Quality Assurance Fall-Back

[Oysterville]

As my eternal internal infernal )) debate between 2 and 4 stroke rages on, I keep coming back to the combination great price and power point of the 2 stroke. However, the horror stories of Chinese QA with the bad gaskets, bad screws, and bad internal cleaning practices keep haunting me. Finding metal shavings in the cylinder? Are you kidding me?!
So I guess my first question is whether any dealer out there goes through the effort to go through the engines prior to them going out, in order to lessen the issues mentioned above and take care of other issues. Does anyone do it, or are the margins so competitive that the labor isn't worth it to them?

Second question would be one of how difficult it is to do the teardown myself, given that I'm a 2 cycle newbie. I'm not the dimmest bulb on the Christmas tree, so I can follow basic instructions. How much effort, and how long would it take, approximately?

Thanks in advance for the advice.

 

[DVBikes]

take a loOK AT the 60 mph thread thtas waht were doin is cleanin up the motor and blueprinting the cases

 

[pj-pirate]

take a loOK AT the 60 mph thread thtas waht were doin is cleanin up the motor and blueprinting the cases

I took my motor apart and cleaned up the cases and ports with a dremel and washed out the beaings/bushings. Took all of a 1/2 hr to clean up. I lubed up everything and re-torqued nuts and bolts( use blue loctite) all during the re-assembly and now I have a motor that is reliable and starts on the first bump! A little TLC goes a long way! Im now on my 4th gallon of gas and ride it like I stole it!!!

 

[2door]

Unfortunately the only seller I know of that disassembled and cleaned his engines prior to selling them was Chris Hill. You paid a little more for his kits but the quality was what you'd expect to get for a $350.00 kit. Chris has closed his dealership due to heavy Canadian and US environmental laws and the associated problems with importing and distributing 2 stroke bicycle engines.
If you're not concerned with the warranty offered by many sellers doing it yourself is not hard. These little 2 strokes are about as simple as one could ask for so disassembly and reassembly is an easy task as stated above. We used to do this with even high end model airplane engines and you'd be amazed at the trash you'd find inside. I disassemble every engine and clean them before the first rotation of the crankshaft. Maybe overkill, but I've had good luck with all my engines and I attribute it to making sure I was starting with a clean engine. Proper lubrication upon reassembly is important too. Good luck.
Tom