Chinese bikes?

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

Read the WK400 thread and the real drawback of Chinese built and branded bikes is apparent...not so much the poor quality of some components as the lack of replacement parts. It's something that's not important in the Chinese market, as one of the ways they boosted their motorcycle industry was to have a five-year scrapage rule for bikes. There was no point in building them well, or having parts back-up for them.
I think that has changed now, but if you do want a Chinese bike, get one with a European nameplate as there's a fighting chance you may be able to get parts for it.
I've had good results from Mitox garden machinery. It's made in China, but seems to use a lot of Japanese components. Perhaps crucially, the machines are made to a British specification and the importers actually hold spares for them.

[Magnusson]

Read the WK400 thread and the real drawback of Chinese built and branded bikes is apparent...not so much the poor quality of some components as the lack of replacement parts. It's something that's not important in the Chinese market, as one of the ways they boosted their motorcycle industry was to have a five-year scrapage rule for bikes. There was no point in building them well, or having parts back-up for them.
I think that has changed now, but if you do want a Chinese bike, get one with a European nameplate as there's a fighting chance you may be able to get parts for it.
I've had good results from Mitox garden machinery. It's made in China, but seems to use a lot of Japanese components. Perhaps crucially, the machines are made to a British specification and the importers actually hold spares for them.

I cannot remember the last time I needed actual spare parts for a bike. I'm not talking about oils, tires, bearings, chains, sprockets, brake pads, but actual bike specific spare parts, like inside the engine. Not this century. Besides, if the bikes are cheap enough you don't look for spare parts if you crash your bike, you get yourself a new bike.

[Tonibe63]

Read the WK400 thread and the real drawback of Chinese built and branded bikes is apparent...not so much the poor quality of some components as the lack of replacement parts. It's something that's not important in the Chinese market, as one of the ways they boosted their motorcycle industry was to have a five-year scrapage rule for bikes. There was no point in building them well, or having parts back-up for them.
I think that has changed now, but if you do want a Chinese bike, get one with a European nameplate as there's a fighting chance you may be able to get parts for it.
I've had good results from Mitox garden machinery. It's made in China, but seems to use a lot of Japanese components. Perhaps crucially, the machines are made to a British specification and the importers actually hold spares for them.

I cannot remember the last time I needed actual spare parts for a bike. I'm not talking about oils, tires, bearings, chains, sprockets, brake pads, but actual bike specific spare parts, like inside the engine. Not this century. Besides, if the bikes are cheap enough you don't look for spare parts if you crash your bike, you get yourself a new bike.

I personally class the WK400 as a relatively old school Chinese bike, that's not a comment on their reliability or a snobbery viewpoint but it was built for the Asian market and appeared on our shores due to retailers spotting an opportunity for relatively cheap bikes at the smaller cc end of our market. More recently with the European brands now having midrange bikes manufactured in China I think it has and will continue to raise the quality of components and bikes destined for the European consumer. Personally I think we are overpaying for brands that we perceive as high end without knowing many of the parts/bikes are made in China but whilst the residual prices support the second hand market (or PCP figures) consumer retail prices won't change for European badges.

[fatowl]

I'm assuming that as Suzuki sell the DL250 as their own, they will support it fully, and provide spare parts etc, as they do for all their other bikes. The Inazuma, which the DL250 is based on, has been sold for a number of years, and I've not heard of any problems.

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

Due to the rear puncture on my Benelli I've been forced to get to know the bike more than I'd have wished but I have to say I'm pleased with how well the bike is built. Yes it's heavy and over engineered due to old technology materials but at the price of under £4.5k for a new 500cc twin giving 70mpg it's good value.
Recently I heard that the standard Tesla model 3's are now being built completely in China whereas the performance model is still 'assembled' in USA and looking at some of the other EV's that are planned to be built in China I'm not sure how European manufacturers are going to compete ......... apart from relying on badge snobbery for mainly Chinese components assembled in Europe.
Can't help thinking that the flood gates are about to be opened ........ the history of British car and bike industry repeating itself but on European/Japanese/World wide manufacturers???

Interesting point about the Tesla. Since the Model 3 appeared in the UK, the manufacturer has slid down the reliability tables and is now in the bottom 3 with Renault and Land Rover.
My brother had a new Volvo XC90 years ago...did about a quarter of a million miles in it until a 'reconditioned' water pump destroyed the engine. It was worked really hard, towed heavy trailers up tracks and across fields and did the usual school runs and Continental holiday stuff too.
So he got a replacement. Volvo now under Chinese ownership....it spent more time in the dealer than out of it and had basic build-quality problems like water leaking into the cabin. Compared to the proper Swedish Volvo, it was rubbish.
I had an interesting discussion years many ago with someone who had been a high-flyer in Ford of Europe. I asked him why cars were still even being built in Europe...South Korea, Thailand etc being cheaper.
He explained it like this. Automation of production means the labour element is a small cost in producing a car. The biggest cost is the design, testing etc needed to get the first production version built. You have to do that work where the skills, knowledge and facilities are. You need input from people who understand the markets that it will be sold in, and you need to run 'customer clinics' with the kind of people who are potential customers. You have to do this in your big markets. What a Chinese or Indian buyer wants may be very different to what a European or American buyer expects. It's easier with commercial vehicles, where the same things (payload, reliability etc) are important the world over. Hence Ford can build Transits in Turkey and pick-ups in Thailand.
Once you have the car production-ready, the two main things you need to make it are robots and sheet steel. There's a global price for robots, and (almost) a global price for high-quality automotive steel. So, unless you are building a new factory (in which case all kinds of incentives get offered), it costs pretty much the same to build a car anywhere in the world.
Another significant cost is getting the car from the factory, to the end-user. The automotive world is 'just in time'...you want to build to order and get the car to the customer asap (a big inventory of unsold cars can break you). You can't do this if there's a three month lag in the supply chain caused by a slow boat from China. You can't stuff cars into containers (shipping or air-freight) they have to go on specialist ro-ro ships. They get damaged, they get unloaded in the wrong country etc.
Every word of what he said was right. The Japanese have design facilities and car factories in the UK and Europe, the South Koreans and Americans likewise.
The automotive industry has long had a dream of building a 'world car' somewhere cheap and then selling it somewhere expensive. It's never worked. I once spoke to someone who designed steering-columns for a living....what an exciting life I lead! He said that even for a big company like Ford or GM, the Euro market wanted relatively heavy 'sporty' steering, and the American market wanted relatively light and unresponsive steering. Then the Euros wanted metric nuts and bolts, and the Americans didn't. He always ended up designing two different steering systems for the 'same' car sold on both sides of the Atlantic.

[Magnusson]

Due to the rear puncture on my Benelli I've been forced to get to know the bike more than I'd have wished but I have to say I'm pleased with how well the bike is built. Yes it's heavy and over engineered due to old technology materials but at the price of under £4.5k for a new 500cc twin giving 70mpg it's good value.
Recently I heard that the standard Tesla model 3's are now being built completely in China whereas the performance model is still 'assembled' in USA and looking at some of the other EV's that are planned to be built in China I'm not sure how European manufacturers are going to compete ......... apart from relying on badge snobbery for mainly Chinese components assembled in Europe.
Can't help thinking that the flood gates are about to be opened ........ the history of British car and bike industry repeating itself but on European/Japanese/World wide manufacturers???

Interesting point about the Tesla. Since the Model 3 appeared in the UK, the manufacturer has slid down the reliability tables and is now in the bottom 3 with Renault and Land Rover.
My brother had a new Volvo XC90 years ago...did about a quarter of a million miles in it until a 'reconditioned' water pump destroyed the engine. It was worked really hard, towed heavy trailers up tracks and across fields and did the usual school runs and Continental holiday stuff too.
So he got a replacement. Volvo now under Chinese ownership....it spent more time in the dealer than out of it and had basic build-quality problems like water leaking into the cabin. Compared to the proper Swedish Volvo, it was rubbish.
I had an interesting discussion years many ago with someone who had been a high-flyer in Ford of Europe. I asked him why cars were still even being built in Europe...South Korea, Thailand etc being cheaper.
He explained it like this. Automation of production means the labour element is a small cost in producing a car. The biggest cost is the design, testing etc needed to get the first production version built. You have to do that work where the skills, knowledge and facilities are. You need input from people who understand the markets that it will be sold in, and you need to run 'customer clinics' with the kind of people who are potential customers. You have to do this in your big markets. What a Chinese or Indian buyer wants may be very different to what a European or American buyer expects. It's easier with commercial vehicles, where the same things (payload, reliability etc) are important the world over. Hence Ford can build Transits in Turkey and pick-ups in Thailand.
Once you have the car production-ready, the two main things you need to make it are robots and sheet steel. There's a global price for robots, and (almost) a global price for high-quality automotive steel. So, unless you are building a new factory (in which case all kinds of incentives get offered), it costs pretty much the same to build a car anywhere in the world.
Another significant cost is getting the car from the factory, to the end-user. The automotive world is 'just in time'...you want to build to order and get the car to the customer asap (a big inventory of unsold cars can break you). You can't do this if there's a three month lag in the supply chain caused by a slow boat from China. You can't stuff cars into containers (shipping or air-freight) they have to go on specialist ro-ro ships. They get damaged, they get unloaded in the wrong country etc.
Every word of what he said was right. The Japanese have design facilities and car factories in the UK and Europe, the South Koreans and Americans likewise.
The automotive industry has long had a dream of building a 'world car' somewhere cheap and then selling it somewhere expensive. It's never worked. I once spoke to someone who designed steering-columns for a living....what an exciting life I lead! He said that even for a big company like Ford or GM, the Euro market wanted relatively heavy 'sporty' steering, and the American market wanted relatively light and unresponsive steering. Then the Euros wanted metric nuts and bolts, and the Americans didn't. He always ended up designing two different steering systems for the 'same' car sold on both sides of the Atlantic.

I'm told that the China made Tesla s don't have the Panasonic battery, making them about 100 kilos heavier and with shorter range. Something to look at if you're considering buying Tesla.

[Richard Simpson Mark II]

You see it time and again...build up a good rep building a product in the West, then off-shore to China and hope no-one notices the decline in quality and durability.

Hunter wellies, DM boots are two classic examples.

[paul_tim2000]

I've put products into manufacture in China (Electronics) but we employed a, non local, QA Manager who spent 80% of his time at the manufacturing facility to make sure that once everything was up and debugged it stayed that way and didn't drift. It actually worked out quite well and we had no major problems.
Tried the same thing with a E European facility in the early 2000's (Bulgaria) and had far more quality problems.

MInd you I once (and never will again) tried to subcontract with a facility in the USA, probably more difficulties than anyone else I've ever dealt with.

[Tonibe63]

Racked up 360 miles since buying my Benelli badged Chinese 500cc twin cylinder and a quick calculation shows it's getting 80mpg over a full range of roads. My 1200gs would be on high 40's mpg for no greater speed (there's only so far I dare push my licence).

[Elmer J Fudd]

There is a term in China: "Tofu-dreg" which describes cost cutting, cheating and corruption within the construction industry. Buildings have major defects, even collapse and it is actually very common.

China has the means to build good quality bikes, cars, buildings etc. The question is not one of can they? but will they?