coming end of June. My brother bought a 125 Adrenaline last October and has clocked up 4000 miles since then. Runs great, so this 250 version seriously interests me.
Just think about it. It’s cheap for a reason. Next to bugger all R&D done on the design and the cheapest products used.
4k miles isn’t really much of a test to be honest.
Anyone on here ever read Percy Hopwood (or is that Percy Hopgood?) “Whatever happened to the British Motorcycle Industry”? It’s a litany of failures by the UK (then) to keep up with modern engineering.
But mostly it’s about people being in threat denial.
O.K. Maybe, just maybe*, it’s a bit early for the Chinese bike industry to move into the European market but they will be back with better and better bikes as they learn. Ignore/deny at your peril. You could look pretty stupid in, say, five years time.
I take your point GC, but does a bike like this need much R&D on the design? Like most Chinese bikes, they’re designed for cheap basic transportation and not for doing 180mph or impressing the writers at Fast Bikes magazine. The engines and frames have been used in various models for years and are tried and tested (Qingqi make Suzuki engines under licence, and many small capacity engines used in Suzukis worldwide are manufactured by Qingqi). This Pulse Adrenaline 250 is a Qingqi subsidiary Shandong Pioneer XF250GY. It might be a new bike to the UK, but it’s sold in other markets for a while.
I think a lot of people in this country see the £1999 price of a brand new 250cc motorbike and immediately draw a negative conclusion based on what they perceive to be a ‘reasonable’ price. There was a post in the ‘General’ section of this forum about a week ago from a long-time forum member who has done extensive research into protective motorcycling clothing. I’m sure one of his comments said that he’d bought a pair of un-logo’d motorcycle gloves for £3 in a Pakistan factory that are logo’d-up and sold in the UK for £60… exact same gloves. In the case of the Pulse Adrenaline 250, why shouldn’t £1999 should buy you a decent enough motorcycle? It might not be the latest and greatest, but certainly no worse than many Jap bikes of 5-10 years ago, and fine for general running around and commuting. £2700 buys you something higher quality like Zing Bike’s Shineray XY250GY, supermoto/endure/motocross series. Next step up is to go Japanese where £4000-4150 will buy you the Honda CRF250L or forthcoming SM model, but by then you’re into a totally different country with a hugely different cost-base.
Don’t believe the Chinese are coming? Take yourself down to your local Chinese bike shop and look at the Lexmoto ZSX125 and tell me that at £1500 it’s only 60% as good as the £2499 Yamaha YBR125. I’d opt for the Lexmoto every time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ch10gFYmIkQ This boy loves his Chingra 
China is just Japan all over again.
The reaction to Japanese motorbikes in the 60’s was that they were cheap and inferior and would never catch on - then after getting a toe hold in the market with smaller cheaper bikes they started to come out with bikes like the CB750 (1968) and started to spank the arses of the competition.
Remember when the phrase ‘made in Japan’ was a slur - just like the term 'made in China, is now - well that died out in the late 70’s and now Japanese technology, design and construction is seen as being of the highest quality.
Same thing will happen with China.
I would seriously consider one of these.
To buy from new means I could keep a close eye on all servicing and know that nobody else has had it before and done stupid things with it.
2k for a new bike, sure it’s budget and you get what you pay for, but you could run that bugger into the ground as a hack and I imagine it uses hardly any petrol.
I think the test ride will answer a lot of questions.
But I do agree 4k isn’t much of a test for a bike!?
the problem with Chinese bikes is they age at a 3x rate when compared to a jap bike.
its all well and good buying a 2k bike that is brand new but then 5 years down the road you have put silly amounts into new parts and its worth jack all.
that guy spicy his old bike he had to buy a new engine a fking new engine in a 3 year old bike or what ever it was that’s bullock’s tbh replacing a engine in a £200 1996 ntv like i had to fair enough but if i bought a brand new bike i would want it to last without changing parts.
the other thing is parts you can get all the parts when they first come out but after a wile the parts dry up im trying to get a part for my Chinese quad and for the life of me i cant find one so am going to have to get one made or my one straightened.
second hand jap beats brand new chink all day long
Ross, I would defo disagree about the bikes ageing quicker than Jap stuff. A little bit maybe, but I’ve seen 5-6yr old Chinese 125’s with 30k+ miles on them that still look great. Likewise I’ve seen some 3yr old ones that look terrible. All comes down to how they’re cared for and I suppose at £1600 odds, they will be regarded as disposable by many buyers. Spicy had to put a new engine in his, true. It could have been repaired, but spending £400 on a new motor was cheaper than opening up the old one to fix it. Bummer, but even he says he was very unlucky, still rates these bikes, and has just bought another. Who’s to say a 2nd-hand Jap bike for the same money would be guaranteed to have no troubles with the engine? Parts?.. not an issue for any ‘mainstream’ Chinese bike. Chinese Motorcycle Parts Online stocks them for many bikes, and as so many are generic (and have remained unchanged for years) that it’s not an issue for any mainstream Chinese bike like Lexmoto, Pulse, Lifan etc. MCN tested parts availability for Chinese bikes as few years ago, and their orders arrived in the same time or quicker than for most of the Jap bikes. Even if you couldn’t for whatever reason find a part in the UK, you would just buy it online from abroad from the seller in whatever country e.g. QLink (USA), Konker (Canada), I-moto or Tiger (Spain), Hooper (France), Kreidler (Germany), Viper (S Africa), and loads more. My brother’s might only have 4.5k miles now, but he’s ridden it for the past 7 months from new, through the ice, snow and rain of a British winter, and contrary to widespread belief, it hasn’t broken down nor has it disintegrated.
I’ve only been in around 3 main dealers in the past year, but even they’re now stocking Chinese bikes… a Honda main dealer selling the Lexeter Pulse range, a Yamaha dealer selling Zontes (albeit through a small unit near his main shop so as not to upset Yamaha), and a Suzuki dealer who sells SYM (Taiwan I know) and is now branching out and stocking Baotian.
I’m waiting to hear about a new job in the next week or two, and if I get it I will be down my local Chinese dealer as soon as this Adrenaline 250 comes in and if it looks as good as my brother’s 125, I’ll be buying one as a city runaround.
My brothers 2010 kaiser xtr has been a pain in the arse spent 5 weeks sitting because it would not start then just started clocks failed 2 days arfter buying it so had to buy new clocks. He only payed 400 for it but id wish I would of given him a few extra hundred more to buy a cbr 125.
My 2 grand will b3 going on a drz or xt 600
Nice choice on the DRZ or XT. Cracking bikes for the city. Also considered the BMW G650GS but just been looking at the MCN forum and see Steve Farrell mention that when he rode one, the end can fell off on the A1 closely followed by the front mud-guard. Are those Beemers not assembled in China? Certainly know the engines are. Why pay £6k for a BMW that will fall apart when (if all the stories were true) you could buy a Chinese bike for a fraction of that and get the same result?
Bad luck with your bro’s Kaiser, but then a 2nd hand Chinese Kaiser for £400… big gamble. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Chinese bikes are all that. 3 years ago I’d still be ripping them for poor build quality, problems etc, but amongst the more ‘mainstream’ Chinese brands like Qingqi (Pulse), Shineray etc, there does seem to have been a major improvement in very recent years. Now, when a nice little commuter like the Lexmoto ZSX125 comes in at £1500, it would take a hell of a lot of persuasion to convince me that a bike like the £2600 Yamaha YBR125 is better by the extra 73% they’re asking.
It’s here… http://www.pulsemoto.co.uk/XF250GY.php
only 5 gears?
I’d be tempted to test ride one of those if they made a version with knobblies 