Cheap Bikes
I saw the ads a few years ago in the Sunday papers and nearly shot coffee through my nose. What in the...? A brand-new off-road bike for $399?
Yep. There it was. Closer inspection of the ad showed precious little in the way of information, and the photo was small. Further study revealed a fork suspension. Good. No rear suspension. Bad.
The more I looked, the cheaper the "off-road" bike appeared. A sprung saddle, an engine that would look at home in a lawn mower and no front brake. I dismissed the bike as junk and turned my attention to Garfield in the funny pages.
Yet more of those ads began to appear over the last few years. Pocket bikes for $199, go-carts for $449 and even two-seat dune buggies for $2299! I just shook my head. Until, that is, my friend Ralph, proud as could be, showed up at my house on his brand-new 90cc quad. The thing had an electric start and didn't look too bad for only $799. Since we live in Baja, the lack of roads was the reason he chose an ATV in the first place. He could leave his car parked most of the time and use the cute little quad for beer runs and local jaunts.
A few days later, he asked to go trail riding with me. After all, the quad was billed as a Baja Motorsports vehicle on the decals. I stuck to the easier trails because Ralph was a novice at the sport. We rode around for about a half-hour before we stopped for a breather. Ralph said his quad was handling sort of funny. I checked it out and quickly located the problem: A pool of oil had formed under the rear of the swingarm. Since most swingarms are not oil-cooled, there was only one possible source for the oil: the shock. The thing was blown. How it had blown was beyond me. We had traveled on fire roads and trails, which were so easy that I never had to stand on the pegs.
Later, back at my garage, we took some plastic off the quad and did some inspecting. Hmm. Welds were sloppy enough to rival the early Spanish bikes of the late-'60s. Low-quality fasteners were everywhere. The brackets holding the plastic on were nothing but flat, mild steel that bent with light hand pressure. All of a sudden, Ralph's bargain quad began to look like less of a bargain.
Ralph said he would contact the auto parts store where he had purchased the miserable thing. Bad news. Those fine folks had no parts in stock. Where could we get the spares? They gave us a phone number. After a lot of holding time, the lady told us that parts were back-ordered and she could not take our parts order over the phone. She suggested we check back in a few months. Effectively, he was screwed.