A good once over - Part one.

Now the scooter's running, it's time to give it a once over and a service. Warned by their reputation, I expect to find low quality parts in some places and poor quality finish to, well, almost everything,

With the engine running, I can check all of the electrics. With the exception of the horn and the electric start, everything seems to work. That's better than I expected.

The brakes need a coat of looking at. The rear drum is fine, although the lever travel is on the long side. The front disk has very little travel and seems poor, so will need a looking at, and the end of the lever is snapped off. That'll go on the list of parts to buy, along with a new speedo cable.

Bodywork wise, apart from the broken section of the front mudguard, the panels aren't too bad. There's the odd scrape which may respond to T-cut, and some sticky patches from where the L-plates have been taped on which will clean off. Some of the panels are lightly cracked in places, but they're firmly attached and not massively noticeable. I'll ignore these for now.

I've already checked that someone's changed the plug for an NGK so that's one thing off of the list, but I need to change the oils and take a look under the belt cover to see what state that's all in. The Chinese belts fitted from new have a poor reputation.

Out with the gearbox drain plug, and I'l surprised to find good quality clean oil. Has someone been here already? I pop the plugs back in and refill with new EP80 gear oil from my squirty oil can.

It's engine oil next. That comes out black, but the strainer is nice and clean. After it's drained, I replace the drain plug with a new O-ring and fill up with 5w40 Castrol Magnatec that I had on the shelf. These bikes won't need bike specific oil, as they don't have wet clutches, so don't waste your cash on motorcycle oil for one of these.

The belt cover is held on with 8mm headed bolts. They all come out, but all look very dry. I'll put them back in with copper grease on the threads later. The cover looks rather corroded on the outside, the paint is flaking off in places - this is poorly finished from new. Inside, it looks fine though. The belt itself is.... a Contitech. Someone's replaced the original belt with the best one available. Result! The clutch bell as a small amount of run out on the outside, but as the clutch engages smoothly and doesn't judder I'm going to assume it's OK on the inside where it matters and add it to the ignore list.

I clean the air filter, housing and pipework while I'm in the area, then screw it all back together and fire the bike up on the kick start to check it's OK. It's fine.

While I've been working on the bike, it's given me a chance to look an under the panels at the overall finish. Some bits look as good as any other scooter I've worked on, the electrics for example. Other bits are very poor. The frame paint would fall into this category, for a two year old bike. It's shockingly thin and appears to have been applied with little or no primer. Anyone looking at keeping one of these on the road long term would do well to invest in a can of Waxoyl or a similar rust preventative.

That'll do for now while I wait for my new mudguard to arrive, then I can tackle the front end.

Time to take a look and see what's wrong.

The Chinese scooter is home and in the garage. It's a Direct Bikes DB50QT-11. Romantic name eh?

These are as generic as they come, they're made in various factories in China to a vague specification and sold by the container load to dealers who get them badged up with whatever brand they sell them as. The exact same machine can be bought as a Baotian, a Lexmoto, a Longjia, a Znen - you get the idea. What you're actually getting in all of these cases is a scooter chassis with the 139QMB engine fitted.

There are some decent workshop manuals available to download from the internet relating to these machines and so long as you remember that what's fitted to your machine may vary a little from what's in the manual, then there's plenty of information available to help you undertake looking after or repairing one of these bikes.

Now it's time to take a look and see what I've bought.

First, the bodywork.

It's obviously been ridden by the ubiquitous impoverished teen. With balance issues. The front mudguard has the front snapped off. There is the odd scrape down either side and the seat has a torn cover. The glass is broken in one of the mirrors, and the front brake lever has the end snapped off. Overall, it's in poor cosmetic condition for something just over two years old. However, none of that can be blamed on the fact that it's a cheap Chinese bike - the finger of blame points at the previous owner and how they'd looked after it.

Mechanically, the electric start doesn't turn the engine, although it turns over on the kickstart fine. All of the locks are a little stiff, although they do work. The electrics mostly work, apart from the horn. The brakes aren't dragging, and stop the bike when rolled along. Giving the bike a good shake produces no ominous noises, and the suspension moves freely at both ends. Front and rear tyres are both legal and are a brand that I've at least heard of, Duro. Overall, better that expected.

As the bike's stood for a couple of months, I put the battery on charge. Surprisingly, it's a branded battery (Lucas), rather than the un-named one I was expecting. It's in good condition and takes a charge. Unfortunately, there's still no action from the starter motor, apart from the click of the starter relay.


Back to first principles - if you've got fuel, compression and a spark at the correct time, the engine should at least fire. Whipping off the seat and under seat storage box, I can now get to the engine to check for the presence of all three.

Running down from the tank to the carburettor is the fuel line with a big fuel filter in it. It's dry inside. It can't be that simple can it? With the starter out of action, the vacuum operated fuel tap won't get enough suction to open when the engine's turned over on the kick start, so I remove the vacuum pipe from the inlet manifold and suck on it enough to open the fuel tap. The filter fills, could this be all that it needed?

No.

Many kicks later with no signs of life at all, I move onto the next thing to check and remove the plug. It's a brand new NGK. Someone's been down this path before, apparently unsuccessfully. There's a nice big spark when it's turned over on the kickstart, so let's park that one for now.

Compression. I know it's only a tiny engine, so the kick start won't put up much of a fight, but if I put my finger over the plug hole, it struggles to blow my finger off. Compression is low, why? With a four stroke engine, low compression can be due to bore, piston or ring wear, a blowing head gasket or valve problems. Checking the valves is the easiest and first thing to check. Off with the valve cover (noting that the engine seems spotlessly clean inside, and that the valve cover uses a reusable neoprene gasket, rather than a one shot paper one) I rotate the engine until both valves are closed on the compression stroke  and check the clearances.

Inlet - fine. Exhaust - there is no clearance. We have a smoking gun, if not a running engine. If the exhaust valve has no clearance it'll not be closing properly so the engine will be losing compression. This will be worse when the engine is hot, so the performance must have been very poor when it actually did run.

A quick adjustment, so that the exhaust valve has the required clearance, and a few prods on the kick start and the engine is attempting to start. Time to put the valve cover back on, this time with a little copper grease on the bolts to make future maintenance easier. This done, and a few more prods on the start lever, and the bike bursts into life, burbling away at a slightly high tick over.

It lives!

Can a Chinese Scooter be any good?

Direct Bikes DB50QT-11 Scooter.

These bikes, along with most Chinese bikes, get a slating online and in the press earning an unenviable reputation for unreliability, low quality and just being a bit rubbish. They tend to be chosen because they seem to be an extremely cheap way of getting on the road as a teenager.

However, their cheapness tends to lead a situation where their invariably impoverished teenage owners are reluctant to spend a large portion of the bike's purchase price on maintenance and upkeep at a dealer, if you can find one that will work on your bike in the first place. Servicing gets done by a "mate who knows about bikes", if at all. Little problems get ignored until they become big problems or so much goes wrong with the bike that it becomes uneconomic to repair. By then, the owner has given up on bikes and moved onto a car. The scooter gets left in the garden under a tarpaulin or, better, at the back of a garage until, fed up of it getting in the way, the disappointed owner puts it up on Gumtree or eBay.

For those of us who've been around a while, this is a familiar story. A lot of the cheap bikes bought in the 70s or 80s, Minsks, MZs, CZs or Jawas for example, got ran into the ground in exactly the same way. Some of these were good bikes let down by their owners, while others were just bad bikes.

Via Gumtree, enter one two year old Direct Bikes DB50QT-11, advertised as a non-runner since the fuel ran out for £70 including a full tank of fuel, a new top box and new screen. One quick trip across town in the back of an estate car, and it's mine.

So, can this be returned to the road as a reliable vehicle, or is their poor reputation deserved?