Here's the deal, I enjoy building bikes as much as riding these days, but I'm getting a little tired of the rust and dirt.
So I was thinking that one of these Chinese things might be a fun and cheap to work with and try and turn into something decent.
I had similar thoughts bouncing around inside my head many many years back, I knew the bikes weren't the best but with my skills and knowledge I thought maybe I could turn some into something remotely decent.
Then a mate brought around some 200cc full size bikes to have some bits modified and repaired and I came to realize that they were exceptionally woeful.
The finish on them was good and they looked the part but the materials they used on a lot of the parts (metal & plastic) were really substandard, the motor wasn't too bad as it was a copy of something but what they had designed themselves was rubbish.
The forks looked really good with their anodized parts but they had no dampening.
Front and rear discs looked good also but they stuffed up the ratios of the master & slave cylinders to the point that they had no decent leverage and the brakes were next to useless.
The more I looked at what needed sorting the more expensive the whole thing became and it became more obvious that it would be easier & cheaper to restore an XR200.
That was maybe 10 years or more back so maybe the model your looking at is sorted better but I doubt it.
It's often mentioned that the Japs weren't that good in their early years either but the Japs have a different culture, they wanted to build a better product and went to extremes to do so by buying in riders and copying existing models and then improving on them.
It's not that the Chinese can't build good stuff, but it seems that they can only do it when a Western company makes them build to a spec.
When left to their own devices they seem to take as many shortcuts as they can to optimize profits, mostly by using substandard steel etc.