Reply To: Look what I found in China
Cost of living on the world isn’t going to make a rider fork out £1500 for an engine, they would get a whole bike for that! – 50+ units could work for a dealer though if they have a fleet of bikes and need spare engines for their customers in their workshops.
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I quite agree, £1500 for an engine is crazy, I could get a cloned Toyota 1zz-fe engine (Celica, Corolla etc) for around that price with shipping and customs included. Plus somebody could buy 2 or 3 Hyosung 125/250cc for about £1500 now they are getting on in age.
I am enjoying my sniff through China and have a couple of more ways to track stuff, but I feel it will lead to nowhere. The most likely to see a result is using 1688.com, suppliers are on there but you need the right Chinese search terms to find it and use the picture matching system. Then if they can be bought and shipped you will likely get the “not quite the same as OEM fitment issues” that I am seeing in comments for the cloned GT manifolds. I have ordered a set of the cloned GT manifolds for experimental purposes, as it is a simple process to make modified airbox funnels.
But the engines are in common use in China and they are in a quite a few bikes, so the parts may trickle through eventually. You can already get cylinder barrels, head gaskets, pistions, valves etc for the 250. I will not devote much more time to looking, the whole system is a minefield to navigate. I just love these bikes and have owned a couple now, instantly regretted selling the first so I went and bought another. It breaks my heart to see them dying for lack of parts, so even though it is likely to be fruitless I don’t see it as time wasted.