I wanted to share a story from before I had the 200X, one that will end up being a long one and I'm not leaving out any details. Special guest appearances include a Suzuki and a Husqvarna.
It was October 2015, Halloween to be exact. I was with family around the area of the dealership and repair business where I bought my trike from. As we were driving past the place, I saw a three wheeler which I thought was an
ATC70. I always wanted an ATC70 to customize and turn it into a pit bike, so after we were done with our business we stopped so I could look at it. I couldn't tell from the road, but the trike was in pretty bad condition. Rust everywhere, parts missing, severely faded plastics. I also found out that it wasn't a 70, but a
Suzuki ALT50, which is even smaller than Honda's ATC70. I also found out that parts for these 50s are next to nonexistent. The shop owner and one of his employees spent a good 20 minutes trying to fire the machine up, but the three of us agreed to give up and the owner and I would talk about where to go next while the employee went back to work on a Kawasaki. The owner asked what I wanted the 50 for, and I told him I wanted something to fix up and sell for more money when it was done. He recommended the Husqvarna bike that was sitting a couple of feet away, a Husky Boy 50cc and pictured below, so we talked about the Husky for a bit and I decided this was what I'd take home with me. It ran and rode, and was $400 so I figured it would be an easy flip. This was where I later found out that I was dead wrong.
I brought it home and started tearing into it. Nothing significant, just small stuff and things I could fix with what little tools I had at the time, which was pretty much just two ratchets and two handfuls of random sockets. All I could do was fix a crack in a thin part of the frame where a bolt threads in to attach the plastics. That was it. A few days later I started riding it and getting used to being on a bike since it was the first time I ever had such a machine in my life or even rode one. I had no experience on dirt bikes or ATVs, three wheelers included. My friends wanted to bring me along for a few rides with them but nothing was ever organized while the Husky was still in running condition. Fast forward a month and this is where the bike goes from the best thing I ever had to my worst nightmare.
I was about to store it for winter, it's still 2015 by the way, and I wanted to get one last ride out of it. I fired it up and it ran for about a full second, then it shut off with a few spurts of grinding and knocking noises. The following day I tore into it and found that the clutch had nuked itself and looked exactly like
this. After doing a bit of research I found out that this was actually a fairly common problem with the engines that were used in my bike. Due to a lack of special tools and knowledge on how to fix this, I decided to take it somewhere for service. My friends suggested to take it to the shop where I got it from so I did. They were all for me taking the Husky there, so I figured this was a safe move. This was on a Friday so I scheduled an appointment to drop the bike off the following day. From here things just went downhill real quick.
On the following Monday I updated my friends on the situation and basically got called stupid and yelled at for taking it to the shop I did even though these were the very same people who told me to take it there in the first place. When they told me to take it down there they had nothing but good things to say about the place but now they were going on about how it's a terrible place that's full of people who have no idea what they're doing and charge way too much for service. For obvious reasons I couldn't take the bike back in my hands now that it was on the shops property for service and they don't allow machines to leave their property until after they're done. Fast forward two months from here and what I heard about this place is quickly becoming true. They hadn't even pulled the bike into their shop yet at this time so I figured this would be a long wait. I stopped in a couple of weeks later to buy some tools since I was on a tool buying spree and asked for an update on the bike. The owner told me that a clutch he ordered two weeks prior went missing in his shop so they had to bring another machine into the shop until they found it. Three weeks later I got a call from him, saying that he ordered and received a new clutch but it blew apart just like the original one upon startup, and he went ahead and ordered a third clutch (without calling me for approval I might add). A few weeks later I called him for another update on the bike and he said that the third clutch came in and that too blew apart just like both the previous ones. Each clutch was an $80- $100 part and the shop has a labor rate of $60 per hour, so this repair was quickly becoming a very expensive fix, not to mention the fact that this bike was just supposed to be a quick, simple flip and I was getting tired of both the shop and the struggle the bike was becoming. I told the shop owner that I'd be in the next day to talk to him about the Husky. I thought things were finally going decently okay, but I was wrong.
Upon stopping in, the owner and I talked about the bike and what my plans were for it, which were to sell it and put the money toward a shed, then buy a three wheeler since I always wanted one. He was on board with idea, especially since he's a trike enthusiast himself and me buying a three wheeler was the very first thing I ever mentioned to him almost a year before I originally found the Husqvarna. This was when we branched off into talking about his 200X, which is now my 200X that you see in this thread, but we got back to talking about the bike. After about 20 minutes of talking, we reached an agreement that I'd take the bike back home unfixed and would only have to pay for one clutch and one hour of labor, which was only $130, because of how big of an issue the thing was becoming. Since I couldn't take the bike back home that day, the shop owner told me that he'd hold it overnight and his guys would put it back together as best they could without the clutch. At this point it was officially four months since I first dropped it off. Also at this point is when the trike came into the picture in a bigger way, with the shop owner saying that he'd also have it ready for me to look at the next day; he had it at home in his personal collection of 24 other three wheelers across the main three manufacturers.
The next day, I went to the shop with all the money I needed for the bike and the trike (I'll focus only on the bike here). The shop owner brought out the bike and went back inside to get the parts, which were in a zip lock bag torn to shreds. He had a tech help me load the bike up but he completely half assed it and left me do all the heavy stuff. Literally all the guy did was hold his hand on the seat after it was inside our vehicle despite the kickstand being deployed; he was no help whatsoever. Upon going home, I found out that a few bolts were missing and the bike wasn't in any different condition than it was the day before, which was the opposite of what I was told would be the case. From here the the bike has been sitting untouched and is still in my possession. I will talk about the early stages of the trike in a future post in this thread.
