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When the police in Chiang Mai started to clamp down on unregistered bikes I sold my Kawasaki Vulcan and my Suzuki GSX400 and bought a cheap chinese 200cc road bike.

I also bought a new Platinum PX 175 enduro style bike for riding short journeys around Chiang Mai and also because I take a couple of short cuts on a bike that have bumpy and unpaved roads.

I read up all that I could on this bike prior to making the decision to buy it, and it’s fair to say that lots of people have bought earlier Platinum PX175’s and had nothing but trouble, but this is a second generation Platinum PX 175 which is actually a whole different bike built in a different factory.

I remember back in 1981 my friend bought a new Honda XL125, I rode his bike a few times when it was still fairly new and this bike really does feel like an early 80’s Honda XL 125 with a slightly more powerful engine and electric start. Really it’s an old honda design made on the cheap in China with engines made in a factory that actually make OEM Honda engines, hence whatever the complaints about these bikes nobody has ever criticized the engine.

Things I like about this so far:

• Great Engine
• Full Size Bike
• Very Cheap

Things I dislike:

• Gearing is wrong, needs to be changed.
• Front Brake not very strong.
• Indicators hard to cancel.

I can fix the gearing by changing the sprockets easy enough, I can buy a Honda twin pot brake caliper on eBay cheap enough, and I can change the switchgear to Honda just as easy.

The bike was 52,000 baht, I reckon that if I need to spend another 20k on bits and bobs to bring it up to standard then it’s still a bloody good deal.

This is my second Chinese bike, so I knew that I had to go over it with a torque wrench, to my surprise there were no loose nuts and bolts on this one and it seems to be well assembled.

If Honda, Yamaha, Suzuki or Kawasaki sold a full size enduro style bike for under 125,000 baht in Thailand then I would have bought one, but they don’t. Platinum fill a gap in the market, time will tell if this was a good buy or not, but I’m willing to take a chance and I’m confident that it will be OK.

I have been riding my Gusto Rumba since I bought it last week and it’s just about ready to go in for it’s first service.

This is a Chinese built motorbike, imported and assembled in Thailand by JRD who are the exclusive distributors in Thailand.

The engine on this bike is a 200c twin with twin carbs, and it really does pull strong for a 200cc bike, it’s also smooth and quiet.

The engine appears to be based on a Honda 250cc twin, this particular engine is also found in the Lifan 250-4 (in 250cc form, mine is only 200cc) and quite a few other Chinese bikes.

There have been some problems with the way it was assembled, from a over tight chain and no brake free-play to a rattle from the headlight and a incorrectly fitted exhaust, but i’m confident I have checked and adjusted everything now and hopefully it will be OK.

There is no problem with the electrics, but the connectors and the wires look cheap, also wires are routed in a couple of places that look like there should be grommits to prevent chaffing in the future, so when I have time I will attend to that.

Above all, this bike feels good when it’s out on the road, and it has more than enough power to keep up with the traffic and overtake safely.

The bottom line here is that if you are looking for a full sized and well spec’d bike then the Gusto Rumba is well worth a look..

Have been the proud owner of a Gusto Rumba for more than 24 hours now, and have been slowly clocking up the kilometers.

I did an inspection and found the following assembly faults:

• Chain far to tight
• Brake adjustment incorrect
• One of the exhaust flanges incorrectly assembled
• A few loose nuts and bolts!
• Idle speed needed adjustment
• Exhaust joint bolt positioned wrong.

Chain being too tight is almost expected in Thailand, but annoying none the less. Took just a few moments to adjust.

The back brake was binding slightly, adjusted the free play in the pedal and now it seems OK.

One of the exhaust flanges was not fitted correctly, if I had not noticed this then I’m sure the bolts would have fallen off before the 500km check.

When going over bumps today I heard a knock, that was just before noticing the exhasust flange problem, when fixing the exhaust flange issue I noticed that the clamp between the 2 into 1 downpipe and the silencer section had the bolt about 1mm from the frame, causing it to knock when going over bumps, easily fixed.

The idle speed seemed a bit slow but the adjuster is easy to get to on the twin Mikuni Carbs.

I checked lots of nuts and bolts and found a few were loose, I don’t know what torque wrench settings to use so I just tightened them carefully.

I will invest in some locknut stuff and treat the threads of all the nuts and bolts around the frame and ancillary stuff, just to be on the safe side, I will also change as many of the visible nuts and bolts to stainless hex fittings as these are really cheap in Chiang Mai and the shop (just down from the railway station towards the bridge) will match nuts and bolts so I can pull up outside the shop and and hand them a handfull of nuts and bolts at a tine.. but I need to check that this won’t make problems with the warranty.

I’m sure now that I will discover a few more little problems in the following days, but these are issues relating to the assembly of the bike after it was shipped in a crate and not issues with the quality of manufacture so I’m not too bothered. Actually I did expect to be sorting a few minor issues after reading about other peoples experience with chinese manufactured bikes.

A couple of my mates who have seen the bike have been quite impressed with the overall quality, I think it’s better than they expected it to be anyway.

I expect to be up to the 500 km first service/inspection in a couple of days so it will be interesting to see what they check.

Conclusion: I have bought 3 new bikes in Thailand before (all Yamaha) and none has ever had any of these kind of issues, It’s not a problem for me as I have the time and patience to fix these little issues but it suggests that JRD as a distributor are not doing as good a job on assembly and pre-delivery inspections as they could. Still: I’m happy for now.

I bought a new Gusto Rumba today from Scooter Arena (Thailand).

I was looking for a new bike since the police started impounding bikes that don’t have number plates (my other bike is a Jap Import with no reg number) and demanding 10,000 baht to release them.

So far I have ridden only about 30km, enough to form an impression but only just.

I paid a total of 60,500 baht, thats 59,000 for the bike and 1,500 for the Registration, Tax and Insurance.

It’s a big bike in terms of size, but only 200cc engine, thats fine for me and I really am quite impressed with the performance but it will be another 500-1000 km before I will really open it up and see what it can do.

It feels comfortable to ride, all the plastic bits seem to rattle a bit but I’m hoping that once it’s all settled down and I have properly tightened all the nuts, bolts and screws that it will be OK..

It has a nice sturdy feel to it, it feels much more like a 400 or 550 bike rather than a 200, but the exhaust note gives the game away, it sounds a bit tinny.

The engine seems sweet enough though, no noise or undue vibration.

The first thing to change will be the handlebar grips, they look plasticky and they do not feel comfortable at all.

I will update shortly and include a lot more pics of details. So far I reckon it was a good buy for me, but I do acknowledge that it will not suit everyone’s tastes.

Back in January I decided to buy a Motorbike, and I had figured that a cruiser was what I wanted. I started to look around the bike shops in Northern Thailand and discovered that

1. There are a hell of a lot of bikes for sale in Thailand.
2. Most of them are crap!

I looked at lots of bikes and then decided the choice was down to a Honda Shadow, Kawasaki Vulcan or a Yamaha Dragstar. If money was no object then I would have bought a Harley, of course.

I found my Kawasaki Vulcan Classic in a small bike shop near the airport at Chiang Mai, the shop owner seemed to know what he was selling and his prices were fair. He had a batch of Kawasaki Vulcan VN400A imported bikes that had just come off the boat from Japan, so I picked a bike and then got him to swap a few bits from the others in the batch so that I had just about all the best bits on mine.

When I collected the bike it had a fresh paint job, and all the alloy bits had been polished to look like new, but there were a couple of problems. The front brake was useless and the headlight was not working, so I decided to fix that myself. I traced the headlight problem to a faulty switch and ordered one on ebay which took about a week to arrive. I bought a uprated twin pot caliper with a new set of brake pads, and I changed the brake fluid so that the front brake is like new. The tank badges were not with the bike, I found a new set on ebay for about US$20, and a handful of other bits to finish it off.

The bottom line is that this bike, which is a 1996 model now looks new, drives like new and cost me about 90,000 Thai Baht (under $3000) with all the bits that I bought. Or, about the same price as a new Honda Phantom 200 which is the biggest new bike you can buy in Thailand.

Now I am enjoying my Kawasaki Vulcan, I have not been on any long rides yet but I will do as soon as the rainy season is over. Call me a wimp, but I don’t like getting caught out in the monsoon rains.

My most valuable accessory is the Clymer Workshop Manual that I bought from the states, it turns out that this model is also manufactured by Kawasaki in the USA so parts are plentiful and cheap on ebay.com