoned the idea altogether. I also have no doubt that Chinese scooters will improve with time and that some brands may be better than others. I have Chinese made Nikon binoculars and they seem just as good as my older Japanese ones.
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Post by bnc on Jun 1, 2014 16:45:16 GMT -5
I used to belong to the Yahoo Honda Reflex group, but there is a significant difference between the posts there and here. It's rare to see a post over there about broken switches, cables, etc. especially on newer bikes. Here it seems much more frequent. I do recall a guy blew up his motor, but most posts are more like I bought a used Reflex and it idles poorly, etc. or how do I change my belt, or my water pump is leaking (the most common response being that if a silicate based coolant was used, the mechanical seal will be destroyed).
I thought about buying a Chinese made bike first but I wanted true ABS. There were a lot of stories on the Internet that ABS on Chinese bikes was not really ABS but just a pressure limiter to prevent maximum brake pressure from ever being applied. The Reflex ABS works just like on cars with sensors that measure the speed of the front and rear wheel and a separate computer to prevent traction loss.
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