Up to Date Prices of Wolf, KTR, HD150 etc?

The wife’s Honda has lost its cool factor :neutral: and I’ve been lusting after a bike. I’m pretty sure I’m going to make the purchase soon. I’d like to buy new (I think) and it’d be one of the usual suspects i.e. Kymco KTR, Harford HD, SYM Wolf etc.

I’d only be using it for commuting and I don’t really want more than 150cc.

Before I go shopping, can anyone give me an idea of the price of each of these machines? Price is important; I’ll start by looking at the cheapest bike first.

For and against comments about the bikes are also welcome, especially from owners.

I’ve also been looking at bikes recently. I’m thinking about replacing my old bike. Hartfords are the most expensive followed by the KTR and the cheapest is the 125cc wolf. If I’m correct, Hartford and SYM do not have fuel injected models yet. The 2008 KTR is fuel injected and can be had new for about 58k. I tried one and I thought it was nice but the circular transmission is disappointing. The Wolf and the Hartford 150cc also have circular transmission unless you go with the Hartford 200cc(1 down 4 up with neutral between 1st and 2nd gear). The 200cc has the international transmission but it’s a lot more expensive. I don’t know much about bikes but that’s what I found out so far. I’m debating between the FI KTR or the Hartford 200cc but it will have to wait until after the upcoming Chinese New Year holidays.

The Wolf 150cc RII series has “international gears” (1 down, 4 up). All the other Wolves use circular gears - a bummer.

The Hartford Mini125 has international gears. It’s a motorcycle (not a scooter) but has scooter-sized wheels - good for women (my wife has one). The small wheels make it less smooth at highway speeds than a Wolf.

cheers,
DB

I THINK the Kymco Grand King (125 and 150, though maybe the new ones are only 150) is probably an “international” sequential non-cyclic gearbox. I’ve never ridden one, but IIRC my old Zing was, and I’d expect them to use the same transmission.

Worth checking anyway, IF gearshift pattern is a showstopper, and you don’t have some other reason to exclude the Grand King.

I think the Grand King has the cyclic gear shift.

Thanks to all for the responses.

I’m still researching / waiting for the wife to give her blessing - we already have a car and a scoot. I don’t need a bike, I just want one.

I see that for most of you it’s really important that a bike doesn’t have circular gears. I’ve never owned a bike before and only ridden one once, a friends Yamaha SR with circular gears. I’m obviously missing something here and willing to be put straight, but isn’t a circular gearbox more convenient in the stop-go traffic of Taiwan?

Gearboxes aside, I really like the look of the Sym 150 that Dog’s Breakfast mentioned. It’s not one I’d seen before. It’s only listed on the Taiwanese website (been looking on the company’s international one – in English). It’s not as farmeresque as some of the other cheaper bikes. Any idea of the price of this one?

Can’t help you on the bike price, but one tip for looking for bikes in Taiwan: Use the local site and run it through Google translate:

translate.google.com/#en|zh-TW|

It’s not perfect, but a lot of the things on the international sites aren’t available here, and vice-versa. And you get to practice up on your Chinglish :smiley:

This has really helped me when looking for scooter specs, although there are still times when asking my older students to translate something works better. Flash, for instance, can’t be translated.

[quote=“Paul Muskinbak”]Thanks to all for the responses.

I see that for most of you it’s really important that a bike doesn’t have circular gears. I’ve never owned a bike before and only ridden one once, a friends Yamaha SR with circular gears. I’m obviously missing something here and willing to be put straight, but isn’t a circular gearbox more convenient in the stop-go traffic of Taiwan?

[/quote]

Gear pattern is perhaps largely a question of what you are used to. If you havn’t ridden an international pattern much it might not matter terribly.

I’m not an experienced rider and have only ridden cyclic when test riding a Wolf Legend, and an SR150, (both on the same day and both, especially the SR150, apparently good deals) and it confused the hell out of me because I wasn’t, at the time, aware of the difference. I just thought I was incapable of using the gearbox on these (and perhaps any) machines, and so didn’t buy one.

A priori, IF I understand how they work, I’d say cyclic is less convenient because if you’re in top (say 4th gear on a 4-speed) you can only go to first next, whereas you might just want to drop a gear into 3rd. To get there you have to go through the other gears.

More seriously if you think your in 3rd and change up, but you are in fact already in 4th, you could be unexpectedly dumped into 1st gear at speed, which is alarming and potentially dangerous.

[quote=“Paul Muskinbak”]Thanks to all for the responses.

Gearboxes aside, I really like the look of the Sym 150 that Dog’s Breakfast mentioned. It’s not one I’d seen before. It’s only listed on the Taiwanese website (been looking on the company’s international one – in English). It’s not as farmeresque as some of the other cheaper bikes. Any idea of the price of this one?
[/quote]

I split the post because editing gets impossibly twitchy at the moment with a longer post, perhaps due to the pending upgrade.

IIRC Dogs_breakfast regrets his purchase and wishes he’d got a more farmeresque model. Sulavaca makes a well argued (BUT rational, never work for motorcycles) argument for the superiority of his cheaper commercial SYM125 as a basic commuter.

Edit:If you’re not convinced maybe you should make DB an offer?

[quote=“Ducked”]
A priori, IF I understand how they work, I’d say cyclic is less convenient because if you’re in top (say 4th gear on a 4-speed) you can only go to first next, whereas you might just want to drop a gear into 3rd. To get there you have to go through the other gears.

More seriously if you think your in 3rd and change up, but you are in fact already in 4th, you could be unexpectedly dumped into 1st gear at speed, which is alarming and potentially dangerous.[/quote]
Not quite.

Standard gearbox puts neutral between 1st and 2nd gear. There’s a stop above top gear to prevent you shifting into 1st, which would be on the next rotation of the shift cam but for the stop. The neutral position on the shift cam is a shallower notch than the others, so it’s a little harder to locate, but that makes it easy to shift straight from 1st into 2nd without hitting neutral.

Cyclic puts neutral ‘under’ 1st and then there is no stop on the shift drum anywhere. With cyclic you can progress from 1st to 2nd without the possibility of hitting neutral, a little easier for clumsy feet. You can also progress from top gear straight into neutral, but going through to 1st would require two clicks of the lever. You can also if you like change direction and click back down through the gears to get to neutral as you would with a standard gearbox.
I think the cyclic was created for those who don’t want to use engine braking but would rather clog from top gear into neutral and use the brakes to stop the bike.

I personally hate the cyclic system because once in a while I will suspect I’m not in top and try to go up a gear, just to find neutral. On my Triumph I’ve cruised for an hour on the freeway before realizing I was only in 5th and still had one more gear to use. :blush: So, it’s my habit to look for one more gear just to be sure I’m in top.

By the way, it’s not unknown for manufacturers to mess these things up. The first RD350 Yamahas came with six gears and no stop above 6th. After a few people shifted from 6th ‘up’ into 1st, Yamaha blocked off 6th gear for the remainder of the production year until they had re-engineered the cam. You can imagine what happened when that bike could easily hit 120mph in 6th gear… :astonished:

[quote=“redwagon”]You can imagine what happened when that bike could easily hit 120mph in 6th gear… :astonished:[/quote]That made me grind my teeth. :doh:

The biggest annoyance if you’re used to the international gears when riding a cyclic transmission is that I always end up shifting down when I actually intend to shift up (or I shift up when I intend to shift down). If you’re used to a cyclic transmission, it’s probably better in traffic because you can go from top gear to neutral in one click. Pointless on bigger bikes, but with these small 150s, you can cruise at 60 in top gear so the need for engine breaking at that speed isn’t great.

Cyclic shift was developed for the market niche that rides wearing rice paddy boots. Toe press for up, heel press for down. I hate it, but then, I don’t work in a paddy.

[quote=“redwagon”]
I personally hate the cyclic system because once in a while I will suspect I’m not in top and try to go up a gear, just to find neutral. On my Triumph I’ve cruised for an hour on the freeway before realizing I was only in 5th and still had one more gear to use. :blush: So, it’s my habit to look for one more gear just to be sure I’m in top.[/quote]

exact same here. this is especially true on torquey big twins and triples because it can get hard to tell sometimes when you are crusing.

since i started driving, i got into the habit of heel and toe matching all downshifts, skip shifting only once in awhile when driving say race cars. that said, when i was younger a lot of the time i spent driving was in things with strictly sequential patterns, so the heel toe thing was pretty much “do it well or no driving for you” thing. i assume this or something similar is probably the case for a lot of people who really like to drive.

this carried over to bikes for me and thus i wonder sometimes why the cyclic gears. if you are looking far enough ahead, you can get the clutch in and drop to neutral, or just let the compression slow it down, blipping along the way so that ideally, you can get going again in the right gear before you have to stop. of course this does not work as well in the city, but it still works. if you take looking ahead into account, a cyclical makes no sense at all, imo.

i test rode a wolf here, realized what was going on after some fairly embarassing confusion, messed up a few times before getting it, and it still felt wrong. another thing also is being able to stomp down from neutral to first at a light.

My colleague has a Hartford 150s, he bought it new in June for $70,000 or thereabouts and has covered about 2000km on it. He absolutely loves it, polishes it every couple of weeks and everything. I think he spends more time cleaning it than riding it! He was going to get the SYM Wolf but the fat back tyre on the Hartford sealed it for him. It looks very cool, I have to say.

Looking through “scooter custom” magazine I can see that they have indeed released an FI version. I think FI scooters go for about $10,000 more than the carb ones, so maybe you’re looking at about $80,000 for that bike.

Looks like a new bike will have to wait. I want a bike and my wife wants a car. Guess who wins… :laughing:

I didn’t know SYM made 150cc models. I will look into that in a few months when I start looking at bikes again.

Some good points here, it’s certainly made me think about avoiding a cyclic gearbox. I did a bit of reading online and it seems that there is a very real saftey issue when it comes to cyclic boxes and finding 1st gear when you don’t want it.

The new bikes cost a bit more than I first expected, and times are pretty tough at the moment. So I’m now considering a second hand bike.

Kind of kicking my self at the moment because a 2 year old Hartford HD 200 had been advertised at a very reasonable price (~$50K with 8000km on the clock). I thought about it for a bit too long because it’s sold now.

Someone I know is selling a Hartford 150. She wants 35k. for it and she’s leaving Taiwan in 2 days. Maybe she would accept a reasonable offer. The bike is in very good condition. Let me know if you’re interested and I can put you in touch with her. She’s in Kaohsiung.

I’m pretty sure that I bought this bike. It is real nice.

Abacus, would you mind posting what you like and don’t like about the bike? I mean in general, not necessarily the particular bike you brought.

I originally wanted to buy new and the price put the Hartford out of my reach. The more I think about it, I should buy used. I could get something I really want rather than make do.

In this price range, I like the styling of the Hartford a lot.

I found out today that she actually sold it a while back but she got to ride it until she left Taiwan a couple days ago. Did you buy it from Heidi? If that’s the bike, yes, it’s really nice and in very good condition. Heidi maintained it very well. I think you got a good buy. I was interested but I’m quite tall and it felt too small for me.