this is the new 2019 tao motor TBR7 250 enduro it is a street-legal dirt
bike made in China that sells retail for thirteen hundred and fifty dollars
brand-new delivered to your house a sharp-looking bike but in my case not a
perfect looking one I bought this bike to ride and ride it I have roughly 1500
miles and I say roughly cuz well I don't know a few months ago I was coming
through the woods and a tree ripped out my speedometer cable so 1,100 miles on
the clock is where we sit there is but one good reason to buy this motorcycle
and that's the price it is made in China hence the reason for the significant dip
in that price versus other bikes and I think that for that money you get a lot
this bike it does come in a crate but it's like 90 percent put together you do
have to put the front wheel on the handlebars off controls getting it out
of the crate by myself was actually the hardest part you do also need to go over
everything that was put together at the factory on this because some of it was
not put together well at all aside from that once it is together it mines
started right up I hit the switch and it just rolled in this video I'm going to
compare this bike to a couple of other things you will hear me talk about it
versus a Japanese bike my xt 250 and you will also hear me compare it to the
RPS Hawk which is a very similar bike I do not have that bike but it was it's
something very very common that other people who are into these Chinese bikes
do have initially after doing a whole lot of reading on China riders forum I
decided on the towel versus the hawk for two main reasons and that's because
these tires right here I wanted to give a more on-road tired I wanted to be safe
on the highway as I could I think these tires are about an 80/20 tire they do
very well on the pavement and quite respectably actually off-road too I can
tell a difference between a good set of knobbies and those when I'm on the dirt
especially if it's wet outside but they do a reasonable job the other thing that
I chose this bike for versus the RPS hawk is it has this rack on the tail end I
wanted to have that some additional features that you get with this bike are
we have a somewhat adjustable suspension you can adjust the preload on the rear
end and we also have this tool container out of the box this was an incredibly
tall bike and the way it set it was the seat height was above my hip and I had
to kick my leg up higher than my waist to even get it over that I was blacked
for inches touching the ground on both sides because I don't weigh a lot I was
able to simply adjust the rear suspension sag I put it almost all the
way down to the bottom that gave me a couple of inches and also on the front
end I removed the spacers that are inside
the shocks and and I also lowered the place where the tree grips the shocks -
those two things combined made me be able to touch almost flat foot on the
bike because I did that I also had to cut the kickstand because even out of
the box it was way too tall even for the way the bike was set up the bike would
fall over sometimes like five people are gonna realize the significance of what I
just showed here I would say that the engine of the Tao TBR7 is probably its best
feature not only did it start right up when I put it together it's very very
torquey I love has so much power its gear ratio is
fairly low unfortunately the gears are pretty close together but that does mean
that this bike will sit up for you all day long you don't even have to use the
clutch to get the front end in the air with this bike we did get a decent
headlight LED turn signals disc brakes on the front we got a drum brake on the
rear now there is another version of this that's come out since I purchased
mine that I heard does come with a disc brake on the rear but I bought mine
around Thanksgiving of last year even though it is a 2019 so I have the drum
break online if you're looking for a cheap adventure bike this one will get
you some places I have really got a lot of hills and canyons and valleys and
stuff like that where I live and I also will just take off riding straight
through the woods or following the powerlines things like that and most of
the time this bikes capability exceeds mine that said when I see something most
of the time I go for it anyway
good thing we didn't bet so clearly it rained more last night than what I
thought it did yesterday we got up that just fine but all my footage was garbage
cuz I wore the GoPro on my chest
admittedly yesterday was the first time I ever made it up that on this bike
though the nobbies really helped and in the mud these tires are not good a
better rider probably could do it but this riders just going to take the other
way home it has plenty of power getting through the trails and up the hills the
top speed is around 60 miles an hour I don't particularly care for going that
fast on this bike because it is so low gear you are squalling going down the
road I don't feel particularly safe on it going that fast but it does a great
job in the woods
overall it runs pretty well but there are definitely some problems with it I
chose the Tao TBR7 over a used enduro at the $1,300 price point because I felt
like I was getting a known problem set and I'm gonna tell you what that set is
because there's some doozies the first thing that you'll have to do with this
bike right out of the box is either change the carburetor or cut open the
one you've got and modify it it will run but it lacks power and they
sputter like crazy that's when you get on the throttle and you start to
accelerate or you've got it open and it cuts out and cuts out and cuts out I
chose to go with buying the mikuni carburetors that I found out about on
China riders forum but YouTuber motocheez has shown on his channel a
solution that works too can't for proof screws so we got to fix that and it's
got the tamper proof mixture adjustment
if you go with the mikuni carburetors a magic numbers are the 110 jet the needle
should be 2 clicks from the top and the fuel screw was turned 2 turns out when I
put that carburetor on its squalled huge jump in power and eliminated all of the
sputtering issues some of the other things you need to know are when you
were putting this together you have got to double check everything and China
riders forum is a great place they have lists of stuff you need to check on
these like I found the fuel line was not hooked up to the carburetor even though
all of that section was put together I also found that the front end was not
tightened down correctly and I didn't notice this at first I put the bike
together and I wrote it around for a bit and I heard this thump in there and this
is what I discovered the chain tension may need to be adjusted and one other
thing that was probably the worst thing of all about this is
when I got mine the we the rear wheel was stiff it would bind up and I looked
and looked and looked and tried to figure out what was wrong you know
checking to see if the brakes were doing that the spec on it is something like 60
or 64 pounds you're supposed to be able to torque it to at like 5 pounds it
would start making that squeak noise and go by 10 pounds the wheat the rear
wheels locked up the bearings were greased they were good and I didn't
figure this out on my own I actually mentioned it to motocheez to see if he
had the same problem with his bike and he told me there shouldn't matter how
tight you torque that down to that there should be spacers in between the
bearings that keep that from happening and I found that one of the main ones
inside the wheel and mine had never been put in another issue is oil in the
airbox and it's partly it's due to the design of this right here if I'm not
mistaken this is so that gases can escape from the crankcase and be
recirculated into the airbox but unfortunately a lot of oil goes with it
so I added this extra length of hose to make it more difficult for the oil to do
that even with that there still have been some times where I've had to drain
oil out of my airbox not only is this bike inexpensive it is cheap the quality
of materials used in this does not compare at all to a Japanese bike on the
rear end instead of having thick aluminum tubing we have sheet metal
basically the welds and things on this are not nearly as good the frame for the
most part has stayed together but both the rear passenger peg and the rear
brake broke off on me and I was doing wheelie practice trying to do
stand wheelies that stud that's just welded to the sheet metal right there
snapped off and so to fix that you know I had to take it all apart and I made my
own stunt I happen to have a lathe so I made one that was longer that could not
only be welded to the front side but I drilled a very small hole to the
opposite side and poked it through that hole and then welded it there I don't
feel like I should have to own a lathe and a welder to operate this bike after
that passenger peg broke off I went back and went over all of their welds and
they look terrible because I had to use my Harbor Freight $99 welder so that's I
don't have the 220 electricity out here for my other one but so that brings us
to what what advantages does this have over my Yamaha xt 250 now you know obviously
the price but also I really like how torquey the engine is in the low range
and the weight the weight of this bike is awesome
this bike is I think around 30 ish pounds lighter than my XT and
significantly less top-heavy the peg position is also a major plus on this
bike they sit about six inches further forward than my Yamaha xt 250 and a couple
inches lower the xt it feels like I'm sitting on my knees it makes them hurt
this bike has a much more relaxed Cruiser type position other than that in
every other category I'm gonna have to say xt 250 blows this bike out of the
water but you know for the extra money it costs it should my personal
recommendation do I do I recommend owning this bike if thirteen hundred and
fifty dollars is the absolute maximum of your budget
I still think owning one of the Chinese bikes gives you an advantage because you
get unknown problem set and you do have a problem set but it's a known one
you're getting a brand new bike at thirteen hundred and fifty dollars the
end Neuros I found in my area were junk
they were like 1999's with 40,000 miles on them you know which
probably had black smoke white smoke ball tires all of that you're not gonna
get much if you can come up to $2,000 you know and I'm not gonna say that like
Oh a few hundred more dollars cuz I know how it is or definitely if you can get
up to $2,400 you will get a better used bike you can find Japanese bikes to 50s
for $2,400 with only a few thousand miles on them that are gonna blow this
away both in performance and in quality they're a much much safer bike I feel
like that this bike is significantly more of a hazard to your life you're
risking your life more by buying this bike than other motorcycles about
customer service I mentioned I got this bike at q9 Powersports you know they
were one of the very few people that actually had them when I was looking
around and I bought the bike the day couple days before Thanksgiving within
eleven days it was sitting here in a box what I didn't think was okay is they did
not send the title at all and and not only that they didn't plan to I get why
they don't ship it in the box because that would make it easy to steal but
they could have very well shipped it you know in the mail the only reason I got
my title is because I called them to find out why I didn't have my title you
know maybe that's how it is everywhere maybe maybe I'm foolish and I just don't
understand how things work you know there's the first internet motorcycle I
ever bought at least four to six weeks before I was able to get this bike
street-legal because of that the good thing about q9 is you can always call
them and get an English speaking person in the United States of
America on the phone when it came time to get the missing parts that I did not
receive for my back wheel you know I did get a response 14 days later they said
okay were when I contacted them again they said okay we're having this shipped
to you from our California warehouse you'll have it in three to five business
days I kept you know emailing back and they'd be like they just say that same
story again and I called him on the phone and they you know the same story
again and so finally I just gave up and I didn't want to but I made my own part
on the lathe I found out what it was supposed to look like by looking at
another youtubers video the shape of the part and I just got some steel and I
made my own I put it on there and it works perfectly I I first emailed them
on April 2nd on May 17th a part came in the mail UPS just like this well not
just like they said but six weeks later but you could do worse on customer
service they did actually eventually at least send the part I'll put a link in
the description to q9 because you know they they do have customer service you
know I did get my bike there an okay place I'm also gonna put a link to xt
power sports and I've not bought from them but youtuber motocheez has
several of these kind of bikes and he seems thrilled with them they even gave
him a coupon code so that you can save some money on that and so I'm I'm gonna
put his link and his coupon code in there I don't get anything at all from
this I don't I don't really know him so you know you'll be taking his word for
it if you buy from there but I'll put both of those sources down there so you
guys can see them as always guys super thanks for watching and good luck