Cheap Chinese

Geez I'm wordy today. TL:DR Check out my new pit bike, its surprisingly good

When I was a teen in the late 70's and had just left home, I had a standing date with my Mom for lunch. We'd get together, talk about nothing and everything and always have a good time. I know we equally enjoyed those lunch dates and we always went to the same place, the Sherwood. One of those bars that was already oldschool in the 70's, and still had the ladies entrance on the side, though I doubt it was still used. If you weren't around in those days, I can tell you what these places were really good for, aside from a 40 cent draft, was a solid, inexpensive lunch, and the Sherwood served it up in small plain room, on one side , away from the hotel main. You got a huge plate of good Chinese food for a couple bucks, and we always called it Cheap Chinese. That phrase stuck in my vocabulary and became  more commonly used as we started to import practically everything from China. When I think pit bikes now that phrase, that story, and those times with my mom come to mind.

And I present to you, Cheap Chinese, the bike.

Not so much a build thread as a bit of an information thread, as I don't think these are well known outside the main circle.

Pit bikes sold like crazy during Covid, when people were buying everything they could get their hands on, and worldwide manufacturing couldn't keep up. But the Chinese manufacturers were more than happy to comply. Fast forward a few years and it's a buyers market. Most of those aspiring pit bike riders have gone back to whatever it was they were doing pre-covid, want to clear their garages and sheds out, and get some of that money back in their pockets.

This is a 2021 YCF SP150, a race machine, a serious pit bike.  A local guy bought it, rode it around a little bit, and it sat in his garage for a couple years. I knew exactly what he paid, and the bike's story because after I read the ad on MP,  I searched his name on FB and found everything on one of the YCF groups. So it turns out that FB is worth something after all, most of his ad was a lie. He started out asking $2850, and dropped it after a few months. I went to look at it with the intention of offering him $1500, but raised that $1750 when I saw how nice it was. He turned it down, I told him I understood, we shook, and I left on good terms. I continued to watch the ad, and months later he dropped the price to $1650. I contacted him that day, told him if he'd take $1500 I could be there in an hour.

Have a look the quality on this bike. Yes, it's Chinese, but this is a real race bike with a lot of aluminum, adjustable suspension, decent build quality. There are European pit bikes that are 10k, and they are better, but there is a great deal of value in this machine.

Look at the welds on this aluminum swing arm, and damping adjustment on the shock that actually works like a shock

Nice aluminum triples with three adjustments for the bars, risers, and damping adjustment that actually works. The bar mount areas are finish level, the rest is roughing quality finish, but that's fine. Anodizing is very good  

More later

Just take a look at the throttle. My Italian race bike doesn't have a ball bearing in the throttle housing!

Nice heavy pegs that are adjustable... you don't see that often.  The brake lever is a little on the long and bulky side, but it's aluminum, appears to be very well made, has a ball bearing in the pivot, and the associated hardware is good quality. Nice attention to detail here. You'll note the kickstart lever is not aluminum, but a heavy steel casting. That seemed out of place and a little disappointing at first, but after spending a day with the bike I realized the reason. This motor barks, and if you don't get the start sequence just right, it kicks back so hard, I won't risk it with running shoes. An aluminum one probably wouldn't last a day

Founded by Yannick Coquard, a National Pro Motocrosser who rode pit bikes to cross train in the winter; and Dimitri Bera, a high level French technician who now lives in China overseeing all development. They joined forces in 2004. The YCF story started when Yannick decided to improve the quality and reliability of the pit bike he owned before starting YCF. Step by step he modified this bike and finally decided he would build his own bike.

There are three major manufacturers for competition pit bikes, YCF the French company, Thumpstar, from Australia, and Piranha, the house brand of Wholesale cycle in the US, which are re-badged YCF's. A pit bike proper has 12" rear wheels, and 14" front. There are other classes, but this is the major one. In this segment the SP2 is considered one of the top bikes, aside from the big dollar Euro bikes.

Pit bike engines are typically 4 stroke, and there are generally two types, the Honda copy and the Kawasaki (KLX110) copy. The Kawi engines are the better ones and this bike has a YX150, a copy of the Kawi, or at least a hybrid, using the Kawi cylinder head design, and oil filter. This model also has an air box, where they would normally just use a pod filter. Half of the air box is off because I was still cleaning, this thing was filthy when I got it. All the literature says it comes with a NIBBI 24mm carb, but it's actually 19mm. Because it's so small, throttle response is insane.

Big brakes, aluminum wheels and hubs with heavy spokes, and adjustable levers all show that they mean business. Hardware is mostly on par with the YZ125 I bought in 2019 which, at the time, I criticized for looking like it was straight out of China. It doesn't look out of place on this bike.

And this concludes the introduction to the YCF SP2 150

China will build something as cheaply as you pay them to.

Looks like a fun machine.

Delta learned pretty quickly that you need someone from your company in China on a regular basis to keep an eye on quality control or your castings end up being 2 parts lawn chair and one part beer can pretty quickly. Their quality was really bad for a few years but they eventually got it back up to their normal, mediocre levels.

This bike is a riot.

I know China still builds lot's of junk, you should see some of the pit bikes you can buy for under a grand. But they are getting better, and you don't have to look too far these days to find something made in China that's very high quality, like maybe what you're reading this on.

I've owned Japanese MX bikes in the past that don't meet the quality of this bike.

That is seriously cool.  

This is about the part of the year where I resolve to do a bunch of dirt tracking in my back property with the CRF70.   

"Pit bikes sold like crazy during Covid, when people were buying everything they could get their hands on, and worldwide manufacturing couldn't keep up. But the Chinese manufacturers were more than happy to comply. Fast forward a few years and it's a buyers market. Most of those aspiring pit bike riders have gone back to whatever it was they were doing pre-covid, want to clear their garages and sheds out, and get some of that money back in their pockets."

Guilty. I ordered a CT70 clone during Covid and a few days later one popped up locally so I bought it too. They both only have a couple hundred km and have been in my way for a couple of years now. I need to rectify that. Hoping your thread will inspire me. Have fun with it! 
 

You didn't think I was going to leave this alone did you?

I'm doing both upgrades, and some needed maintenance, but staying in theme, cheap Chinese. All the parts are Chinese but, like the bike, decent quality, and most importantly, good value.

This is a Canadian company that imports some decent stuff, and I've used these chains in the past. I put 50 hrs on one last season as a trial, and it held up very well.  An X-ring chain on a pit bike? At those prices, why not? Keep it clean, put a little oil on it to keep the rust off and it will last the life of the bike. Good value there!

Nice looking stuff.

The stock counter shaft sprocket is 15T which is a little low for normal riding, a lot low for high speed track use. A lot of guys go straight to 17T, but I bought and tried both, and prefer the midrange answer, the 16T. Straight from Amazon for less than a deck of smokes!

Like always, more to come.

I guess I should wrap this up before I start the build thread for the race bike I'm currently working on.

I wanted a little more power and assumed the insane, and potentially dangerous, throttle response was due t the small 19mm carb. It could be a little tricky to start, and the idle was sometimes a little wonky, but it did run well. So let's see if we can screw that up. I did a little research and these carbs have a decent reputation among the pitbike guys. It was also the same manufacturer as the stocker.

I don't even remember now what it cost, but it was cheap, maybe fifty bucks, and even cheaper on the river company, which made me think it could be a copy of a copy. But apparently the river people are the distributor for NIBBI carbs. It came with a number of different jets and needles, and looked pretty good. I tore it down nonetheless to see if there was anything goofy going on but it appeared to be generally well made. It's not like there's any magic in there, and by this time they should have figured out where to put all the holes. Remember, this is all about value.

I realized I forgot to say what the carb is, it's what they call a PE24, a 24mm round slide carb, 5mm larger than the stocker. It's a big jump, but apparently they can take a 26 with no problems, and I probably should have ordered that instead. Maybe next time I'll do a little better with my research, but probably not.

I started off with their recommendations, then YCF's recommendations, then did a bunch of reading when it ran like E36 M3. Either this carb is junk, or the jetting recommendations are out to lunch.

The jetting recommendations were out to lunch. 

Why YCF would go to the trouble of putting out a chart that is very clearly wrong, I don't know. This is one of the problems with these Chinese bikes. There's little meaningful info available, and when you do find some, you have to take it with a grain of rice. Anyway, the 105 main was out and a 118 - the stock main jet from a KLX250, and surplus in my box-o-jets went it. Bingo, it ran like it should have. This carb actually works, and works as good as it looks.

The stock grips must have been spec'd for someone with monster hands because the diameter was probably 25% larger than a normal grip - you can see it in the first pic, so I had to do something about that. I raced Italian Husky's (Cagiva's) for years and really liked the stock Domino grips. I don't wear gloves when I ride, I find them uncomfortable, and the lack of feel dangerous, so grip feel is really important for me. I once tried a set of pillow top grips in a hare scramble and completely wore them out in two hours. I need a firm grip, and found these years ago on Ebay. They say they're Domino, they look and feel like Domino, but came from China at less than half the price, so I bought a dozen sets, and this is the last one. Who knows, maybe Domino grips aren't really made in Italy. Value.

Since it's a race bike it doesn't have a kickstand, so I needed some sort of stand and hade a piece of 1/2" round kicking around. so I bent this up. I've since painted it white - I always paint my stands white so I don't lose them in the grass, it works a treat.

I recently discovered that it also works perfectly in the rear axle of the bike I'll be writing about next. That's a bonus, I'll just copy it.

The last thing I did, and I did this to protect the levers, not my hands, was to install some bark busters. These are actually decent quality Enduro Engineering parts,  the $20 Chinese set I initially bought for it actually fit one of my race bikes better, so I used these instead. I'm cheap, and I really don't like buying levers, and you know if this thing falls over the Chinesium levers would snap like dried spaghetti. You can see the one on your right already showed me that, and was replaced by an oldshool shorty, that I fortunately had in the tote-o-levers. Never throw anything away, you never know.

And this looks like a wrap. This is how I should start the season with it now. I might throw on some better rubber, and maybe get some white plastics, but I don't see a big bore, 26mm carb, or anything fancy in it's future. OTOH, if I decide to race it, a 172 big bore and a 26mm carb would definitely be the ticket

Just a random question: Is pit bike racing a thing? Because it totally should be.

Threads like these have me itching for some kind of small two-wheeled vehicle I can drive downtown and back.

In reply to Colin Wood :

Pit bike racing is pretty active right now.  There are quite a few series, and some organizers run on the back of, or in conjunction with other series. My own club has pit bike races, more of a fun event than anything, as a part of their double headers, but there are stand alone series, for MX, road racing that run on kart tracks, and even flat track. Check out some of the bikes, it's pretty affordable way to have fun

YCF

Sunday motors