Are Benelli bikes big fat lemons....

[ShuBen]

Yeah, the "rubber cow" is running again. :-)
But now I see more oil patches on the road than ever in my whole life before....

After seeing the pics from Bill I come to following conclusion:
The amount of luggage and bad roads bring the shock absorber to its limit and it end blocks. By this, the forces going into the rear support frame. That creates shear forces in the connecting bolts.
In the moment when shear forces are bigger then the clamp forces of the bolt you are done. Just a matter of time.
As every technician should know, shear forces are the worst thing you can do to a bolt or screw.

... There comes the roll of torquing in the game. If u overstress a bolt the bolt material goes in the plastic deformation zone (doesn't mean it brakes immediately). At the end your achieved clamping force is lower than in the elastic zone that you would stay in by using correct torque.

... Sorry for my tech teach, but I must let my thoughts out :-)

Sent from my HUAWEI P7-L07 using Tapatalk

[prince666]

All input is welcome with this thread.
A lot off people have missed the fact that the bikes front right hand shock is leaking and maybe lossed all its oil.
Not sure if the right hand shock is the compression or the rebound shock needless to say this has compounded the problem with the bolts IMO.

[billeuze]

Hey Bill, saw your post and definitely think your assumption is right where the damage could have come from.
As I understood the bike once fallen to the left onto the luggage box right? That could have been the starting point of the damage, as the force of the impact when it fell had to go somewhere, even you didn't see any obvious damages right after....
Dave

I doubt it Dave. That little tip over when I was backroading with Shuben had hardly any impact force, it wend down quite slowly and actually did not even land on a rock because the impact was cushioned by my boot which ended up stuck under the bike.

On the other hand, some of the bumps I took at highway speeds put an awful lot of strain on the frame parts.

Meanwhile, I am following advice of some of you and lightening my load. today I sent back home 5 kilos worth of stuff. I also decided I will never carry more than 1 liter of water with me (I used to carry up to 3 liters) and I will only fill my 10 liter spare fuel tank up to about 3 liters. Altogether this reduces the load hanging off the back by 14 kilos.

Also today, I sent back my new fuel tank as it was defective. So, ordered another new one and now waiting another 2-1/2 days for it to arrive by air express. I'll get refunded the cost of the tank, but not the 200 RMB air express charge.

[prince666]

14 kg good start.
Over the 90 days ride I sent back 3 loads at diffants stages just over 40kg and now the TR-G rides and handles much better.

Form this.

20160627_155244.jpg

To this.

OI000086.jpg

After unloading and loading up the bike every night and morring taking as much as 40 mins a go I decided I needed to streamline the load.

[billeuze]

Now that's what I call way overloaded! I probably don't even have 40 kilos total. For sure not now after I got rid of the 14. I probably won't be able to weigh it till I get home.

[1288711]

wow @billeuze, i've only just seen this post.

I actually remember seeing your bike for sale some time ago on this site and remember thinking that it was a good deal. It looked in much better shape than the one I had.

For my own opinion. I wouldn't say it was a complete lemon, its just that it had standard chinese manufacturing practices applied to it.
(I realise there are some chinese 'champion companies' that the chinese can be proud of....but i don't think Benelli is really one of those, and especially not the early model bj600 gs. )

A friend has the bn300 and its a much better bike than any bj600 i've seen, including the one i owned.
My version was the one with the overheating problem, that many of you guys had a lot of helpful suggestions with on this thread http://www.mychinamoto.com/forums/sh...ht=overheating
In the end, i installed a manual (always on) switch which kept the fan running all the time, to prevent it from getting too hot.

I had the intention to do as Asymptomatic suggested and put in bigger fans... but i got transferred with my company and had to sell the bike.

The standard problems that i saw myself was 1- overheating... which i was informed was changed on later model bikes, but then 2...till the rest, just the addition of poor quality secondary parts... like plastics, meters, levers, mirrors...that kind of shit.

When i sold the bike i obviously informed the guy of these problems and told him that provided he was using it for mountain rides... it should be fine. He was aware of that model and bought it anyway.
That being said... he actually didn't intend it for mountain rides and used it primarily in the city...and for some reason uninstalled the 'always on' cooling fan switch...
and of course it overheated. And i've since been told developed a few more choice problems that it didn't have before.

So he doesn't seem so happy. That being said, i agree with most of what this group has said so far... it's not a great bike. It gives some exhilaration, but its not a good everyday bike... and definitely not a good choice as a tourer in my opinion, just too many things that can go wrong. Even when i owned it, i used it for highway riding to work, and mountain jaunts...but not city riding. I had a Shineray xy250gy10 for that.
There were 2 guys that bought Suzuki en150 ' s and toured around China on them. In my opinion they're probably the best China bike for touring... especially if you know very little about mechanics. Its suzuki so decent engine, and a major plus is those particular bikes are basically great quality chinese farmer bikes, which means parts are everywhere, and everyone knows how to fix them.
Also... air-cooled... less things to go wrong.