Lifan 250cc Dirt Bike

Giant Box

Two months ago IAman bought a Lifan 250 cc dirt bike and had it delivered to my house. I go down to the garage to make sure we have space to work on it and when I open the garage door I find this giant box sitting just outside the door.

Box removed

Up on blocks

Putting it together was pretty straight forward. It was a bit of a struggle for these two old guys to lift the front end up, but we managed. My wife assisted by sliding the wood blocks under the frame to support it.

The handlebar mounted controls are kind of complicated: buttons and switches and levers and cables, but we managed to sort it out.

Filling new motorcycle battery with acid
Chuck Pergiel

The battery came dry. The acid came in a separate container. I expected filling the battery to be terror inducing. Not so. Easy as pie. See above video.

It wasn't until we were cleaning up afterward that we discovered the guards for the front forks.  No biggy, except that one of the mounting screws goes in from the wheel side, which is almost impossible to get in with the wheel on. Also discovered that the speedometer cable is supposed to go around the front of the fork, so we took the front wheel back off.

Motorcycle Rack

IAman bought a rack for carrying the bike on the back of his pickup truck. It comes with a ramp, the idea being that you can roll the bike up on the ramp and onto the rack. The ramp is a U-shaped channel. As the bike weighs 350 pounds this is easier said than done. He starts rolling it down the driveway to build some momentum but when he hits the ramp he is not on center, the tire hits one of the edges and the ramp flips over. This kicks the wheel three or four inches towards him, which throws it off balance and down it goes. I didn't notice any damage. Kind of good to get that out of the way because you know it is going to get dropped eventually, so now you don't need to live in constant terror of dropping it for the first time.