I love mopeds but am getting a bad dose of Indian quality control ! I sure wish the japenese or a western Europe country still made them .Seems that most new mopeds I found were made in India,except the Tomos,which seems to sometimes have it's own quality control issues too.....let's see,
1.Tomos- Eastern Europe
2.Avanti- made in India
3.Puch - Hero-Puch made in India
4.Kinetic- India
My Avanti Autopower 3 month checklist so far
1. Occasinal lockup of back tire, due to a transmission box problem....adding extra oil seems to help this
2. leaky gas tank
3. to make a matching set - came with a leaky fuel valve
4. one broken throttle spring
5. one broken muffler,came apart at the weld
6. assorted stripped screws , due to improper tapping of the holes during factory construction.
On the positve side I guess I have to consider :
1. they are much cheaper then a motorcycle
2. the Indians copied good European designs
3. Avanti seems willing to send me replacement parts....but the Sept.11 attacks have really delayed the supply of parts.
Customs is a nightmare now, so I am still waiting.
4. sure is alot nicer bringing my moped into the kitchen where it's warm to work on it....rather then standing outside in the cold, on the street trying to fix the family car..
5. I gleefully tear things off my moped engine to work on....something that would be a nightmare on the family car... no, have to pay some guy $ 80 an hour to work on the family car
6. I've got 2000 miles on the moped so far and if I can get replacement parts I should be able to clock a hell of alot more mileage.
I hope that India works on quality control, while they can sell these flawed bikes dirt-cheap in India,they're going to have to realize that Americans who are paying at least twice as much for the bikes are going to expect bikes that are not broken before they even buy them. If my parts do arrive I can say that at least Avanti is trying... I hope they succeed,they are nice bikes when they are not falling apart.