kids quad/trike wanted

[smellmycheese]

After buying a chinese p.o.s for my son for xmas and it then seizing within 20 mins use i`m looking for something half decent second hand. 50cc ish preferably auto maybe semi auto in the northwest please. Cannot be doing with ebay anymore after just bidding on a honda atc project......no bids for a week at £100 then some cheating twat outbids me by £2 in the last second. Or maybe a bit of advice on something not honda/yam/suz etc..that wont fail immediately.

[dave21478]

Aaaah, you have just re-ignited my rage.

Basically, you have to pay big money and get a decent brand name. Avoid everything else.

 

My nephew is ten - he is a good kid but is a bit of a wuss. He is very risk-averse and especially fearful of anything motorised.

A while back someone gave me a cheap chinese quad - 40cc, no gears, just twist and go. I tried my nephew on it and to everyones massive surprise he loved it. Sadly the quad was epically fucked - really hard to start, would cut out at random, and just generally ran like a bad of shite no matter what we did to it. It eventually seized up and my nephew was gutted. I decided to get him a new one, but the prices are frightening - I just couldnt justify spending a grand on a kids toy and even the second hand stuff wasnt really loosing value, so started looking at the chinese stuff again and found a local-ish place that imported them and stocked them, rather than most online places who had them drop-shipped directly. My assumption was that a brand new one with a guarantee and local spares backup would be ok, not having a few years abuse like the last one had.

Wrong.

The first couple of days were fine, then it started getting hard to start, woudlnt idle, would cut out at random and be difficult to re-start. It would eventually go again, but would take a lot of fucking about feathering choke and throttle...something a ten year old couldnt manage. He lives on a farm, so used it in a field - it would obviously always cut out and not re-start when he was at the far end of the field so I or his father would have to traipse all the way over to get it going again - rinse and repeat until everyone was too pissed off with it to continue.

I have had the carb to bits countless times and its basically just shite - really poor tolerances.

I considered binning it and fitting a different carb, but by then the rest of it was coming to bits too, mostly the rear "suspension" which very quickly developed huge amounts of play so the chain keeps coming off. No bearings anywhere, just shitty soft plastic bushes. I went back to the shop and they just handed over a new set of bushes without even asking to see the receipt - they obviously get a lot of this. New ones didnt last much longer either. Its not as if he is thrashing it hard, doing jumps etc, he basically just trundles around on it, rarely at anything near full throttle and on relatively smooth ground.

I put it in the pickup and went back to the shop intending to get them to give it a full service and repairs....it has a two year warranty after all. The shop has closed down - what a massive surprise.

So this quad, which has had a handful of hours of use is now relegated to a corner of the workshop and sits unused - waste of fucking money.

[Chas4545]

Quads/trikes?  A and E   and the rozzers don't like them, use is normally illegal unless on your land or with written permission

 

Amerca banned the three wheelers after kiddie carnage IIRC.

 

If he is big enough/strong enough  why not get him to a local motor cycle trials club? They are always looking for keen youngsters. IMHO Bikes are a lot safer than trikes or quads if qualified instruction is taken . Lethal if not , of course.

Will also help to keep him safe if he becomes a biker later in life.

[andy18s]

You need to get hold of a shagged out corsa, then advertise it on any of your local farcebook sales pages

Guaranteed to get loads of stuff offered as a "swp4apitbykem8"

[dave21478]

Chas, you must be a right laugh at parties.