Home Forums Gear Horses and ATV's Rokon 2wd motorcycles?

GDV#3, IF you're willing to sacrifice some ultra-slow trail crawling/load hauling capabilities I'd take a very close look at the TW200. YouTube has some videos of them in action so you can get an idea about their size. Unless you're a Gorilla, it's a very nice little bike, AND being street-legal, opens up options to ride from home at 80mpg while not drawing as much attention to yourself as a big dirt bike or ATV might.

A little nudge........
TW200 Video

Just did a quick search for TW200 on Craigslist. There are a number of them for sale around the country ranging from $1300 to about $4k. One guy in CA has one with 5 miles that he won in a contest for $4k. What do they sell for new anyway?

I think new street price is around $4K----------or it was last fall when I was shopping. Condition and mileage is everything, because they haven't changed much in the last 25yrs. BTW this IS the 25th anniversary. Talk about a "known quantity."

The problem with anything on Two Wheels is the balance. the faster you travel the easier it is. There is the paradox. slow travel on two wheels is exhausting for any distance.

I too had several trail 90's and 110's. It was the slow going easy to ride machine. They still made every part from Honda in the late 90's. Buy one of these and you're probably set for a long time. They did have a 2:1 low range too.

The Honda fat cat was a freaking disaster with any amount of weight on back. I've had the front wheel pop up off the ground when packing heavy meat loads more times then I could count. Lower racks were made to keep the weight down, but they hung up on stuff. It was simply a no win design. The advantage over the Yamaha design was the auto clutch, so the engine never stalled on hills or other complicated travel. The Little Yamaha Big Wheel was amazing fun, but not for crawling along on rocky trails with a load.

There is no easy answer for 2 wheels. The skills I had on a dirt bike as a kid where great, but are not the same as trying to slowly navigate and haul game and camp out on a dirt bike. Dirt bikes are great when flying along, but really fatigue you quickly going slow with your legs as outriggers. There is no good option for slow complicated crawling when you travel on 2 wheels. My neighbor has a Honda Ruckus. At first glance is a silly little scooter, but after riding and fooling with it for an afternoon,..... Well it's so light and easy to ride with the fully automatic trans, it has real potential for trails. It lacks power and suspension, but it's 100X better then walking or a bicycle, and goes plenty fast for trails. Plus it's so quiet electric start, and street legal without even needing a Motorcycle endorsement!

It's certainly not an ATV or dirt bike, but it's an option for the conditions you spoke of.

A while back, I saw a pic of a pig loaded on a Rokon. He was complaining that handling was impossible. The pig was whole with it's 4 legs tied together. It was on it's back on the rear rack and half of it's weight was behind the axle. With a load like that, handling would most certainly be impossible. You couldn't hold up the bike or keep the front wheel on the ground. He needed to cut it in half and hang the halves lower on the side racks, plus moving them forward. His load was terrible for a Rokon and would have been even worse on any other bike.

There's no easy way to load any bike for handling. You have a few laws of gravity to follow. Most bike racks are designed for a top load and there's no way to get it lower. The Rokon has the best rack setup I know of and it's far from perfect.

One thing the bike makers could do to greatly improve load handling would be a longer wheel base so the load could be kept in front of the axle. Of course that would reduce it's agility when not loaded.

Another thing to look for is make sure whatever bike it is, has a kickstarter, neither TW I had did. I was replacing batteries every 2 yrs.

I think the kickstarter is going the way of the recoil start on ATV's.

GDV3, is it just 4 wheel atv's which were made illegal?

If so them a Honda Big Red 3 wheeler is what you want.

Plenty of power and unlike most 3 wheelers they have front forks for suspension.
Be much easier to pack loads than any 2 wheeler.

Just a thought depending how the law is written.

I've seen quite a few trails closed to vehicles over 40" wide. That covers the 3 wheelers.

Thanks so much for the replies. I had a very steep learning curve to overcome in this area and thanks to your input I'm at least started on the up-sloap.

Nasqam, Iowa's laws vary county to county and town to town. I've watched my neighbors' kids fly up and down our rural gravel roads on ATVs for five years while I was walking my dog while being told by some "outdoors folk" that, technically, it's illegal. And, it depends which LEO, if any, happens upon you at the time. So to this point, as far as my knowledge goes, I can't answer your question precisely. But personally, I don't like the idea of doing something that's breaking the letter of the law even if the rural LEOs look the other way or ignore it because it happens to be a way of life.

My wife's opinion weighs heavily against the two wheelers because we had imagined putting along slowly, and together, and as you have indicated, that will be an exercise in frustration and exhaustion on only two wheels.

So, I am back to googling the laws and regs once more and talking to folks. But if anything, it looks like I'm back to an ATV...if anything.

Yep, ATVs may not be operated on public roadways (or ditches)--from IA's DNR book of freedom infringements

In Idaho, an ATV can be made street legal by adding turn signals, a horn, and brake lights if it doesn't have them.
I called the sheriffs dept to verify it and was told that an ATV can't be made street legal. Then I kept hearing about people who had done it so I called them again and got the above info.

I have had several, maybe four or five of them. Two with two stroke motors and I can say NEVER AGAIN! One that had the Honda powerplant and it was pretty good. I wish I still had it. I just traded for one with a Chinese 110 cc motor swapped in and a four speed transmision in it instead of the original powerglide type thingy. So far, so good but little time on it yet.

What I like the most about Tokons is this: IF one falls over on you you push it off of you easily, get up dust yourself off and keep going. If a full size ATV falls over on you - easy to do on a side hill or steep up or down hill by the way - you are hurt and injured, and badly. Not worth it to me.

I have carried some game out with a Rokon by sledding it on a cheap plastic tobagan or a thick plastic tarp and such works very well for me. Don't go sidehill, ride the Rokon straight up to the top and then ride ridges down or up or roads if there are any as needed. Works well for me, I am a BIG fan of them.

They seem to go forever on a cup of gasoline as well.

Something else that works very well is using the hide. Wrap the meat in it and lace it shut with rope. It'll take a lot of wear before it falls apart. You can drag it by hand in snow but it's pretty hard to do on dry ground.

Then you can say is well tanned for your full body mount.

I would second the votes for the Yamaha BW or TW 200. I recently bought a used one and I love it. I find that I can tool around pretty darn slow without any problem. Say under 10 mph for sure. Little different learning curve than the ATV, due to the balance thing but the low seat hight makes them pretty easy to put a foot down now and again.

Now if it only had decent racks in FRONT of the rear axle.

I bought a new TW 200 yesterday.

I sold my Goldwing and was delivering it to the new owner. I got to thinking, yeah, that usually costs me. I mean I did have the trailer behind the truck and I hate to pull an empty trailer. So, I dropped off the 'Wing and drove straight to the nearest Yamaha dealer. In the door and off the lot in 1 hour 14 minutes.

So far, Its a blast, a slow blast, but fun. I took it down some oil patch roads and down the highway about 10 miles.

I'm taking it to one of my leases in the morning to give it a better try out. The place up at Woodville has all kinds of trails to ride on, about 30 miles or so.

Price in Houston was $4,300.00 plus freight of about $400.00.