I bought a ten year old 125cc 2-stroke scooter from a foreigner in November because I was in a fix and needed transport. I fully intended to replace it with a bigger and more reliable machine the next month but it didn’t last that long… I had it checked out by my local scooter shop, replaced a few minor things and it seemed fine. Started perfectly, ran well, no smoke or weird noises. At 10k I thought I got a pretty good deal.
After a few weeks I’d already done 3,000km+ thanks to long commutes and took it into the aforementioned shop for regular servicing. ‘Nah, you’ll be fine, doesn’t need anything’. ‘I don’t care - I still want you to check it over because I’ve been doing some serious mileage’. He taps the exhaust and says ‘looks fine to me!’ Err, yes, okay…
I didn’t have time to argue so left with a plan to have it checked out by a mechanic friend and buy a new one at the same time. Guess what? On the way to Mechanic no. 2 the engine goes pop while overtaking a lorry at 100km/h. Mechanic no. 1 is closer so I take it to him and wait two days for a repair estimate.
‘Oooh it’s gonna cost hao ji qian to fix this… but I can offer you a great trade-in deal on a brand new one!’ Okay, so we have someone who thinks I was born last Thursday. I make an excuse that I really wanted a Yamaha Majesty, which he doesn’t sell. ‘Ohh you don’t wanna buy a 150cc, they’re really unreliable and expensive to maintain.’ Yeh, and nothing to do with the fact that you only have 125s for sale? Nope, not at all. I saw he’d removed the spark plug from my old bike and it was absolutely caked in shit. I pointed out that it probably could have done with some REGULAR MAINTENANCE. Somehow the bike had also sprung an oil leak that definitely wasn’t there before. Then granny pipes up to give me a ‘super trade-in price’ of 45k for a hunk of shit toy scooter so I just leave, shaking my head in disbelief.
Fortunately a close Taiwanese friend who’s well liked in the area is putting me in touch with a decent mechanic who will sell me a more recent model and hopefully fix the old one.
The moral of the story: nnnnnggggggg Taiwanese mechanics nnnggggg.
sounds to me like it was just and old scoot that you have thrashed, and that more than anything else is why it went bang.
FWIW, all my scoots and bikes have manufacturer’s oil change intervals at 1000 km. At that age, it could have well leaked & run dry in 3000 km.
sounds to me like it was just and old scoot that you have thrashed, and that more than anything else is why it went bang.
FWIW, all my scoots and bikes have manufacturer’s oil change intervals at 1000 km. At that age, it could have well leaked & run dry in 3000 km.[/quote]
You forgot this:[quote]Somehow the bike had also sprung an oil leak that definitely wasn’t there before. [/quote]
It sure sounds like your bike ran into some lubrication problems. Too bad you drove it for so long on the same oil and sorry to hear about your bad experience with a motorcycle shop.
I suggest you demand maintenance every 1000km on your next scooter or the same thing will happen to you. Especially if you drive a 125cc at 100km/hr. That’s hard work on a small bike.
You missed one detail - 2-stroke scooter. The last time I checked, since a 2-stroke burns the oil it doesn’t require changing like a 4-stroke I kept it topped up with 2T oil whenever the light came on every 1,000km or so.
I don’t drive everywhere at 100km/h Taiwanese style. On the country roads out here in Da Keng you either keep up with traffic or end up with a lorry up your arse. My scooter gets worked damn hard and brought me up and down a mountain daily but it wasn’t permanently redlined or anything.
I’m not really complaining about the fact that an old scoot died after being worked hard and I don’t for a minute think the original seller sold me a duff motor. I AM, however, complaining about the ‘fix it when it’s dead’ mentality that I’m not the first to bring up. I don’t really get why a Taiwanese mechanic would pass up the opportunity to make money from me every month for life either.
PS: the new mechanic is fixing my old bike for 4k and giving me a year’s warranty on the work. He also lent me a temporary scooter gratis so I’m very pleased with him. Turns out the problem was almost certainly the oil - but the plot thickens. The last time I bought 2T oil was from the local CPC station but the mechanic showed me what was in my scooter and it was almost the same viscosity and colour as car engine oil. What the hell? I don’t pretend to know much about engine thingummies - is this likely to be what killed my engine?
sounds to me like it was just and old scoot that you have thrashed, and that more than anything else is why it went bang.
FWIW, all my scoots and bikes have manufacturer’s oil change intervals at 1000 km. At that age, it could have well leaked & run dry in 3000 km.[/quote]
You forgot this:[quote]Somehow the bike had also sprung an oil leak that definitely wasn’t there before. [/quote]
It sure sounds like your bike ran into some lubrication problems. Too bad you drove it for so long on the same oil and sorry to hear about your bad experience with a motorcycle shop.
I suggest you demand maintenance every 1000km on your next scooter or the same thing will happen to you. Especially if you drive a 125cc at 100km/hr. That’s hard work on a small bike.
If you got 4T oil in your 2T bike, it can’t be good. Enough to cause a pop at 100km/hr, I’m not sure. Perhaps redwagon would know better what 4T oil would do to a 2T bike.
There are some 2T oil that looks like 4T but from my experience, it’s usually synthetic and expensive. Not the kind you get from most mechanic shops or gas stations.
I kept it topped up with 2T oil whenever the light came on every 1,000km or so.