X TREAM SCOOTERS:  A GUIDE

The good:  Cheap!  Really cheap.

The bad:  REALLY CHEAP.  Horrible build quality, bottom-of-the-barrel, made in china crap.  Just save your money, get a quality brand.

The following is just a collection of my thoughts and experiences after having bought a 50cc gas-powered X-treme scooter.

The quality on these scooters is really, really just dismal.  It's quite obvious that these things have been farmed out to the absolute cheapest, quickest factory in china and made with about $30 worth of materials.  All of the bolts and fasteners are of the absolute lowest quality imaginable, break easily and strip out when you try to tighten them.  Within the first hour of riding it, a bunch of the bolts had started to rattle loose, and they are of SUCH cheap quality that they stripped when I tightened them.  I ended up going to the local auto parts store and replacing most of the exterior Allen bolts with hex-headed bolts.

The tool kit that comes with them is just as laughable.  The wrenches and tools are all of SUCH poor quality that they either snap in half, or grind apart/round out when you try and actually use them for any work on the scooter.

The misery doesn't stop with the tools and bolts.  It's obvious that everything on the scooter is the cheapest available.  The wheels are cheap cast aluminum, easily dent and in my case, completely cracked into about 4 chunks.  The folding and locking mechanism for the neck is easily prone to failure, in my case one of the key welds fractured, alone with one of the large hinge bolts on the scooter body, and two of the shaft bolts that hold the front wheel on.   I ended up modifying the front neck and hinge mechanism to be MUCH stronger and solid, but it required a good amount of work.  I could spend all day listing all the things that have broken on this scooter, that I’ve fixed by hand.

Fortunately, I'm a machinist by hobby and engineer by trade, so I've been able to fabricate my own (much stronger) replacement parts, but it requires tools and expertise that no normal rider should ever need to have.

And the BRAKES.  Oh, lord, the brakes are almost non-existent.  I had to spend the better part of half a day tweaking, adjusting, modifying, and fiddling with the brakes to actually get them to provide ANY sort of real stopping force, and even then, they're really, really poor, to the point where they're dangerous.

In short?  Honestly people, just stay away.  Stay far away.  Save your money up, get a decent name-brand scooter if you really want one.  Because in spite of all this thing's flaws . . . it is just ludicrous amounts of fun.