Sold the Yamaha Scooter

Today's weather:  High = 2  Low = -3
Sunny and cha cha cha chilly

About a year ago I purchased a white Yamaha knock-off gas powered scooter.

These beasts are ideal for getting around the city and they cut down a trip time in half compared to using the subway or getting into taxis.  Scooters are flexible and nimble to navigate the city's busy roads.  They are most useful during rush hours, when a taxi is hard to come by and the subway is packed.  Late night is also a good time to ride, and there are no transport worries about coming home from a party.  Scooter riding is much better in the 'riding season' which typically goes from March to November when the weather is decent enough to ride. During the winter months, you can still ride, but it is going to be very cold and uncomfortable.

Generally, gas is cheap to fill up the bikes.  Roughly 30 RMB each time, about $5.  It lasts for around 200km.  As mentioned in previous posts, however, a crackdown on unregistered bikes (all scooters are illegal in the city since 2006) means that not all gas stations will sell to you.  The crackdown, of course, is not uniformly applied and it's a matter of knowing and memorizing which gas stations do sell you that precious fuel.  Awhile back I had a siphoning system going on with jerry cans and hoses.  That has not been necessary recently, but you never know when I'll need to revitalize that plan.

A typical knock-off Japanese scooter goes for around 5000 RMB, or $800.  This is a great deal of course.  Double the price and you have the genuine version.  For even cheaper you can get a purely Chinese bike, usually around 2500-3000 RMB, but these are not recommended as they always break down.

Regardless of which scooter it is, the key to owning and riding a bike Shanghai is getting familiar with the shops, making friends with the mechanics, and doing repairs and maintenance on a regular basis.  Expats have this strange idea that they buy a bike, ride it, and see how long it lasts without maintaining it -- they expect this to be a very long time.  Conversely, they seem to think that going to the shop regularly means the bike is not high quality, and it's a sign of weakness.

Perhaps this idea comes from the combined fact that parts and labor in western countries is ridiculously expensive, and vehicles in general don't go to the shop very often.  In China it's the opposite.  The bike is cheaper, so the quality is less, that's a given.  But the available parts at the shop are so cheap and the labor is essentially free that you'd be a fool for not taking advantage of this and getting that maintenance done.  Why do it yourself when you can pay someone else to do it for you at a good price?

So I've been maintaining and repairing the Yamaha Cygnus 125cc knock-off scooter for awhile now, and recently upgraded to a Honda CB400 full-blown motorcycle.   The scooter was taking up space so I figured that selling it would be a good idea.

On that note I took the scooter down to the shop and did a major overhaul.  New exhaust pipe, new spark plugs, new carberator, new battery, new tires, new generator, change the oil and air filter, and various other touch-up jobs.  The mechanics did fabulous work on the bike, it only took an hour or so, and the grand total of all this work was 490 RMB, about $80.   It was ready for selling shortly after that, which I did.

The bike served me extraordinarily well in the past year.  I put roughly 10,000 km on it, and made countless trips criss-crossing the city for this thing and that thing.  The savings of both time and money were enormous.  Using a rough calculation, the estimated savings were like this:

15km of riding saves one hour of commute time.
10km of riding saves 30 RMB in taxi fare

So that's essentially 30,000 RMB and approximately one whole month of time savings.  Fabulous.