How can these mini motos be so cheap?

I've been joking with my son that one day he can have one of those mini
moto bikes. He's still really too young and the offer isn't that
serious. But I have just noticed a website selling mini moto 49cc bikes
for £99.

http://www.ghostbikes.com/products....+POCKET+BIKES&subcategory=Ultra+Race+Replicas

His first bicycle cost £50, and that was a cheap one!

Surely actual motorcycles for this price cannot be of usable quality,
can they? The website claims: " These are the highest quality mini
motos on the market". Say what? At 99 quid? And they're in not too
accurate "replica colours" of Respol Honda and other motogp teams.

Being a great believer in "you get what you pay for", my gut reaction
is that there's obviously something wrong here. Can anyone with actual
knowledge of these bikes tell me the real story.

Thanks in anticipation,

Ross-c

 

Ross Clement (Email address invalid - do not use) said...

Basically they are shit quality Chinese copies of reasonable ones.

One of the reps on our firm had a cheap Chinese built mini-moto, he
crashed on his local Tesco carpark and the complete headstock broke off
the frame. If you can find spares for it you'll be lucky. The lifespan
of the clutch on a Chinese copy is measured in minutes from the time you
start the engine. Typical lifespan is around 120 minutes. Then you'll
need to find someone who stocks them, if there is anyone.

Those aren't the best mini-motos you can buy - Blatta and Polini are, to
name just two. Expect to pay upwards of 500 quid for a good condition
used proper one.

 

snip...

Hey, Loz. Do you do the Helmets for Keys MC's of Worthing? I only
ask because I was in there a couple of days ago and they said they
were binning their range of cheap Nitro helmets for Sharks instead.
Thought you might want to kick some old gits ass. Or not.

I bought a Justissimo.

 

They're cheap as chips Chinese cheese. To a certain extent you get what
you pay for, but some of the cheap Chinese goods are surprisingly ok.
Others are crap, of course.

 

Mike Barnard said...

Not one of mine. I do Beds, Bucks, Herts, Kent and inside the M25 with
the exception of those bits called Surrey.

 

Thanks. I must say I'm unsurprised by some of the comments here. A
quality clutch alone must cost about £99 I would have thought. In
terms of spares, and getting it repaired, most repairs would cost more
than £99 anyhow, so it may be cheaper to replace the whole bike!

I note that the only ad for a Blata mini moto on loot.co.uk prices it
at £220, and they're £500 new. So is the estimate of £500 upwards
for a proper secondhand one a bit high? Though, I note the ad says that
it's too fast for his 7 year old, and I have a six year old.

Cheers,

Ross-c

 

I fucking hope you bought a selection of ear plugs too. I love my
Justissimo, but they're a fucking noisy lid.


--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19

 

Are they having a sale of Nitro stock?

 

You will find most of the mini motos start off in china / vietman /
Korea these days components wise anyway , the quality depends on
whose controlling the manufacturing , European or japaneeze controlled
companies will produce reasonable products Chinese controlled an it
will be absolute crap

--

 

Fork out a few squids for the cheap one, let him break it, learn to fix
it, learn to curse it, and if he likes it, buy a proper one a bit later.

But hey, I dont have kids.

 

Methinks you layer honey on lard, but who wouldn't, for a trifle of 50
squids, allow their offspring access to the roar of the wind, the thrill
of power, the cursing of the right royal fuckwit that bestowed this heap
of shite on them?

Is it just me that thinks at 8 years old I would have killed for a
chance like this?

 

Thanks. They did pique my interest at that price. I emailed the
distributors and asked them how long the guarantee was for. They
replied very quickly (9am this morning it seems) that the guarantee was
7 days, parts only (!) They haven't responded yet to my question about
the sale of goods act section 14 saying that goods that failed within
six months of purchase were assumed to be faulty at the time of
purchase, and that the seller was in breach of contract. But I only
sent that one this morning so I shouldn't conclude too much.

The original website claims that "These are the highest quality mini
motos on the market". I thought that by UK law you weren't allowed to
make claims like that without proper evidence to back them up. As I'm
often a "very annoying person" (substitute other, stronger, words as
appropriate) when I see what I perceive to be consumer wrongs, which I
consider their "guarantee" to be, I've emailed Blata to ask them what
they think of that claim that these are the highest qualilty mini motos
on the market.

Cheers,

Ross-c

 

Unfortunately I am one of those sad people who left motorcycling behind
and never got back to it again. But once upon a time I was a teenager
whose elder brother crashed a Yamaha RD350, which caught fire. I bought
a second hand wiring loom and rewired it, and it actually worked again.
And I was allowed to use it as I'd rebuilt it. But I didn't get around
to repainting it or even really cleaning it up. So I was riding around
on a motorcycle that was ... black. And the front of the seat was
considerably, erm, charred. So I might actually have an idea of what
I'd be getting into if I bought the bike.

One of my pipe dreams is to get an oldish bike and convert it to run on
ethanol. Why? Because! But I don't think I'll ever get around to it. So
apologies to Nidge.

My cousins grew up on a farm. So they probably were riding bikes around
at 8. Different world now though.

Cheers,

Ross-c

 

I probably wasn't much older when I had my first bike. Rode it around on
the moors and on a new housing estate that wasn't complete but the roads
were tarmaced. It were great.

 

<Snip Ross/Rope conversation>

Oh, the irony.

 

Que?

Cheers,

Ross-c

 

Heh.

 

I was disappointed to read that that they're introducing random drug
testing for schoolkids. Or something like that, anyway.

Not that I could afford proper drugs when I was at school, mind.