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My Scootering Life |
Bothersome B125
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September 2007 - Present
June 2007 - July 2007
May 2004 - April 2007
March - April 2004
May 2003-March 2004
BOUNCING ALONG ON A BAJAJ SPIRIT March - April 2003
Coming Soon....
Gears V Auto's
My personal favourites
E-mail link
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The Piaggio B125 By March I had made up my mind on the B125 so sold the Adly on E-bay for a respectable £420 and visited my local Piaggio dealer. Little did I know the five week nightmare that was to stretch out in front of me when I put my money down. Picked the bike up two weeks later and rode it from the dealers to my work in Edinburgh. Came out that night and had a terrible job getting the bike started (much to the amusement of a couple of my colleagues !) The following day it was very difficult to start, the engine would fire up OK but as soon as you pulled away it would stall. It could do this once, twice or a dozen times. Persevered for a few days but it then stalled turning onto a busy road so at that point it was off to the dealers. They adjusted the idle speed but the problems were still apparent so back it went again. The dealer then discovered the engine valves had been wrongly set at the factory so this was corrected. It no longer stalled on main roads but was still difficult to start from cold. I added some Silkolene ProFST to the fuel as I suspected the problem was carb icing, that seemed to help for a couple of days but then the problems came back again. The final straw came a couple of weeks later when I had ridden the bike into work. It was parked outside as normal but it rained heavily an hour or so before I left work, the first time the bike had got wet. Came out and it just wouldn't start at all. Eventually had to phone my breakdown company who couldn't get it going either. The bike was put on the back of a rescue truck and we dumped it outside the dealers main door ! It was discovered the engine control box had failed. Piaggio then sent no less than three faulty boxes at which point I just asked for my money back. Luckily my dealer was as exasperated with Piaggio as I was so there was no problem. The last I heard the bike was still sitting in the dealers garage as he tried to get parts from Piaggio. A very disappointing experience all round, the B125 is a great looking bike, but there seem to be a lot of problems with the Leader engine, Piaggio's quality control, and their general approach to owner difficulties. The last few weeks may have permanently put me off anything made by a certain Italian company but it had not put me off scootering. After taking some more advice and reading a lot of reviews I decided to try a Honda !
To read about my long and happy association with my next scoot, (and it's tragic end !), just visit Happiness Is A Honda.
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