Every superhero needs a mask...

Okay....

So we rode the scotters in the half helmets we purchased for a full day before we stumbled into a special at our local Kmart on full-face helmets.

The half helmets we had were basically these:

What we found in Kmart were these:

The Raider helmets were marked down on clearance to $35 each. So we grabbed two and immediately put them to use.

Total spent on helmets so far : $150.

We road for several days; but quickly grew tired of communicating with each other using hand signals and raising our visors to talk each time we came to a stop.

So I decided to look around for what our options would be for helmets with communications in them. It was then that I discovered the V-Tune by Vega.

I first ran across the BLINC helmets by VCANN. But after reading about them, I determined that I wasn't interested because they were mono and not stereo bluetooth helmets.

A quick email to Vega, resulted in a local dealer list that told me where I could go to see the V-Tune in person.  This list directed me to Honda of Cool Springs; where I went on a lunch break and purchased two of them. Their list is $229 each; so after I got them it brought my total helmet cost to just over $600 within two weeks.

ouch!

But the helmets are really nice, as you can see from the following two photos. The first of which shows nice details including having the shield raised.

The next photo gives you a look at the bluetooth controls; which are built in to the helmet and not an addon box.

We've used the helmets now on several occiasions and I have mixed feelings.

They are extreme light and comfortable. I belive mine may be slightly too big, but am not sure. It is an XXL; but I got my wife the XL and it felt too tight for me when I tried it on in the store.

I have heard that head shape has something to do with fit on these helmets and it may just be that my head shape is not optimal.

In any event, the first time we paired them we were able to talk to each other for about 2 hours during our ride before my wife's helmet gave out.  The range is good; we can get maybe a bit over 100 feet apart before we lose contact with each other.

The next day, we tried to use them. But my wife's turned off after less then 10 minutes. It was then that I discovered that the charger that came with her XL was toast. I took it back to Honda of Cool Springs and they exchanged it no questions asked.

But the next time we tried to use them, my helmet died after aboy 20 minutes.

You guessed it... another flakey charger. Or so I thought at the time.

The next time we went out, I took care to charge both helmets from the same charger.

Sure enough, after 10 or 15 minutes or helmet to helmet communications cut off. I pretty much figured it was my helemt's charge again. So I didn't do anything at first but revert back to our hand signals.

But about an hour later, I happened to turn my ipod touch on and noticed that it saw my helmet . So I told it to play Pandora through my helmet and immediately the music started playing in my ears.

So the helmet hadn't shut down after all. It had just simply ended the peer-to-peer conversation.

We ran for about an hour, with me listening to various Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond, & Elton John music. Then I simply hit the talk  button again and surprised my wife by speaking in her ear.

We had thought the helmet had died; but instead it must be something about the peer-to-peer pairing that occaisonaly drops the connection.

Which I can live with, because we can always call each other and talk via cell phone and not have to worry about the 100 foot range limit.

All in all, I reccomend the Vega V-Tune highly. IT is a great investment and appears to be a great helmet.

They also make a replacement visor for it that is designed for cold weather driving. It appears that by DC powered and has heat tape to keep the face plate from fogging up and heat the helmet at the same time.

Nice.

Finally...Elvis is in the building!!!

So a few days later, I drive down to Murfreesboro to visit GDM Motorsports to take a look at the scooters that my wife and son were shown.

When I pull in to the parking lot, I see one of the scooters parked out front; and it looks quite a bit bigger than I expected (which reinfoces what the good folks at Red Dog Scooters told us).

After looking at the scooters, I begin to talk to the owner and he agrees to sell me both scooters as a pair for $999 each. Further, he agrees to deliver both bikes for free the following weekend, as well as to do a complete mechanic's inspection of both bikes prior to delivery.  All that is in addition to them also taking care of all the title, tags, and registration work with the DMV.

All in all, an incredible deal. And I came in a full $1,000 below my original budget for the two bikes.

While we were there in the store, we also purchased two 1/2 helmets for about $40 each and went home to wait for our bikes to be delivered the next weekend.

The following Saturday, Gary showed up around 3 with both bikes on a delivery platform. He rolls them off and I quickly take the following pictures:

Notice the odometer in the photo below; 3.0 miles!

With my trusty new scooter in hand; a new Scooter Freak is born!

Curiouser and curiouser...

The biggest thing to come out of my wife's visit to Red Dog Scooters, was that we could make due with 150cc scooters instead of 250cc scooters.  That fact alone saves us over $500 on each scooter at mail order prices.

In the meantime, my web search turned up an internet site dedicated to Chinese scooters: http://scootdawg.proboards.com/.

This site is filled with good people who are actually more than willing to help people who have questions; or have just purchased scooters.  I introduced myself there and mentioned that my wife and I were going to be buying scooters in April.

I was introduced to another scooter owner who lives in Nashville; and received quite a bit of good advice. But the admonition to buy local versus internet was echoed once again.

Now before I get much further on this; let me point out that ScootDawg is probably the single most influential site I came accross during my search. The wealth of knowledge and advice they posses is extraordinary to say the least.

If you buy a scooter on the internet - you must check this site out for all the tips and tricks needed to ensure that you have a good experience.

That being said; I want to stop here for a moment to discuss warrenty.

Simply put; on Chinese scooters there is no warrenty. Period. Don't let *anyone* else tell you any different. If the scooter breaks down, you will have to find the parts yourself and arrange to have the repairs done. I've yet to see a single instance where *any* internet dealer actually honored a warrenty and provided repair service at no charge.

So don't let the warrenty be a factor when you are comparing internet dealers. The scooters are never actually kept in stock; so there is literally very little difference between Dealer A and Dealer B. And everyone I've ever spoken to pretty much agrees that every internet dealer will tell you whatever you want to hear in order to sell you a scooter.

I'm not saying that every internet dealer has the integrity of a used car salesman; but if you operate under that impression you will not be disappointed. And some dealers may even surprise you.

Not every internet dealer out there will treat you badly. But never make the mistake of counting on their good will.  Keep this advice and you will have a good experience.

So, to make a long story short (too late, I know).... ScootDawg's users pointed out that I shouldn't overlook Craig's List as a good source of scooters. Both new and used. The advantage of buying via Craig's List is that almost all the scooters have all their proper paperwork and will be titled and tagged for your state. And having the paperwork taken care of is a major advantage.

So I used a site called http://www.craiglook.com/ to see what scooters were available in my area.

There were actally quite a few scooters that caught my eye; so I contact about 5 different people who listed their email addresses on their ads.

Out of the 5; only one person actually answered me.

It never ceases to amaze me how much oppurtunity is missed in life because people do not follow through on things. All 5 of those scooters are still listed for sale today - and I may have bought one of them. But most didn't seem to care about making the sale. Sigh....

But one ad did catch my attention. It was from a local dealer in a small town about a half hour away from Nashville who said he had several 150cc scooters available starting at $750 each.

That had my attention.

The very next Monday; my wife and son made another scooter trek to the dealer and this time they came back with a different story.

It appears that there was an importer in California that imported their scooters from China and their Motorcycles from Korea. Unlike most Chinese importers; they had established a dealer network here in the US.  The company called itself United Motors; and had a fairly successful run selling motorcycles and scooters until the economy took a turn for the worse and GE Capital apparently forced them to close their doors.

Then the vultures swept in and gobbled up all their inventory for liquidation.

What would normally be a sad story had a good ending for me; because the dealer I had found had purchased a crate of 6 of their scooters in the liquidation and was reselling them.

By the time my wife and son had made it down; they had sold 3 and had three left.  Two 170cc and a single 150cc. The dealer (Gary Mann) was nice, and went out of his way to explain that the scooters were from a manufacturer that was no longer in business and would not have any warrenty to speak of. Which confused my wife; but when she relayed the news to me it sounded like a very honest way for him to avoid misunderstandings with potential customers.

He sent them on their way with the comment that if we were interested, he would give us a deal on the 150cc and one of the 170cc scooters for $2,000. My wife said we would be in touch, and that appeared to be that.

Through the looking glass....

The next few days were spent using Google to see if I could find some local dealers in Nashville to check up one.

There are actually several dealers in the area; but one in particular caught my eye : http://www.reddogscooters.com/.

These guys only sell scooters; and they listed at least one Chinese brand (Fly Scooters). That pretty much told me that they wouldn't snub my business if I told them I was looking for something cheap.

The salesman, Tommy, greated my wife and son when they entered the store (I was busy at work and couldn't go) and proceded to show them several of the scooters they had in stock.

Up to that point; the only scooter my wife or I had seen was the one our neighbor had tried to sell us earlier in January. That scooter was a 250cc; so we had been looking at that size as we developed our wishlist.

Tommy explained that they didn't stock and scooters that big; only 150cc and below. He showed several of these to my wife; who later reported to me that the 150cc scooters looked like they could be quite acceptable size wise.

He also was the first person to tell us that you could take a 250cc scooter on the Interstates in Tennessee; but anything smaller was forbidden.

During this visit, I spoke with Tommy over the phone. In that conversation, he assured me that Red Dog Scooters would perform and work I needed on a Chinese scooter; no matter where I bought it. That was a very important fact for me; especially since I knew I wasn't a wiz at handling repairs myself.

Unfortunately, the scooter my wife was most interested in (a Fly Cadenza I believe), was not availble to be seen. And Tommy told me it would probably be mid april before they had them back in stock.

So we thanked him for his time; and then my family left to return to the house and discuss what they had seen with me when I got home after work.

The search begins...

The very first thing I dscovered was that there are two kinds of scooters in the world: the Chinese, and everyone else.

Chineese scooters seem to get a *really* bad reputation on the web. Especially at sites which had lots of users who owned Yamaha, Honda, Vespa, Suzuki, and other more recognizable brands.

The bad press is almost entirely centered around poor quality on the scooters. As well as horror stories about crooked dealers and nonexistant after-the-sale support.

It appears that most internet dealers actually do not stock the scooters they sell - but rather have them drop-shipped to you after you pay.

The drop-shipped scooters then show up in your driveway; usually in mistreated shipping packaging, and sometimes suffering cosmetic damage.

Usually, the very same dealer who was always happy to chat with you on the phone before you placed your order, was now strangly silent and difficult to get hold of.

The horror stories go on from there.  Most people will tell you not to buy a Chinese scooter unless you are willing to embrace your inner mechanic.  Mechanical failures on these bikes seem widespread. And for that reason almost everyone reccomends that you purchase your scooter new from a local dealership (sometimes refered to as a 'Brick and Morter' or 'B&M' dealer.

Well...while I am a self professed computer nut who can pretty much fix any problem imaginable involving a computer; my mechanic skill date back over 30 years when I worked at a service station as a teen ager.

So I pretty much figured that I would take a look at local dealerships in and around the Nashville, Tennessee area to see just what was available.

The First Day...of the rest of my life....

I remember the day that I was bitten by the "Scooter Bug".

It was a cold January Saturday in early 2010. I was riding down the road outside my house when I noticed what looked like a red motorcycle sitting in someone's yard with a For Sale sign on it.

Later that day, my wife and I returned to the house and as I got out of my SUV to get a better look; the owner of the house came out and spoke with us.

The scooter was a 2007 250cc Honda reflex clone (although neither he nor I knew that at the time) with about 1800 miles on it. The gentleman said the scooter belonged to his son. Apparently the son had bought it; and then got a newer one and told his old man to sell the old one.

They wanted $1,500 for the scooter; which I was not able to determine if it was a good price or not because of my unfamiliarity with scooters.

We went home, and I began to look up scooters on the internet.  In short order, I discovered the world of Chinese scooters.

I originally found many dealers offering brand new scooters for around $1,700 delivered on the internet. So I pretty much ruled the local man's purchase out as having been too expensive. I would later decide otherwise.

My wife and I decided that we both wanted one rather than two of us riding the same bike.  So we began pricing scooters and figured we would purchase them in March.