Mini-moto's

[mrchips]

After searching eBay for what would be a nice Christmas present I saw hundreds of 49cc Chinese imports. I know little about these but if you decide to use them for competition use do they not need to be 39cc? Does anyone know anything about the £300 ones ie reliability etc. I saw a few 'proper' ones (polini 4.2hp) in the auto trader but even those were well above my price range.

[Ste]

Avoid the cheap chinese copies if you want to be able to use it for anything other than car park posing. They are priced very cheaply, and you'll find that the build quality reflects that. Despite them having an extra 10cc over all the proper ones they are shit slow and if you take it to a mini moto track you'll end up getting pissed off because your mini moto is stupidly slow.

For £300, or even for twice that, you'll get much more for your money if you buy a second hand proper mini moto rather than a cheap new one. Have a look through www.minimotoclub.com/vb/ for minimoto's for sale, there are lots on there to choose from.

Before deciding you want to buy a mini moto for competition use, you'd be best off before buying one at all looking on the minimotoclub.com pages and going along to a mini moto track near you which offers hire and ride, Normally it will cost you £25 for 3x10 minutes of track riding on a hire bike, 10 minutes doesn't sounds much but it's still good.

[mrchips]

There's a go kart track close by that does the mini-moto's too, only ever been on the go karts though. They don't look very stable, are they easy to come off?

[Laura]

Yes very.
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Good girls ride motorcycles bad girls thrash them.

[G]

Initially you will fall off a lot.
However as you are usually already on the ground (ie knee down and leg just above it) it doesn't hurt much.

The first time I did it I fell off ten times in thirty minutes.

When you get used to it you can feel the tyres starting to slide and save it easily enough.

[Ste]

They are very easy to come off, if you don't crash them then you're doing something wrong.

I've never broken any part of my mini moto by crashing it, and have never had a injury from crashing one either. When you're on one you're pretty much already on the ground so all that happens is you fall off and then slide along a bit. Another reason to go along and have your first try on a hire bike as if you were to manage to crash it and break it, it's not your bike.

Only know of one person who has ever managed to hurt themselves by crashing a mini moto and that was Hex who did a fairly impressive crash and managed to break a couple of ribs. Have a read over the minimotoclub.com website and if you want ask people if they've ever hurt themselves by crashing and the majority won't have (I expect!) and any who have won't have had any bad injuries.

[mrchips]

Think I'll get a crowd organised and head down to that track some day. Last time we went we only done the go-karting which is also a lot of fun.