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Chinese Motorcycle 200GY

1.09.2007 at 8:07 PM

I ended up renovating a brand new Chinese motorcycle. Its chief complaint was a broken fuel tank. The petcock mounts to a three-inch stalk of polyethylene that is plastic welded to the main tank, and the plastic weld failed after 240 miles.

I looked around on the Internet to find a replacement tank, but parts are not so easy to find for a Chinese motorcycle, especially when you don't know the trick. So then I researched adhesives to bond the stalk back on, but they were almost as expensive as a plastic welder, which was way more money than a plastic fuel tank should cost.

Then I learned the trick of Chinese motorcycles. Many of them are the same or close enough to have interchangeable parts, even though they're made by different manufacturers. That makes it easier to find parts for them. I was used to thinking that any given model of motorcycle would be made by only one manufacturer. Like the way cars are. Only the manufacturer Toyota makes the model Camry. Only Mazda makes the model RX-8.

Chinese motorcycles aren't like that, though. There are a whole bunch of manufacturers for a particular model. For instance, what I was working with was a HiSun 200GY. If you go to look for parts for a HiSun 200GY, good luck. You won't find them. But the model 200GY is actually made by a ton of different manufacturers, so if you widen your search for just 200GY parts, then parts are available, though not conveniently.

I eventually found a fuel tank that has a long built-in metal petcock stalk that bolts directly to the tank instead of having a plastic stalk at all, and even though it was for a bike made by a different manufacturer, it pretty much almost fit with minimal effort.

Figure 1: This is the gas tank. It has been taken off of the bike. The right side of this photo would be toward the rear of the bike as assembled, the left side toward the front. The top of this photo is the top of the gas tank. So we are looking at the left side of the tank as it would be mounted.Enlarge Photo


Figure 2: Notice that the petcock is mounted to an approximately three-inch black polyethylene stalk that is plastic welded to the polyethylene tank itself. This tank failed at that plastic weld.Enlarge Photo


Figure 3: You can see the stalk separating from the tank.Enlarge Photo


Figure 4: You can see one of the fuel filters poking up out of the stalk.Enlarge Photo


Figure 5: This joint was made with polyethylene plastic welding rod. There are only a couple of adhesives available for bonding polyethylene. One of them is made by 3M. It is very expensive but it seems like the one that would be most likely to work on this joint.Enlarge Photo

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Nokia 6800 R.I.P.

9.18.2006 at 8:11 PM

Last week, I took my Nokia 6800 cell phone out of service. It still worked, too. That thing was a workhorse.

I liked the keyboard so much that I had a hard time giving it up. That keyboard was great for text messages. Now I'm back to the old "Cu@1 2mro" routine. That bugs me. But I have a camera now. But I don't like the pictures so well. Maybe I'll use it to post some live reports or something.

Anyway, in memory of my Nokia 6800 cell phone on which I used no funny free ringtones.

Figure 1: Many sides, all at once.Enlarge Photo


Figure 2: DamageEnlarge Photo


Figure 3: Damage.Enlarge Photo










Figure 8: Check this out. It opens to make a keyboard.Enlarge Photo


Figure 9: This keyboard saw a lot of action.Enlarge Photo


Figure 10Enlarge Photo


Figure 11Enlarge Photo


Figure 12: The display was so scuffed it had sort of a perma-haze on it. But it still powers up and it still works.Enlarge Photo

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