working on the Chinese scooter

I plan on taking a lightweight scooter or dualsport bike with me when I hit the road.  My current road bike, a Honda NC700x, is too heavy at 500lb+.  I’d much rather load/unload/pick up a 200# bike than a 500# one.  I don’t care about liquid cooling but I would greatly prefer fuel injection.

My plan had been to trade in the commuter bike on the lighter one.  Here are the front-runners:

• scooters

  • some kind of “big wheel” scooter:  old Honda SH150i or similar.  So many good big wheels available in Asia….

  • failing that, a 12” wheel scooter:  Yamaha Zuma 125, , Kymco Super 8, Lance PCH or Cabo.

• dual sport bikes

  • Chinese Hawk 250cc, even down to 100cc.

  • Honda CRF250

  • Yamaha xt225 or 250

  • KLR250

But what would make the most sense is just to put some work into this TaoTao 150 I got off craigslist for a couple hundred bucks.  Titled and registered.  Runs but getting excessive blowby.  I just ordered a top end rebuild kit for it and we’ll see how that goes.

It’s the blue one on the left.  The silver one on the right is the Honda road bike.

I love motorcycles but they are rather serious.  Scooters on the other hand are joyful and just fun.  Pin the throttle and laugh involuntarily.  It’s stupid amounts of fun for mega cheap.

In case anyone is interested in such things, I recommend the ChinaRiders forum.