MC 95-250 Delivery Review

Kevin Rutland

These are my own views and comments based on my own MC- 95-250 Reverse Trike Motorcycle. I am not associated with any dealership or the manufacturer, and so you can take or ignore the comments as you please.  Other trikes may handle or perform differently and you must use our own commonsense when reading the following.

Delivery

The first thing that impressed me was the overall appearance and quality of the trike.  This machine looks great!  The quality of the construction is excellent, in my opinion, and all the parts look like they are well made.  The engine and transmission, wheels, etc all look as good any anything else out there, and the trike seems great value for the price.

 One important thing to bear in mind if you purchase one of these trikes is that they need to be fully inspected before you ride them.  This is no different to any other motor vehicle; it is just that there aren't any servicing facilities available in most areas to handle these new Chinese trikes, so you need to carry out the inspections and do the initial set up yourself, or find someone who can do it for you.  These reverse trikes appear to have a lot of things in common with ATVs, so maybe an ATV mechanic can help too.

 What follows is what I did to my trike to set it up for road use.  Every trike will be slightly different so you should inspect yours carfeully before accepting delivery and then again in greater depth before riding it.  I'm just letting you know what I had to do to to set me trike up for road use.  The shipping of mine did cause some very minor damage, but nothing to cause me any concern.  I'm totally delighted with the trike and I have currently not had any problems with it on the road.

 

 The new MC-95-250 reverse trike model comes “Fully Assembled”  but is too big for a tailgate lift delivery, so I collected it from the shippers. Not a big problem for me as I have a large flatbed trailer that I use for my hovercraft.  You may have to make special arrangements to have yours delivered, or borrow a trailer wide enough to handle it.

My trike was well wrapped, and transported on a wooden pallet type of open crate, with a simple plastic wrap covering over the open wooden frame work surrounding the vehicle.   The carrier company employee helped me to remove the trike from the crate, so that I could inspect it before signing off on the vehicle. Once the covering was pulled off I could see that the underside of the crate was broken up between the engine and rear wheel.  Also the large cardboard box containing the windscreen and rear fender and the paperwork, was beaten up.  Fortunately the underside of the trike showed no signs of damage to the paint, or parts, and the contents of the box also turned out to be OK.  Even with the damage to the crate the trike was OK, except for a couple of very minor items.  This is not typical I'm told.  A friend of my got his trike delivered in perfect condition.

I peeled off all the wrapping except the front fenders, as they looked perfectly OK.  JD Walters, at Thrifty Scooters, had advised me to inspect everything before I sign for it, so it was my mistake to leave these wrapped.  When I got home I found that both turn signal indicators had broken at their base, but a small amount of silicon soon had them securely back in place.

Another thing that was off on mine was the instrument panel which was out of position, being pushed below the body shell.  I did not notice this until my friend Dean pointed out that some of the display was only partly showing,  Relocating the instrument panel was very easy and just involved loosening the rubber mounts, pushing the instrument panel backing to its position and then tightening the mounts again. I noticed that the trip meter reset button was broken off level with the acrylic instrument panel cover, probably when the panel was knocked out of position during transit.  It can still be pressed easily with a pen tip, and it is not obvious that it is missing its tip, so I'm fine with it.

I carried out a full check of the machine before taking it out for a run. This is vital as these machine have travelled a long way and need to be set up properly before use.  Check the suspension, and steering, etc and tighten everything if necessary.  It is also sensible to check that the front wheels are correctly aligned (see the Blog page).  I did find a couple of loose nuts on mine. These inspections are nothing more that the checks you should always be doing on a regular basis.

 My parking brake was a little loose.  Adjustment can be carried out at the brake lever, and also at the brake mechanism on the rear wheel.  There is a bolt with a locking nut on the rear brake assembly, Loosening the locknut and turning in the bolt a tiny amount will take up any slack in the cable. It only takes a very small amount of movement of the bolt to set the brake correctly, and remember to tighten up the locknut.

The next adjustment I made was to the gear selector, as I could hardly get my foot to bend far enough to reach under the lever. Just a personal preferance. My friend Dean said his was set up perfectly for him.  Again, it's a simple adjustment requiring the lever to be removed and then repositioned on the splines, after first removing the footrest. 

I fitted the windshield, only to find that the handlebars now clouted itwhen full left lock was applied, so I had to reset the handlebar angle,  I ended up angling the handlebars so that the cover stopped just short of the windshield at full left lock, and they seem to work just fine.

Fitting the rear fender also had its own little setbacks on my trike.  One of the fastenings was missing.  The others had been sticky taped in place. One of the bolts had been cross-threaded in its hole.  I had to use 6mm metric tap to clean out the threads on the nuts that were welded to the to supporting brackets.  I also used a wrench to alter the angle of one other brackets which was slightly out of alignment.  I replaced the missing nut and bolt after trip to Ace Hardware, and the fender fitted in place with no problem.  Later, I found that one of the other bolts had a stripped thread and added a locking nut to keep everything together.

 I also applied a dab of silicone sealer around all the visible electrical connectors, to help seal them from water, and also hold them securely together. You should check all the connectors, and the silicon will keep the water out, and keep them together.

 The spring-loaded lever at the rear of the seat was not gripping very well, so I took apart the mechanism and ground off some of the metal to allow it to pivot further, which solved the problem.

 Almost all of the above minor problems are the sort of thing a mechanic would come across when setting up a new motorcycle for customer.  As these bikes have traveled all the way from China, it is not unreasonable to expect to have to carry out this sort of inspection and adjustment.  Anyone not happy wielding a wrench and socket  would probably have to find a mechanic to carry out these adjustments before the reverse trike is fit for road use. You'd be well advised to find someone, before you purchase a machine, or else start reading up on basic motorbike, or scooter maintenance.  Routine maintenance is not difficult and can be carried out by most people willing to take the time to find the information.  (Check out the Links to Useful Sites page). You cannot rely on the info that comes with the trike because it is woefully lacking, so if you do decide to buy this machine, or something similar, you may have to search the Internet to find information and technical details on the engine and the frame so that you can maintain it correctly.  Fortunately, many of the motorcycles are classed as scooters and if you search around for a while you will find very similar scooter manuals.  Bear in mind that you also have to obtain spare parts for your machine, but again these seem to be available through various Internet suppliers (again see the Useful Sites page).

 After adding fuel to the gas tank I pressed the starter and after the second press the bike started very easily.  I tried it many times since then and it starts very nicely with just a very small turn off the throttle.  I did find that the throttle was sticking when I first got the bike, and hte adjustment nuts were not tight, but after making the adjustments mentioned earlier it now works really well.

 Having satisfied myself that the bike was technically sound I moved on to changing the fluids.  I drained the  coolant and replaced it with a better quality antifreeze (50/50 for winter or 60/40 solution for summer).  The radiator cap is under a panel near the handlebars on the right side.  A screw has to be removed to allow the panel to be lifted off.  There is also an expansion container near the front of the machine which should be drained too and partly refilled.  To drain the liquid out of the system a bolt is removed from the bottom front corner of the water pump.  I used low-pressure compressed air to help push most the remaining liquid out of the system.  Some people recommend changing the hoses on the machine, but I'm going to wait and see if that becomes necessary, as my hoses look fine.  Refilling the radiator cooling system takes little time, and additional fluid has to be added as the air bubbles are forced out of the system.

 Next I changed the engine oil to a better quality 15W/40 oil. To drain the oil you will want to run the engine to warm it up, and then remove two bolts from the right-hand side and underneath the engine.  The right-hand side nut has a spring and the strainer located behind it. Make sure that you put the strainer back the correct way round.  Both of these should be cleaned and then put back in place.  The other nut under the engine should also be removed so that you can get all the oil and debris out.  It is very important to flush the system once or twice and replace the oil at this early stage to remove all pieces of contaminant.

 I moved on to the gearbox oil next.  Locating the filler screw on the gearbox took some time.  Some notes I had gained from the Internet suggested that it should be behind the CV cover, so I took that off.  Actually I could not get the CV cover to come completely away from the engine because it seems to be trapped by the engine frame and trim.  Removing the trim would be necessary (two screws - you need a screwdriver and a metric wrench).  Anyway, the filler was not behind the CV cover.  It was actually just to the rear of it, and it has a fairly small hole of not much more than 6mm.  There looks to be two drain plugs underneath the gearbox. I only removed one of them the one that had a copper washer, I'll have to look into some more information to see if I need to remove the second one.  To refill the system I used some good quality 80W/90 grade oil from a bottle with the tapered filler.  I had some plastic tubing that would fit the hole in the gearbox and also push over the tapered filler on the oil bottle, so I squeezed the required amount of oil through the tube into the gearbox.  It took quite a long time as the oil is very thick and slow-moving.  On most gearboxes I've come across before you fill up until oil starts to drain back out of the filler hole.  I'm not sure if this is the case with this engine so I just added the amount of oil mentioned in the very poor handbook.  I'll look online to see if I should be filled right up to the hole, which I suspect is normal.  It probably wasn't very far off, going by comparison with the oil I removed.

 I also added an overflow fuel pipe to the bottom of the tank.  Mine had nothing attached to the overflow pipe.  I pushed a piece of 1/4” fuel pipe over the fitting and lead it down to the lower frame, as it is not a good idea to have fuel spraying over the hot engine.

 My overall first impression is that the MC 95 250 reverse trike is a very nice-looking machine, with what looks like good engineering, but as with all new vehicles, it does need careful inspection and basic maintenance before it would be fit to ride.  If you are a person who does not like to get your hands dirty then this is probably not a machine for you unless you have a willing mechanic nearby town setting up and keep it running.

 I've read several comments on the Internet about poor quality Chinese "crap", and I must say that my machine does not seem to fall into that category.  It is really well made and looks as good as any other vehicle.  I have not found anything that suggests low quality engineering.  Some also have found poor steering at speeds about 35mph, which possibly points to incorrect whell agignment (toe in).  My trike handles really well, and I've had no steering problems at speeds up to 50mph (as fast as I can go until the engine is run in).  Another trike rider told me that after adjusting the wheel alignment, his trike handele perfectly at 60mph. 

 I think that there is a lot of worry from other manufacturers and dealers who are concerned about this competition.  I remember the exact same thing happening back in the sixties in the UK when the Japanese motorcycles first appeared on the scene. The British bike manufacturers and dealers were hammering the quality of the imports, but within a few years the Japanese bikes proved themselves to be as good and sometimes even better than existing British machines.  I suspect that the Chinese machines will soon take over a larger slice of the market.

All in all, I'm totally pleased with my MC-95.

My friend Dean, ordered his machine from Thrifty Scooter, shortly after he saw mine, and it arrived less than a week later.  Dean's MC 95 arrived in perfect condition, with a few loose bolts, and otherwise ready for inspection and gassing up. The steering rod nuts were loose so he had to tighten them up and check the alignment.  His did have a poorly chromed muffler guard, but otherwise it looks great too!

I've recently ridden the trike to work and it performed really well, providing me with an exilerating ride though Council Bluffs and Omaha in the rush hour traffic.  It is much better than sitting in a car, and not being able to remember the journey at all!  Now I know where all the bumps and holes are, and I'm far more alive on the Reverse Trike!For more details and photos about the Devivery see Unpacking the Crate

 
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