AJS js 125 6c o'r Honda cbr?

[Jake Duff]

Hi guys
I've been offered an AJS js 125 6c by a guy I know for £750 around 2900 miles and no MOT or British plate as he bought it in Portugal in 2012 but I've seen that they are crap now that Jinshie owns the brand. Should I go for this or should I go for finance on a Honda CBR 125 which will last me many years of social and going to and from work.
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Jake

[M.C]

...and breath. I'd go for neither. Plenty of CBR125's around for the same money. Also unless you're 17 I wouldn't underestimate how quickly you get bored of a 125.

[Jake Duff]

Well I'm 19 and gonna do my A2 eventually but for now I'm on a CBT so what bike would be suggested?
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Jake

[Rogerborg]

An A2 license. You'll find the money for a bike afterwards.

Hang on, let me stop your rebuttal. We get asked this over and over and over and over and over again, and the answer is always the same. A2, then choose from a huge variety of bikes, most of which offer a lot more value for money than a 125, and tend to be cheaper to insure to boot.

And now let me pre-empt your re-rebuttal. Before you make any decision, ask your local training school that you're thinking of doing an A2 course with them, and ask if you can have a quick go on an A2 bike.

Then see if you can go back to a 125.

If you want to ignore all that, then all I'll say is: don't touch that Jianshe unless he literally gives it to you. Worst case, tell him to put it up for auction on eBay, then bid tree-fiddy. Be prepared to just break it for parts when it turns out that it's got no documentation at all and DVLA won't register it in the UK.

But... A2 licence.
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Biking is 1/20th as dangerous as horse riding.
GONE: HN125-8, LF-250B, GPz 305, GPZ 500S, Burgman 400 // RIDING: F650GS (800 twin), Royal Enfield Bullet Electra 500 AVL, Ninja 250R because racebike

[Jake Duff]

Thank you for your response I'll definitely talk with my local training school first
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Jake

[Evil Hans]

Jianshe don't own the brand. AJS import bikes from a number of Chinese manufacturers, one of which is Jianshe.

I had a 6a that has been problem free. BUT I paid less than that for a 2 year old bike with 300km on the clock. So that ain't no bargain you're looking at!
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Triumph Sprint ST 1050. And it's Red.

[Rogerborg]

Sure, I'm cool with Jianshe-Yamaha bikes. The specific issue is with registering a Mystery Metal bike in the UK.
____________________
Biking is 1/20th as dangerous as horse riding.
GONE: HN125-8, LF-250B, GPz 305, GPZ 500S, Burgman 400 // RIDING: F650GS (800 twin), Royal Enfield Bullet Electra 500 AVL, Ninja 250R because racebike

[Evil Hans]

[Teflon-Mike]

The AJS brand, is owned by BSA Regal; who import a veriety of Chinese built bikes, including the YBR's that dont pass QC to get a Yammie badge....

They have actually had a long term partnership with Yamaha, and had a version of the old T-shock DT175, badged the BSA Tracker, built in ex-British colonies from 'complete knock down' kits supplied by Yamaha, when the parent BSA group went down the tubes in 1973 and supply of BSA Bantams for local postal services etc dried up. In the '80's they penned a 'Big Single' cafe-racer, based around a Yamaha XT500 engine they had bespoke built in small numbers as the 'Regal' Gold-Star, Yamaha themselves 'productionised' as the Yamaha SR500, I think. Certainly inspired Honda's GB500 based on their XL500 engine.

In more recent years they have applied the AJS badge to Chinese derivatives of Honda models, and in some cases 'evolved' them some. Their 'Raptor' cruiser, of which the O/H had an early air-cooled example was 'almost' a blot for bolt clone of the Honda 125 Rebel, but later incarnations incorporated some intreguing mix and match of Chinky made Honda parts-bin bits, and some Regal 'development' in the shape of a water-cooled barel and fuel injection for the old 1970's Honda Benly motor!

It's a pitty they are rather 'Random' and have so little hands on control of actual production, as they have the 'ingredients' to potentially be one of the better chinky Brands... even though they are British, and an ofshoot of the defunct Brit-Bike industry that sort of had a similar problem with a lot of ingredients, bright ideas and a right bludy muddle not making anything of'em! Howerver....

If you want cheap wheels, you dont buy a 'flashy' 125 like a CBR, that's twice the price of other offerings in the show-room to buy, costs more to insure and more to maintain.. its just spending money to waste more money, not be 'cheap'.

On the other hand, you don't save money buying a cheap heap, of a chinky 'project' that you cant ride away on, in the hope you'll be able to make it work, and not cost you a fortune to do so.... especially when that cheap heap of a chink is the think end of a grand, at however many years old and has no reg documents!!!! that is NOT cheap, and even if you do get enough documents you can register it here, you still have to make it/make sure it works, and if its been layed up, its going to need attension... at at £900 that aint cheap! Its a non registered, spares or repairs 'project' of Chinese oragins, that IF it has a UK V5 registration would be worth TOPS £200.. if it showed signs of life and some change it could easily be made a runner... seriously these things are rarely worth £800 in good, tidy, road worthy condition, with a fresh MOT Cert and all docs checked out, ready to ride away.

SO.... what do you want to achieve? at 19, you are old enough to test for an A2 licence... but main incentive is that after 2 years it would let you retest for an unrestricted A, poitentially 3-years early.

Other than that; it's DAS money to get an A2 licence, which can be big money; to suffer 45bhp restrictions, making life awkward finding bikes that are or may be made A2 complient, and the faff of dealing with insurers who likely want proof they are.

You are, unfortunately at an awkward age.. get used to it.... you will ALWAYS be at an awkward age.. there mat be a few months around your 31st birthday things seem pretty cushty... but.. no.. by 32, you are back to awkwardness!!!! GET USED TO IT!

For cheap wheels, 125's can be very useful. You pay a bit of a premium on the buy price, because they can be ridden on L-Plates, and a bit more in the insurance, as most are ridden on L-Plates... but you dont have to ride them on L-Plates..... and testing for an A1 licence on one, is reasonably easy... if you have a bike to do it on, and it only costs about as much as a repeat CBT... that proves your competance and lets you ditch the retched L's, use motorways and carry pillion passengers, even go abroad on the thing if you like... small solace it dont let you have a bigger engine, B-U-T, 125's can still be 'cheap'; where most savings are in the fuel and the maintenance they dont demand, IF you dont wast money at the start buying a posey one, that is no more useful, for the questionable added 'style'.

Here a genuine Yamaha YBR125 is the benchmark Best VFM 125 about, and does take some beating in the balence sheets.

But, means to an end, its cheap wheels, and a doing tests for A1 on it a stepping stone to a higher entitlement licence.

IF you do A1 on a 125, you are a qualified rider; come A2 or RWYL A, you know what's required of you, and training needn't teach you to suck eggs; you have already proved you know enough to pass tests, so all you need to do is get comfy on heavier more powerful bike, and do tests over; big chunk of training costs is renting a bike to do the training and ALL your practice on, so if you have the basics nailed on a 125, which tend to demand a little more diligence, discipline and finesse to make work and aren't as 'easy' as a more flexible bigger bike, you should be onto a winner, and not have to waste so much money on so much training to get ALL your early miles experience in on a bike you can only ride with an instructor on the pay-roll-clock trailing you about.

IF you are a little canny; that sort of saving could pay for the time on a tiddler doing A1 first; provided you don waste money on that tiddler; no reason you cant buy a 125, spend three months on it and have a full licence in your pocket for the effort.

You can then choose whether to keep on tiddling, possibly indefinitely for the 'cheaps' tiddlers offer, or at least until the Insurance is due, after a year, which would give you a years NCB to put towards insuring anything you were then qualified to ride, you chose to buy, and use that time, to train up for A2, without the pressure you have any certificates about to expire or you 'need' to pass so you can ride bike you have bought to work next week. You can do it in your own time.. but as said, already qualified, aught be much of a formaility and no reason you couldn't have both A1 and a2 on your licence within 6 months, and be hapily tiddling in the mean time, and as you are chomping on the bit eager to get something bigger, watching the leaves fall, and wondering whether to hack it out through the winter and buy an A2 bike next year when you have that NCB to add to the game.

working the permutations of the various options, oportunities are pretty much endless, really, trick is to find one that best works for you.... there is no 'one size fits all' solution...

BUT, neither of the two bikes you have mentioned is particularly useful to any particular solution to my mind; but a 125, with determined effort to make it work for you 'for cheaps' and get ahead on the training game doing A1 tests self booked, could make a 125 very useful as part of the plan.

Going straight to A2? courses cost, and whilst many are very attractively priced from perhaps as little as £500, if you start digging into the devil in the detail, they may not actually work out all that great VFM... there's £120 worth of DSA test fees for the actual tests; which will consume about half a morning for Mod 1 and most of an afternoon for Mod 2, so almost one day of any course, will be just in doing the tests on the school bike, and it's likely that those test fees wont be included in cheaper courses, pushing actual all in price up. they will also tend to be shorter courses, probably 3-days, so you will likely only get perhaps 16 saddle hours of training and practice from such a short course, which, if you are starting from scratch is not likely to get you all the way to test standard in one shot... a fact a lot of schools rely on, especially those offering the cheaper courses, where they are discounted as a loss leader to get folk through the door, knowing they wont get them a licence for that little money, and instructors are then telling them they have to pay higher 'day rates' for extra training, or a whole new course, to get to test standard... then training can start to get very very expensive very quickly....

But, if you turn up with an A1 in your pocket? You do stand good chance that is enough to get a feel for the bike and get the tests 'nailed'.

But.. if you have done A1.... humm-harr.... doing A2 only takes you half way to a RWYL licence..... after that, to get the full A, you would have to have held the A2 for two years and do tests A-Gain, on a full power DAS bike..... good chance it would be exactly the same bike you did A" tests on with a different ECU for the fuel injection or something to make it 'full-power'... but still begs another course and another ride around the houses with man with a clipboard, whilst you pay the piper for it....

Is possible if you have done A2, to do RWYL A 'self booked' like you could an A1, on your own bike... if it needs RWYL'a' test standard, which could be as simple as assuring the examiner you have swapped the engine's 'brain' or whatever in the car-park after riding it there.. or turning up with it in a van or something.... But that is step 3...

And like I say, just one more possibility to factor into the perms and combinations.....

It was a lot simpler, when I was your age... I bought a 125 as cheap wheels to get to uni... took my tests on it, got my full licence, ripped up the L-Plates, job done... looked for big bikes to ride.... carried on riding the 125 for a year, as still did the job, and was still 'cheap'!!

Still have a couple of 125's in the stable now, they are a lot of fun for what they cost, and at my age, the 20% 'learner-loading' on the insurance premium compared to my 750, is rather a lot less than the difference of £70 extra in tax on the big-bike! and I find them rather fun to ride, having to eek out every last ounce of oomph from one.... re-living teen-dreams, as long as old bones can stand the strain!

But, just because they can be ridden on L-Plates without a proper licence, and are ridiculed and derided as 'kiddie bikes' so often is something of a danger. Risks on the road are pretty much the same, regardless of how big your engine is. Biggest risk is how big an idiot is holding the handlebars... when a bigger engine will likely just let idiot find more trouble to get into more rapidly.

In that some training can be good and help make you a bit less of an idiot, but if you are 'only' doing it for the licence, and in a rush, to keep the costs down, likelihood is you wont get mush oc the stuff likely to be most helpful to keeping yourself safe... going it alone on a 125 you wont get any... except by the school of hard knocks, which on a motorbike can come hard... BUT stay sensible, read up, get miles under your belt, and come A2 training, if that is all you do, you will have learned a lot, and what you can get from an instructor will more likely be more useful learning, and more likely make sense and stay in your head, having a context of experience to to relate it to... which is why I suggest that split-route aproach, and going with teh 125, BUT with self booked A1 tests an early part of the plan...

Gets you off the stops cheaply and easily; and gives you a spring-board into higher licences, with better chances of success for tests as well as getting more out of what training you pay for.

But your call...

as said, bikes you have mentioned are probably not the most helpful to you for very much at all; BUT not 'planning' to get a licence ANY licence from the start, is a good plan to not get a licence...

Put the horse before the cart, prioritize getting a licence; A1 or A2 makes little odds; route is yours to choose, BUT, it's the key to open the door to whatever you want out of biking... the bike? Not really all that important, and practically pretty much the last thing on the list of stuff you really need. worry about the licence and which one, NOT which bike... get the licence, bike will follow.... spend all your time, money and energy worrying about the bike.. you'll likely get one... but that will be all, and its usefulness will likely be short lived...

To parrot fraze an old safety advert; "Think once, think twice, think bike LICENCE" rest will drop into place, in its own sweet time from there.
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My Webby'Tef's-tQ, loads of stuff about my bikes, my Land-Rovers, and the stuff I do with them!
Current Bikes:'Honda VF1000F' ;'CB750F2N' ;'CB125TD ( 6 3 of em!)'; 'Montesa Cota 248'. Learner FAQ's:= 'U want to Ride a Motorbike! Where Do U start?'

[Rogerborg]

If OP had already bought a 125 and sunk his insurance cost, I'd agree with doing A1 off his own back first.

However, he's not wasted his time and money on a tiddler yet, and so might as well go straight to A2 rather than picking up bad habits and learning 125-specific skills that don't apply once he's on a real bike.
____________________
Biking is 1/20th as dangerous as horse riding.
GONE: HN125-8, LF-250B, GPz 305, GPZ 500S, Burgman 400 // RIDING: F650GS (800 twin), Royal Enfield Bullet Electra 500 AVL, Ninja 250R because racebike