Can anyone confirm this 300 bike?

[felix]

Hi Tintin, you seem fairly up to scratch with the inner workings of puzey here! It's good to have someone on these boards with a bit of inside knowledge! The XTR250 gets talked about quite a bit here on MCM, it seems to be the only Puzey design that's available in China. Galaxy have been promising the release of the XTR250 LC2 for over a year now but still nothing. I presume they ripped off that design as well right?

Do you have any idea if the other designs will become available here too, or are they for export only? In another post, you spoke of upcoming models for next year, including 350cc and 620cc 2 strokes (!!!!!). If those were availble here, they could trounce all over anything else made in this country!!!

[culcune]

Is their a US importer of the Puzey or Galaxy models yet?

As far as I can tell, Pitster (whether an official version or illegal copy) have XTR 250's with liquid cooling (Puzey copy) and rebrand some of the Galaxy bikes as off-road only.

www.pitsterpro.com

[Tintin]

The Chinese have always copied each other that is why the copies get progressively worse from factory to factory. The galaxy bike was made by Puzey 4-5 years ago at YX bike division, they then sold it to everyone in true YX fashion, the bike had a few HUG defects and no major volume was ordered. The original guy working with Puzey at the factory then took the bike to Galaxy where it was made a 2nd time but to this day the design still has many of the same problems as they never listed to the advice given and also sold it to everyone. Frame brakes in 3 places, swing arms fail, suspension is shocking BAD. i could go on. That is why the LC2 XTR was made to escape the stupidity. Shopu did the very similar thing and then nearly went insolvent when a lot of their unpaid stock was auctioned in Ausi to Motovert who dumped it and killed the market on the XTR-2. Look at the graphics from the XTR-1 there are even a copy of the original Puzey graphics set.

[Tintin]

Where is MCM ? Yes I certainly do know the PUZEY story I ride all their bikes as a test rider. The XTR-2 is no going to be copied by galaxy, the top of the company has no budget for this project as they don’t know how to sell huge volume. The XTR1 never sold well at all and they lost a lot in tooling. The xtr-2 was sold by SP to the highest bidder to keep the factory alive after nearly going BUST. Most the stupid people don’t realize to market a toy bike is easy in the west BUT BIG bikes are very hard and need a very specific dealer distribution strategy. If you don’t locate the right network the product will never see volume.

[ChinaV]

Hello Tintin,

It sounds like you have a lot of inside information on the whole, Galaxy / Puzey / Pitster Pro story. I've heard a few different tales from various people, but nothing as detailed as you have mentioned. Thank you for sharing and making us a little less confused as to where the bikes design originated from. You mentioned riding all of the Puzey models and I'm wondering if you are based here in China? I'm nothing more than a consumer, but would enjoy getting together sometime to learn more about the XTR family of bikes and would also appreciate any help you could give in building a better XTR.

Do you think it would be possible to purchase any of the Puzey bikes here in China for personal use? I'm not interested in registering for road use, but would love a high quality dirt machine for the trails around my house.

Cheers!
ChinaV

[Tintin]

It is very simple. Puzey started in Taiwan with the EVO scooters 89 (his designs, sold big in the USA as Bladez scooters). Then when everyone jumped to China Puzey started making pit bike designs technically ahead of the original FYM bikes that were also copies of the original pit bike the Honda 50. At that time the key players were Puzey selling OEM to others (tried to be innovative doing all RND and design), Motovert(an absolute thief, steels from everyone, talentless snake) and Pitster(added some innovation and used Puzey elements but the factories did the RND under instruction so the quality was marginal)…1-2 other smaller Euro customers like PitPro(small volume but good passionate guys) ect.

Pit bikes got Huge and everyone was stealing from everyone else. Puzey was the only one doing CAD design work (still today) and handing it to factories for production. Many of his features are still present in bike today. There are NO new designs out there of late because of the copies, the net outcome of this period was new things came about now and then but Quality actually dropped and this made customers frustrated hurting the overall business i.e. the designs changed but they became more unreliable. THEN cheaper imitations of better products appeared more and more, this lead to the Race bike factories basically dying as customers moved to budget machines to sell volume like Apollo, BSA, Kayo ect (all budget junk makers). This was the end of the GOOD pit bike era, (you just can’t race a 200-300$ bike they are just toys and no one wants to pay for better bikes any more either).

Puzey was on the move to bigger bikes when he could see the market decline. He teamed up on the XTR-1, this took over a year to complete because of many stupid things, delays, parts sourcing ect. Then juts as the bike was about to sell the factory refused to supply Puzey’s opening container orders and keep the agreement as they wanted to sell to the markets directly. A huge fall out ensued and Puzey went into the XTR-2 development knowing all the pitfalls of the now galaxy bike (by the way XTR-1 is real a piece of crap, anyone that tried to sell them burned and hopefully learn a lesson).

Then XTR-2 was ready in air-cooled when Puzey discovered it had no power and the test reviews were bad. Back to the drawing table and another 8 months later the LC was ready. Tested better but looks were defiantly better than performance. Some were shipped to SA, some to Ausi and Puzey did a deal to sell them to Pitster as well. Pitster got his and Brock the agreement in 2 seconds, rebadged them and then tried to sell them as Pitster’s. Found they would not sell and then sat with them for the next year. The Ausi bikes were better accepted and dealers bought them BUT as they shipped the 2nd round of 4 containers to Ausi the global melt down happened. The AU importer went Bust, the stock was repossessed by the administrators and auctioned to MotoVert cheap who also rebadged them then dumped them in the market and killed the beginnings the XTR-2-3 business. Puzey was used badly during this time and lost a lot of money because of these greedy non achievers, then set out to make the XTR-4 as a last attempt to win this madness….here we are today. But this time the product is really good and is made in more complex ways to avoid the stupidity. Puzey now has patents of some elements like the adjustable height suspension and has about 12 importers all over the world now. This will go up to about 30 during next year when the adventure bikes are on line and he has done international shows.
Hope this helps you get the full pictures. E mail Mike Puzey any time about sales of the bikes. www.puzey.co.za