New Zontes 700 cc Adv-bike with inline 3 cylinder engine
 

The amount of new socalled ADV bikes coming from Chinese companies these days are just totally hilarious…

Zontes has made some smaller displacement bikes earlier on but now they are heading high - with a 700 cc inline 3 cylinder engine and many more features….

Rideapart reports this:

https://www.rideapart.com/news/69716...gkQicIxfIeK2Mc

I wonder what the parts support for these is going to be like in the future, or if they're going to be like the old Lifans etc and pretty much disposable

I think thats a question many of us have. There are not many dealers around that want to import and sell all these different chinese brands. So service and parts and even warranty issues - what about that???

They seem to sell well here, and there's a few dealers. I guess it depends on parts interchangeability, for example the Chinese-made UM I had was a rebranded Derbi Terra (popular here for quite a few years without changes to the plastics etc) with an Aprilia engine (also unchanged for a long time) so parts availability wasn't an issue ... if the Zontes (and other new manufacturers) are making a spread of highly stylised new models for short production runs with lots of bespoke parts and bespoke motors then it might become a problem.

Looking at my coworker's Zontes ADV 300 there's a lot of bespoke plastic so it would be a PITA to sort out after even a minor accident. It's also unsuited for actual adventure, naturally.

I would struggle with seeing any 3-cylinder bike as an adventure machine. It's an adventure-styled road bike.

Well - Triumph has build their ADV models Tiger in different configurations but all with inline 3 cylindered engines for almost 20 years and heaps of people has used their Tigers for overlanding and ADV trips.

I had a Tiger 955i and that engine was a pearl. Predictable strong linear power all through the rpm range. Not something you can say about all other engines in so called ADV bikes…

Another thing is that it was waaay to heavy and top heavy to be taken on a trip through a third world area…..
But nothing wrong with the engine. Actually I tried my mates T7 lst summer and he asked me what I thought about the bike and I said it reminds a lot of my Tiger 955i both engine wise and riding wise. T7 is a bit lighter of course but still….

An inline 3 cylinder engine would be great for an overlanding bike but the possible problem would be that it easily would become to heavy for a bike that should be capable to be taken on bad roads and conditions…