New to Pocket Bikes and looking for General information....

do you want the most popular or a list of top 10 performance/build quality wise? because there are ALOT more china bikes out there than euro's....

if you're looking for top 10 then ied say:

Blata
Polini
DM
GRC
GM Phantom
Stamas
BMS
ZPF
Pasini
BZM

Which are all european built/designed bike manufaturers. they offer superior quality, reliability and performance. They are almost ALL available in chinese reproduction models, but they're significantly cheaper built and designed, and the parts are no where near the same quality.

I've owned a blata Elite 13 WRS and a reproduction e13, and they arent even in the same ball park, but ofcourse chinese bikes and parts are WAY more affordable to tinker...

Alright, there are many ways you can go to start off... depends what type and size of engine you prefer to work on. pocket bikes and midbikes range from 39cc to 160cc, sometimes more after modification. there are two ways you can go, liquid cooled or air cooled. Air cooled will offer you an easier mechanic, as you will mostly encounter simple cag or zenoah 49 cc two stroke engines. you can take it apart and slap it back together in about an hour once you know your way around them well. They are easy and cheap to modify, provided you have the proper tools and know how(you can pretty much find anything pocket bike related on this forum anyways) but they require regular maintenance. As far as midbikes go, you're looking at Cat eye, the X bikes, which range from 49cc A/C 2 strokes to L/C 4 stroke 110cc estart motors. I personally have never dealt with any of these, since i was more into 50cc LC bikes, but i'm sure some people around here can enlighten you on them, and there are deffinatly tons of posts around here to help you find out whatever you need to know about them.
The liquid cooled pocket bikes are deffinatly a bigger project to tackle, but once fine tuned, a good L/C china bike can put out tons of torque and have a good powerband

List of the most popular chinese pocket bikes.

C1 L/C
E13 L/C
T1 A/C
D1 L/C
G1 L/C
P1 L/C
G2 L/C
Z1 L/C
Lucky 7 A/c
Cagllari A/C
Banshee SHO L/C
MTA-1 A/C
MTA-2 AC
B1 L/c

They really all are different. you can crossref them with the euro brands above, ex: Z1 is a ZPF rep, B1 and E13 are Blata reps, D1 is a DM rep, etc, etc.. my prefered china reps are the e13, its a smaller frame offers better handling, and you can use original blata or BZM parts on it and the C1, built properly you can smoke some euros on the drag, but it's size really affects the handling.


edit: lucky you caught me stoned and watching rolex supercar sports series, or else who knows if I would've been too lazy to type all this, lol.

The most popular pocketbikes in the cheap range are half fairing and full fairing cags....GRC's,,Polinis and Blatas are a bit more pricier but offer more bang for the buck as far as hp but like I said theyre not cheap neither are their parts...

Cags are the most popular amongst us guys that like to tinker because theyre so cheap and easy to modify and can be built in my hobby room...LOL...Theres lots to tinker with to take a 1.6bhp 2 stroke engine and mod it to almost 4-6bhp with a few bucks and a dremel..........

Theres other members here besides myself who are into performing such mods....It keeps the fun high and the overall pricetag in the end;- low...

Heres a thread I constructed on my cags which I have 6 of them,,I also have a vast array of other pbs from x/1's,,x/2's,,a polini 910 carrena,,twin enginned mini harley bike,,3 stand-up scooters,,cateyes,,4 stroke superbikes and many-many more aswell as projects up the wazoo that need completion....LOL...Good Luck with the bike of your choice

http://www.pocketbikeplanet.com/showthread.php?t=60828

It runs way better than it looks and rides like a scary dream...LOL

HI,

Doing a lot of reading and learning.....Great place!

I do like the fact that a person can get into it for relatively low $$ and have a lot of fun with it.

As a side note, having come from the motorized bicycle side of things, it is interesting that over on the motorized bicycle side, some people have experimented with putting pocket bike engines on their bikes (some 49 CC Pocket bike engines have real performance!) but so far I have yet to run into a post where a pocket bike person grafted on a Chinese bike engine (the ones used to turn a bike into a moped that are commonly sold on eBay etc...) onto their pocket bikes....I wonder why that is considering the "80 CC" kits there claim an output of 5 HP or so from the factory (of course the actual displacement is about 66 CC)....I guess that technically may violate some displacement rules when racing tho....but for general street bashing maybe that would be the hot set up?....A "big bore" 2 stroke for less!?!....Of course the rear sprocket would have to run a different chain to do that....And I guess the rear sprocket would be way smaller since the Chinese Kits run an internal 4 to 1 reduction.....Hmmmmm....

Also, Just curious but I was reading about the "mini moto races" and they said that liquid cooled engines were NOT allowed to run antifreeze....Just water and / or water wetter....Why is there an antifreeze ban when racing?....I would think you would want antifreeze to lube water pumps and keep stuff from rusting?

Andrew

PS - Yeah...it's late BUT I'm pumped up looking and reading about all this!.....For simplicity and price I'm kinda leaning towards a Chinese Air cooled Bike for starters...Any recommendations as to which one to get (would like a common one with good aftermarket support)...Thanks!

Andrew

Kings Sales and Service said:

HI,

Doing a lot of reading and learning.....Great place!

I do like the fact that a person can get into it for relatively low $$ and have a lot of fun with it.

As a side note, having come from the motorized bicycle side of things, it is interesting that over on the motorized bicycle side, some people have experimented with putting pocket bike engines on their bikes (some 49 CC Pocket bike engines have real performance!) but so far I have yet to run into a post where a pocket bike person grafted on a Chinese bike engine (the ones used to turn a bike into a moped that are commonly sold on eBay etc...) onto their pocket bikes....I wonder why that is considering the "80 CC" kits there claim an output of 5 HP or so from the factory (of course the actual displacement is about 66 CC)....I guess that technically may violate some displacement rules when racing tho....but for general street bashing maybe that would be the hot set up?....A "big bore" 2 stroke for less!?!....Of course the rear sprocket would have to run a different chain to do that....And I guss the rear sprocket would be way smaller since the Chinese Kits run an internal 4 to 1 reduction.....Hmmmmm....

Also, Just curious but I was reading about the "mini moto races" and they said that liquid cooled engines were NOT allowed to run antifreeze....Just water and / or water wetter....Why is there an antifreeze ban when racing?....I would think you would want antifreeze to lube water pumps and keep stuff from rusting?

Andrew

PS - Yeah...it's late BUT I'm pumped up looking and reading about all this!.....For simplicity and price I'm kinda leaning towards a Chinese Air cooled Bike for starters...Any recommendations as to which one to get (would like a common one with good aftermarket support)...Thanks!

Andrew

Click to expand...

you can probably pick up a few used Cags off ebay or craigs list for cheap, then buy a buttload of parts for practically nothing. Extra Reeds, extra Flywheels, extra clutches, extra cranks, bearings, head kits, spark plugs... etc... My most recent cag build is a mini quad, bought new in a store for 125$... put a 44mm Big Bore in it that I cleaned up with my dremel, new reed block with carbon fiber reeds, lightened flywheel and clutch(made from stock, tutorials available on the How-To section of the air cooled forum), NGK CR7HIX iridium spark plugs, full circle crank, aluminum pullstart, Jet Pro Exhaust(still havent gotten around to putting it in but it's coming). All that for about 225$....

and obviously the difference from stock is night and day, better throttle response, a much more constant power band, and gains at low mid and top end.... 8900 RPM at WOT with myself on it...

in conclusion, if you have the tools and know how to refurbish, do it, you'll save some money, and get to know the cags alot better in the process. Not only that, you can probably buy a lot of 4-5 bikes for practically nothing, then buy parts in bulk aswell.

Try nabing a CAG, A2, or MTA1, theres littlerally hundreds on ebay.

if you absolutely want to get one new, I'm Pretty sure Hugh from SDScooters has them in stock... he's a member here on the forums.